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^RASS*'

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

A STUDY OF THE LAMER MIND

CHARLES HORTON £pOLEY

raorassoR or sociology in the university or lacmoAV
author or "human nature and the social order"

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1924

diets

251
• IT14-/L.

Printed in the United States of America
Published Ap,il, 1009

4
1

THIS BOOK 18 DBDICATBO

WHOSE INFLUENCE IB ▲ CHXEV
0OUBCB OF ANT LITEBABY
MIBIT XT MAT H1T1

PREFACE

Our life is all one human whole, and if we are to have
anj real knowledge of it we must see it as such. If we
cut it up it dies in the process: and so I conceive that the
various branches of research that deal with this whole
are properly distinguished by change in the point of sight
rather than by any division in the thing that is seen. Ac-
cordingly, in a former book (Human Nature and Social
Order), I tried to see society as it exists in the social
nature of man and to display that in its main outlines.
In this one the eye is focussed on the enlargement and
diversification of intercourse which I have called Social
Organization, the individual, though visible, remaining
slightly in the background.

It will be seen from my title and all my treatment that
I apprehend the subject on the mental rather than the
material side. I by no means, however, overlook or wish
to depreciate the latter, to which I am willing to ascribe all
the importance that any one can require for it. Our task
as students of society is a large one, and each of us, I sup-
pose, may undertake any part of it to which he feels at
all competent.

Ann Abbob, Mich., February, 1909.

6-36-^4

CONTENTS

PAET I— PRIMARY ASPECTS OP ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER I -

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

FAOB

Mind an Organic Whole — Conscious and Unconscious Relations
— Does Self -Consciousness Come First? Cogito, Ergo Sum
— The Larger Introspection — Self-Consciousness in Chil-
dren — Public Consciousness 3

^ CHAPTER II

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND— (CONTINUED)

Moral Aspect of the Organic View — It Implies that Reform
Should Be Based on Sympathy — Uses of Praise and Blame
— Responsibility Broadened but Not Lost — Moral Value of
a Larger View — Organic Morality Calls for Knowledge —
Nature of Social Organisation 13

U CHAPTER III ^

PRIMARY GROUPS

Meaning of Primary Groups — Family, Playground, and Neigh-
borhood — How Far Influenced by Larger Society — Meaning
and Permanence of " Human Nature" — Primary Groups the
Nursery of Human Nature 23

L CHAPTER IV „

PRIMARY IDEALS

Nature of Primary Idealism— The Ideal of a "We" or Moral
Unity — It Does Not Exclude Self- Assertion- -Ideals Spring-
ing from Hostility — Loyalty, Truth, Service — Kindness —

CONTENTS

»aqb
Lawfulness — Freedom— The Doctrine of Natural Right —

Bearing of Primary Idealism upon Education and Philan-
thropy 32

CHAPTER V

THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS

Primary Ideals Underlie Democracy and Christianity — Why
They Are Not Achieved on a Larger Scale — What They Re-
quire from Personality — From Social Mechanism — The
Principle of Compensation 51

PART II— COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER VI

>y THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION

Meaning of Communication — Its Relation to Human Nature
— To Society at Large 61

CHAPTER VII

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

Pre- Verbal Communication — The Rise of Speech — Its Mental
and Social Function — The Function of Writing — Printing
and the Modern World— The Non- Verbal Arte . • 66

CHAPTER VIII

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT AND ANIMATION

Character of Recent Changes — Their General Effect — The
Change in the United States — Organized Gossip — Public
Opinion, Democracy, Internationalism — The Value of
Diffusion — Enlargement of Feeling — Conclusion . . .80

CHAPTER IX

MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY

The Question— Why Communication Should Foster Individu-
ality—The Contrary or Dead-Level Theory— Reconcilia-
tion of These Views— The Outlook as Regards Individuality 01

CONTENTS

CHAPTER X

modern communication: superficiality and strain

PAQB

Stimulating Effect of Modern Life — Superficiality — Strain —
Pathological Effects ,. .98

PART in— THE DEMOCRATIC MIND

CHAPTER XI

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Narrowness of Consciousness in Tribal Society — Importance of
Face-to-Face Assembly — Individuality — Subconscious Char-
acter of Wider Relations — Enlargement of Consciousness —
Irregularity in Growth — Breadth of Modern Consciousness
— Democracy • . . . 107

CHAPTER XII ^

THE THEORY OP PUBLIC OPINION

Public Opinion as Organization — Agreement Not Essential —
Public Opinion versus Popular Impression — Public Thought
Not an Average — A Group Is Capable of Expression through
Its Most Competent Members — General and Special Public
Opinion — The Sphere of the Former — Of the Latter — The
Two Are United in Personality — How Public Opinion Rules
— Effective Rule Based on Moral Unity . . • .121

CHAPTER XIII y

WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

The Masses the Initiators of Sentiment — They Live in the Cen-
tral Current of Experience — Distinction or Privilege Apt to
Cause Isolation — Institutional Character of Upper Classes
— The Masses Shrewd Judges of Persons — This the Main
Ground for Expecting that the People Will Be Right in the
Long Run — Democracy Always Representative — Con-
clusion 135

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIV

DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT

PAOB

The Crowd-Theory of Modern Life — The Psychology of Crowds
— Modern Conditions Favor Psychological Contagion — De-
mocracy a Training in Self-Control — The Crowd Not Always
in the Wrong — Conclusion; the Case of France • • • 149

CHAPTER XV

DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

The Problem — Democracy Should Be Distinguished from
Transition — The Dead-Level Theory of Democracy — Con-
fusion and Its Effects — " Individualism " May Not Be Favor-
able to Distinguished Individuality — Contemporary Uni-
formity — Relative Advantages of America and Europe —
Haste, Superficiality, Strain — Spiritual Economy of a Set-
tled Order — Commercialism — Zeal for Diffusion — Con-
clusion 157

CHAPTER XVI

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

Meaning and General Trend of Sentiment — Attenuation — Re-
finement — Sense of Justice — Truth as Justice — As Realism
As Expediency — As Economy of Attention — Hopefulness 177

CHAPTER XVII

THE TREND OP SENTIMENT — ^CONTINUED)

Nature of the Sentiment of Brotherhood — Favored by Com-
munication and Settled Principles — How Far Contemporary
Life Fosters It — How Far Uncongenial to It — General Out-
come in this Regard—The Spirit of Service— The Trend of
Manners — Brotherhood in Relation to Conflict — Blame —

Democracy and Christianity 189

••

Xll

CONTENTS

PART IV— SOCIAL CLASSES
CHAPTER XVIII

THE HEREDITARY OR CASTS PRINCIPLE

PAGE

Nature and Use of Classes — Inheritance and Competition the
Two Principles upon which Classes Are Based — Conditions
in Human Nature Making for Hereditary Classes — Caste
Spirit 209

CHAPTER XIX

CONDITIONS FAVORING OR OPPOSING THE GROWTH OF CASTS

Three Conditions Affecting the Increase or Diminution of Caste
— Race-Caste — Immigration and Conquest — Gradual Dif-
ferentiation of Functions; Mediaeval Caste; India — In-
fluence of Settled Conditions — Influence of the State of
Communication and Enlightenment — Conclusion • • 217

CHAPTER XX

THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE

The Question — How Far the Inheritance Principle Actually
Prevails — Influences Favoring Its Growth — Those Antag-
onizing It — The Principles of Inheritance and Equal Op-
portunity as Affecting Social Efficiency — Conclusion • • 229

CHAPTER XXI

OPEN CLASSES

The Nature of Open Classes — Whether Claes-Consciousness Is
Desirable — Fellowship and Cooperation Deficient in Our
Society — Class Organization in Relation to Freedom • • 239

CHAPTER XXn

HOW FAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES

Impersonal Character of Open Classes — Various Classifications —

Classes, as Commonly Understood, Based on Obvious Dis-

•••
Xlll

CONTENTS

FAOB

tinctions— Wealth as Generalized Power — Economic Better*
ment a* an Ideal of the Ill-Paid Classes— Conclusion . . 248

CHAPTER XXIII "

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS '

The Capitalist Class — Its Lack of Caste Sentiment — In What
Sense "the Fittest" — Moral Traits — How Far Based on Ser-
vice — Autocratic and Democratic Principles in the Control
of Industry — Reasons for Expecting an Increase of the
Democratic Principle — Social Power in General — Organizing
Capacity — Nature and Sources of Capitalist Power — Power
over the Press and over Public Sentiment — Upper Class
Atmosphere 256

CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS — (CONTINUED)

The Influence of Ambitious Young Men — Security of the Dom-
inant Class in an Open System — Is There Danger of Anarchy
and Spoliation? — Whether the Sway of Riches Is Greater
Now than Formerly — Whether Greater in America than in
England 273

CHAPTER XXV "

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES

The Need of Class Organization — Uses and Dangers of Unions
— General Disposition of the Hand- Working Classes • • 284

CHAPTER XXVI

POVERTY

The Meaning of Poverty — Personal and General Causes — Pov-
erty in a Prosperous Society Due Chiefly to Maladjustment
—Are the Poor the " Unfit "?— Who Is to Blame for Poverty?
— Attitude of Society toward the Poor— Fundamental
Remedies • 200

xiv

CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXVII

HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES

*▲«■

Condition! Producing Class Animosity — The Spirit of Service
Allays Bitterness — Possible Decrease of the Prestige of
Wealth — Probability of a More Communal Spirit in the
Use of Wealth — Influence of Settled Rules for Social Oppo-
sition — Importance of Face-to-Face Discussion • • 901

PART V— INSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER XXVIII

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

The Nature of Institutions — Hereditary and Social Factors —
The Child and the World — Society and Personality — Person-
ality versxa the Institution — The Institution as a Basis of
Personality — The Moral Aspect — Choice venu$ Mechanism
—Personality the Life of Institutions — Institutions Becom-
ing Freer in Structure 313

CHAPTER XXIX

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL — (CONTINUED)

Innovation as a Personal Tendency — Innovation and Conserva-
tism as Public Habit — Solidarity — French and Anglo-Saxon
Solidarity — Tradition and Convention — Not so Opposite as
They Appear — Real Difference, in this Regard, between
Modern and Mediaeval Society — Traditionalism and Con-
ventionalism in Modern Life 327

CHAPTER XXX

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

The Nature of Formalism — Its Effect upon Personality— Form-
alism in Modern Life — Disorganization, " Individualism"
—How it Affects the Individual — Relation to Formalism —
* Individualism 11 Implies Defective Sympathy — Contem-
porary " Individualism " — Restlessness under Discomfort —
The Better Aspect of Disorganization .... 342

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXXI * A °*

disorganization: the family

Old and New Regimes in the Family— The Declining Birth-Rate
—"Spoiled" Children— The Opening of New Careers to
Women — European and American Points of View — Personal
Factors in Divorce — Institutional Factors — Conclusion . 356

CHAPTER XXXII

disorganization: the church

The Psychological View of Religion — The Need of Social
Structure — Creeds — Why Symbols Tend to Become Formal
— Traits of a Good System of Symbols — Contemporary
Need of Religion — Newer Tendencies in the Church • . 372

CHAPTER XXXIII

disorganization: other traditions

Disorder in the Economic System — In Education — In Higher
Culture— In the Fine Arts 383

PART VI— PUBLIC WILL
CHAPTER XXXIV

THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL

Public and Private Will— The Lack of Public Will— Social
Wrongs Commonly Not Willed at All 395

CHAPTER XXXV

GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL

Government Not the Only Agent of Public Will — The Relative
Point of View; Advantages of Government as an Agent —
Mechanical Tendency of Government — Characteristics Fa-
vorable to Government Activity — Municipal Socialism — Self-
Expression the Fundamental Demand of the People — Actual
Extension of State Functions 402

xvi

CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXXVI

SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL

frAGB

Growing Efficiency of the Intellectual Processes — Organic
Idealism — The Larger Morality — Indirect Service — Increas-
ing Simplicity and Flexibility in Social Structure — Public
Will Saves Part of the Cost of Change — Human Nature the
Guiding Force behind Public Will 411

Index ♦ ♦ ♦ . .421

xvi

PART I

PRIMARY ASPECTS OF ORGANIZATION

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER I

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OP MIND

Hind an Organic Whole — Conscious and Unconscious Rela-
tions — Dobs Self-Consciousness Come First 7 Coorro, Ebqo
Sum — The Larger Introspection — Self-Consciousness in
Children — Public Consciousness.

Mind is an organic whole made up of cooperating .
individualities, in somewhat the same way that the music
of an orchestra is made up of divergent but related sounds.
No one would think it necessary or reasonable to divide
the music into two kinds, that made by the whole and that
of particular instruments, and no more are there two kinds
of mind, the social mind and the individual mind. When
we study the social mind we merely fix our attention on
larger aspects and relations rather than on the narrower
ones of ordinary psychology.

The view that all mind acts together in a vital whole
from which the individual is never really separate flows
naturally from our growing knowledge of heredity and
suggestion, which makes it increasingly clear that every
thought we have is linked with the thought of our an-
cestors and associates, and through them with that of
society at large. It is also the only view consistent with

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

die general standpoint of modern science, which admits
nothing isolate in nature.

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. Whether, like the
orchestra, it gives forth harmony may be a matter of dis-
pute, but that its sound, pleasing or otherwise, is the ex-
pression of a vital cooperation, cannot well be denied.
Certainly everything that I say or think is influenced by
what others have said or thought, and, in one way or an-
other, sends out an influence of its own in turn.

This differentiated unity of mental or social life, pres-
ent in the simplest intercourse but capable of infinite
growth and adaptation, is what I mean in this work by
social organization. It would be useless, I think, to at-
tempt a more elaborate definition. We have only to
open our eyes to see organization; and if we cannot do
that no definition will help us.

In the social mind we may distinguish — very roughly
of course — conscious and unconscious relations, the un-
conscious being those of which we are not aware, which
for some .reason escape our notice. A great part of the
influences at work upon us are of this character: our
language, our mechanical arts, our government and other
institutions, we derive chiefly from people to whom we
are but indirectly and unconsciously related. The larger
movements of society — the progress and decadence of
nations, institutions and races — have seldom been a

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

matter of consciousness until they were past. And al-
though the growth of social consciousness is perhaps the
greatest fact of history, it has still but a narrow and fallible
grasp of human life.

Social consciousness, or awareness of society, is in- \
separable from self-consciousness, because we can hardly •!
think of ourselves excepting with reference to a social j
group of some sort, or of the group except with reference
to ourselves. The two things go together, and what we
are really aware of is a more or less complex personal or ;
social whole, of which now the particular, now the general,
aspect is emphasized.

In general, then, most of our reflective consciousness,
of our wide-awake st&te of mind, is social consciousness,
because a sense of our relation to other persons, or of
other persons to one another, can hardly fail to be a part
of it Self and society are twin-born, we know one as
immediately as we know the other, and the notion of a
separate and independent ego is an illusion.

This view, which seems to me quite simple and in ac-
cord with common-sense, is not the one most commonly
held, for psychologists and even sociologists are still
much infected with the idea that self-consciousness is in
some way primary, and antecedent to social conscious-
ness, which must be derived by some recondite process of
combination or elimination. I venture, therefore, to
give some further exposition of it, based in part on first-
hand observation of the growth of social ideas in children.

Descartes is, i su ppo se, the best-known exponent of the
traditional view regarding the primacy of self-conscious*

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ness. Seeking an unquestionable basis for philosophy,
he thought that he found it in the proposition "I think,
therefore I am 19 (cogito, ergo sum). This seemed to him
inevitable, though all else might be illusion. "I ob-
served/ 9 he says, "that, whilst I thus wished to think that
all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus
thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that
this truth, / think, hence I am, was so certain and of such
evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant,
could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it,
I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as
the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in
search/ 9 *

From our point of view this reasoning is unsatisfactory
in two essential respects. In the first place it seems to
imply that " I"-consciousness is a part of all conscious-
ness, when, in fact, it belongs only to a rather advanced
stage of development. In the second it is one-sided or
"individualistic" in asserting the personal or "I" aspect
to the exclusion of the social or "we 19 aspect, which is
equally original with it

Introspection is essential to psychological or social in-
sight, but the introspection of Descartes was, in this in-
stance, a limited, almost abnormal, sort of introspection
— that of a self-absorbed philosopher doing his best to
isolate himself from other people and from all simple and
natural conditions of life. The mind into which he looked
was in a highly technical state, not likely to give him a
just view of human consciousness in general.

* Discourse on Method, part iv.

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

Introspection is of a larger sort in our day. There is a
world of things in the mind worth looking at, and the
modern psychologist, instead of fixing his attention wholly
on an extreme form of speculative self-consciousness, puts
his mind through an infinite variety of experiences, in-
tellectual and emotional, simple and complex, normal
and abnormal, sociable and private, recording in each
case what he sees in it. He does this by subjecting it to
suggestions or incitements of various kinds, which awaken
the activities he desires to study.

, In particular he does it largely by what may be called 1
sympathetic introspection, putting himself into intimate [
contact with various sorts of persons and allowing them !
to awake in himself a life similar to their own, which he
afterwards, to the best of his ability, recalls and describes.
In this way he is more or less able to understand — always
by introspection — children, idiots, criminals, rich and
poor, conservative and radical — any phase of human
nature not wholly alien to his own.

This I conceive to be the principal method of the social j
psychologist. '

One thing which this broader introspection reveals is \
that the "I "-consciousness does not explicitly appear
until the child is, say, about two years old, and that when
it does appear it comes in inseparable conjunction with
the consciousness of other persons and of those relations
which make up a social group. It is in fact simply one
phase of a body of personal thought which is self-con-
sciousness in one aspect and social consciousness in an-
other.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The mental experience of a new-born child is probably
a mere stream of impressions, which may be regarded as
being individual, in being differentiated from any other
stream, or as social, in being an undoubted product of
inheritance and suggestion from human life at large; but
is not aware either of itself or of society.

Very soon, however, the mind begins to discriminate
personal impressions and to become both naively self-
conscious and naively conscious of society; that is, the
child is aware, in an unreflective way, of a group and of his
own special relation to it. He does not say "I" nor does
he name his mother, his sister or his nurse, but he has
images and feelings out of which these ideas will grow.
Later comes the more reflective consciousness which
names both himself and other people, and brings a fuller
perception of the relations which constitute the unity of
this small world.*

And so on to the most elaborate phases of self-con-
sciousness and social consciousness, to the metaphysician
j pondering the Ego, or the sociologist meditating on the
Social Organism. Self and society go together, as phases

* There is much interest and significance in the matter of chil-
dren's first learning the use of " I " and other self-words — just how
they learn them and what they mean by them. Some discussion
of the matter, based on observation of two children, will be found
in Human Nature and the Social Order; and more recently I have
published a paper in the Psychological Review (November, 1908)
called A Study of the Early Use of Self-Words by a Child. "I"
seems to mean primarily the assertion of will in a social medium
of which the child is conscious and of which his " I " is an insepa-
rable part. It is thus a social idea and, as stated in the text, arises
by differentiation of a vague body of personal thought which is self-
consciousness in one phase and social consciousness in another
It has no necessary reference to the body.

— =3

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

of a -common whole. I am aware of the social groups in
which I live as immediately and authentically as I am
aware of myself; and Descartes might have said "We
think/' cogiiamus, on as good grounds as he said cogiio.

But, it may be said, this very consciousness that you
are considering is after all located in a particular person,
and so are all similar consciousnesses, so that what we
see, if we take an objective view of the matter, is merely
an aggregate of individuals, however social those individ-
uals may be. Common-sense, most people think, assures
us that the separate person is the primary fact of life.

If so, is it not because common-sense has been trained
by custom to look at one aspect of things and not another ?
Common-sense, moderately informed, assures us that the \
individual has his being only as part of a whole. What 1
does not come by heredity comes by communication and ;
intercourse; and the more closely we look the more ap-
parent it is that separateness is an illusion of the eye and
community the inner truth. "Social organism, 19 using
the term in no abstruse sense but merely to mean a vital
unity in human life, is a fact as obvious to enlightened
common-sense as individuality.

I do not question that the individual is a differentiated
centre of psychical life, having a world of his own into
which no other individual can fully enter; living in a
stream of thought in which there is nothing quite like that
in any other stream, neither his "I," nor his "you," nor
his "we," nor even any material object; all, probably,
as they exist for him, have something unique about them.
But this uniqueness is no more apparent and verifiable
than the fact — not at all inconsistent with it — that he is

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

in the fullest sense member of a whole, appearing such
not only to scientific observation but also to his own un-
trained consciousness.

There is then no mystery about social consciousness.
The view that there is something recondite about it and
that it must be dug for with metaphysics and drawn forth
from the depths of speculation, springs from a failure to
grasp adequately the social nature of all higher conscious-
ness. What we need in this connection is only a better
seeing and understanding of rather ordinary and familiar
facts.

We may view social consciousness either in a particular
mind or as a cooperative activity of many minds. The
social ideas that I have are closely connected with those
that other people have, and act and react upon them to
form a whole. This gives us public consciousness, or to use
a more familiar term, public opinion, in the broad sense
of a group state of mind which is more or less distinctly
aware of itself. By this last phrase I mean such a mutual
understanding of one another's points of view on the part
of the individuals or groups concerned as naturally results
from discussion. There are all degrees of this awareness
in the various individuals. Generally speaking, it never
embraces the whole in all its complexity, but almost al-
ways some of the relations that enter into the whole. The
more intimate the communication of a group the more
complete, the more thoroughly knit together into a living
whole, is its public consciousness.

In a congenial family life, for example, there may be
a public consciousness which brings all the important

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

thoughts and feelings of the members into such a living
and cooperative whole. In the mind of each member,
also, this same thing exists as a social consciousness em-
bracing a vivid sense of the personal traits and modes of
thought and feeling of the other members. And, finally,
quite inseparable from all this, is each one's consciousness
of himself, which is largely a direct reflection of the ideas
about himself he attributes to the others, and is directly
or indirectly altogether a product of social life. Thus all
consciousness hangs together, and the distinctions are
chiefly based on point of view.

The unity of public opinion, like all vital unity, is one
not of agreement but of organization, of interaction and
mutual influence. It is true that a certain underlying
likeness of nature is necessary in order that minds may
influence one another and so cooperate in forming a
vital whole, but identity, even in the simplest process, is
unnecessary and probably impossible. The conscious-
ness of the American House of Representatives, for ex-
ample, is by no means limited to the common views, if there
are any, shared by its members, but embraces the whole
consciousness of every member so far as this deals with
the activity of the House. It would be a poor conception
of the whole which left out the opposition, or even one
dissentient individual. That all minds are different is a
condition, not an obstacle, to the unity that consists in
a differentiated and codperative life.

Here is another illustration of what is meant by indi-
vidual and collective aspects of social consciousness.
Some of us possess a good many books relating to social
questions of the day. Each of these books, considered by

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

itself, is the expression of a particular social conscious-
ness; the author has cleared up his ideas as well as he
can and printed them. But a library of such books ex-
presses social consciousness in a larger sense; it speaks
for the epoch. And certainly no one who reads the books
will doubt that they form a whole, whatever their differ-
ences. The radical and the reactionist are clearly part
of the same general situation.
There are, then,/at least three aspects of consciousness /
( Which we may usefully distinguish: [self-consciousness,
" or what I think of myself; social consciousness (in its in-
dividual aspect), or what I think of other people; and
, public consciousness, or a collective view of the foregoing
as organized in a communicating group. And all three are
phases of a single whole. ^

CtfAPTEft It

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND— Continue

Moral Aspect of the Organic View — It Implies that Reform
Should Be Based on Sympathy — Uses of Praise and Blame
— Responsibility Broadened but not Lost — Moral Valuf
of a Larger View — Organic Morality Calls for Knowledge
— Nature of Social Organization.

So far as the moral aspect is concerned, it should be
the result of this organic view of mind to make the whole
teaching and practice of righteousness more rational and
effectual by bringing it closer to fact. A moral view
which does not see the individual in living unify with social
wholes is unreal and apt to lead to impractical results.

Have not the moral philosophies of the past missed
their mark, in great part, by setting before the individual
absolute standards of behavior, without affording him an
explanation for his backwardness or a programme for his
gradual advance? And did not this spring from not dis-
cerning clearly that the moral life was a social organism,
in which every individual or group of individuals had its
own special possibilities and limitations? In genera]
such systems, pagan and Christian, have said, "All of
us ought to be so and so, but since very few of us are, this
is evidently a bad world." And they have had no large,
well-organized, slow-but-sure plan for making it better.
Impracticable standards have the same ill effect as unen-
forcible law; they accustom us to separate theory from
practice and make a chasm between the individual and
the moral ideal.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The present way of thinking tends to close up this
chasm and bring both persons and ideals into more in-
telligible relations to real life. The sins or virtues of the
individual, it seems, are never fortuitous or disconnected;
they have always a history and collateral support, and are
in fact more or less pleasing phases of a struggling, as-
piring whole. The ideals are also parts of the whole;
states of being, achieved momentarily by those in front
and treasured for the animation and solace of all. And
the method of righteousness is to understand as well as
may be the working of this whole and of all its parts, and
to form and pursue practicable ideals based on this under-
standing. It is always to be taken for granted that there
is no real break with history and environment. Each
individual may be required to put forth a steadfast en-
deavor to make himself and his surroundings better, but
not to achieve a standard unconnected with his actual
state. And the same principle applies to special groups
of all sorts, including nations, races, and religions; their
progress must be along a natural line of improvement sug-
gested by what they are. We are thus coming under the
sway of that relative spirit, of which, says Walter Pater,
" the ethical result is a delicate and tender justice in the
criticism of human life."*

According to this, real reform must be sympathetic; that
is, it must begin, not with denunciation-though that
may have its uses— but with an intimate appreciation of
things as they are, and should proceed in a spirit opposite
to that in which we have commonly attacked such ques-

* See his essay on Coleridge.
M

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

tions as the suppression of intemperance and the con*
version of the heathen.

Human nature, it appears, is very much the same in
those we reckon sinned in ourselves. Good and evil
are always intimately bound up together; no sort of men
are chiefly given over to conscious badness; and to abuse
men or groups in the large is unjust and generally futile.
As a rule the practical method is to study closely and
kindly the actual situation, with the people involved in
it; then gradually and carefully to work out the evil from
the mixture by substituting good for it No matter how
mean or hideous a man's life is, the first thing is to under-
stand him; to make out just how it is that our common
human nature has come to work out in this way. This
method calls for patience, insight, firmness, and confi-
dence in men, leaving little room for the denunciatory
egotism of a certain kind of reformers. It is more and
more coming to be used in dealing with intemperance,
crime, greed, and in fact all those matters in which ws
try to make ourselves and our neighbors better. I notice
that the most effectual leaders of philanthropy have
almost ceased from denunciation. Tacitly assuming that
there are excuses for everything, they "shun the negative
side" and spend their energy in building up the affirmative.

This sort of morality does not, however, dispense with
praise and blame, which are based on the necessity of up-
holding higher ideals by example, and discrediting lower
ones. All such distinctions get their meaning from their
relation to an upward-striving general life, wherein con*
spicuous men serve as symbols through which the higher

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

structure may be either supported or undermined. We
must have heroes, and perhaps villains (though it is bet*
ter not to think much about the latter), even though their
performances, when closely viewed, appear to be an
equally natural product of history and environment. In
short it makes a differ^ce whether we judge a man with
reference to his special history and "lights," or to the
larger life of the world; and it is right to assign exemplary
praise or blame on the latter ground which would be un-
warranted on the former. There is certainly a special
right for every man; but the right of most men is partial,
important chiefly to themselves and their immediate
sphere; while there are some whose right is representative,
like that of Jesus, fit to guide the moral thought of man-
kind; and we cherish and revere these latter because they
corroborate the ideals we wish to hold before us.

It matters little for these larger purposes whether the
sins or virtues of conspicuous persons are conscious or
not; our concern is with what they stand for in the gen-
eral mind. In fact conscious wickedness is compara-
tively unimportant, because it implies that the individual
is divided in his own mind, and therefore weak. The
most effective ill-doers believe in themselves and have a
quiet conscience. And, in the same way, goodness is
most effectual when it takes itself as a matter of course
and feels no self-complacency.

Blame and punishment, then, are essentially symbolic,
their function being to define and enforce the public will,
and in no way imply that the offenders are of a different
nature from the rest of us. We feel it to be true that with
a little different training and surroundings we might have

^J. 1

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

committed almost any crime for which men are sent to
prison, and can readily understand that criminals should
not commonly feel that they are worse than others. The
same principle applies to those malefactors, more danger-
ous perhaps, who keep within the law, and yet are terribly
punished from time to time by public opinion.

Perhaps it would be well if both those who suffer pun-
ishment and those who inflict it were more distinctly aware
of its symbolic character and function. The former
might find their sense of justice appeased by perceiving
that though what they did was natural and perhaps not
consciously wrong, it may still need to be discredited and
atoned for. The culprit is not separated from society
by his punishment, but restored to it. It is his way of
service; and if he takes it in the right spirit he is better
off than those who do wrong but are not punished.

The rest of us, on the other hand, might realize that
those in the pillory are our representatives, who suffer,
in a real sense, for us. This would disincline us to spend
in a cheap abuse of conspicuous offenders that moral
ardor whose proper function is the correction of our own
life. The spectacle of punishment is not for us to gloat over,
but to remind us of our sins, which, as springing from the
same nature and society, are sure to be much the same as
that of the one punished. It is precisely because he is like
us that he is punished. If he were radically different he
would belong in an insane asylum, and punishment would
be mere cruelty.

Under the larger view of mind responsibility is broadened,
because we recognize a broader reach of causation, but

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

by no means lost in an abstract " society. " It goes with
power and increases rapidly in proportion as the evil comes
nearer the sphere of the individual's voluntary action,
so that each of us is peculiarly responsible for the moral
state of his own trade, family, or social connection. Con-
trary to a prevalent impression, it is in these familiar re-
lations that the individual is least of all justified in being
no better than his environment.

Every act of the will, especially where the will is most
at home, should be affirmative and constructive; it being
the function and meaning of individuality that each one
should be, in the direction of his chief activities, some-
thing other and better than his surroundings. Once
admit the plea "I may do what other people do," and the
basis of righteousness is gone; perhaps there is no moral
fallacy so widespread and so pernicious as this. It is
these no-worse-than-other-people decisions that paralyze
the moral life in the one and in the whole, involving a sort
of moral panmixia, as the biologists say, which, lacking
any progressive impulse, must result in deterioration. In
the end it will justify anything, since there are always
bad examples to fall back upon.

It is commonly futile, however, to require any sharp
break with the past; v& must be content with an upward
endeavor and tendency. It is quite true that we are all
involved in a net of questionable practices from which we
can only escape a little at a time and in cooperation with
our associates.

It is an error to Imagine that the doctrine of individual
responsibility is always the expedient and edifying one

"= — ]

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

in matters of conduct. There is a sort of people who grow
indignant whenever general causes are insisted upon,
apparently convinced that whether these are real or not
it is immoral to believe in them. But it is not invariably
a good thing to urge the will, since this, if overstimulated,
becomes fagged, stale, and discouraged. Often it is better
that one should let himself go, and trust himself to the
involuntary forces, to the nature of things, to God. The
nervous or strained person only harasses and weakens
his will by fixing attention upon it: it will work on more
effectually if he looks away from it, calming himself by
a view of the larger whole; and not without reason
Spinoza counts among the advantages of determinism
" the attainment of happiness by man through realizing his
intimate union with the whole nature of things; the dis-
tinction between things in our power and things not in
our power; the avoidance of all disturbing passions, and
the performance of social duties from rational desire for the
common good."*

An obvious moral defect of the unbalanced doctrine of
responsibility is that it permits the successful to despise
the unfortunate, in the belief that the latter "have only
themselves to blame," a belief not countenanced by the
larger view of fact. We may pardon this doctrine when
it makes one too hard on himself or on successful wrong-
doers, but as a rod with which to beat those already down
it is despicable.

The annals of religion show that the moral life has
always these two aspects, the particular and the general,
as in the doctrines of freedom and predestination, or in

* Pollock's Spinoza, 2d ed., 195.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

the wrestlings with sin followed by self-abandonment that
we find in the literature of conversion.* Perhaps we may
say that the deterministic attitude is morally good in at
least two classes of cases: First, for nervous, conscien-
tious individuals, like Spinoza, whose wills need rathey
calming than stimulating, also for any one who may be
even temporarily in a state of mental strain; second, in
dealing on a large scale with social or moral questions
whose causes must be treated dispassionately and in a
mass.

These questions of free-will versus law, and the like,
are but little, if at all, questions of fact — when we get
down to definite facts bearing upon the matter we find
little or no disagreement — but of point of view and em-
phasis. If you fix attention on the individual phase of
things and see life as a theatre of personal action, then the
corresponding ideas of private will, responsibility, praise,
and blame rise before you; if you regard its total aspect
you see tendency, evolution, law and impersonal grandeur.
Each of these is a half truth needing to be completed by
the other; the larger truth, including both, being that life
is an organic whole, presenting itself with equal reality
in individual and general aspects. Argument upon such
questions is without limit — since there is really nothing

* Amply expounded, with due stress on the moral value of letting-
go, by William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience:
"This abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the funda-
mental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral
practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies
• • . it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every
speculative creed. 11 Page 289.

■■■^.J

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

at issue — and in that sense the problem of freedom versus
law is insoluble.

Above all, the organic view of mind calls for social
knowledge as the basis of morality. We live in a system,
and to achieve right ends, or any rational ends whatever,
we must learn to understand that system. The public
mind must emerge somewhat from its subconscious con-
dition and know and guide its own processes.

Both consciously and unconsciously the larger mind is
continually building itself up into wholes — fashions, tra-
ditions, institutions, tendencies, and the like — which spread
and diversify like the branches of a tree, and so generate
an ever higher and more various structure of differentiated
thought and symbols. The immediate motor and guide
of this growth is interest, and wherever that points social
structure comes into being, as a picture grows where the
artist moves his pencil. Visible society is, indeed, liter-
ally, a work of art, slow and mostly subconscious in its
production — as great art often is — full of grotesque and
wayward traits, but yet of inexhaustible beauty and fasci-
nation. It is this we find in the history of old civilizations,
getting from it the completed work of the artist without
that strain and confusion of production which defaces the
present. We get it, especially, not from the history of the
theorist or the statistician, but from the actual, naive
human record to be found in memoirs, in popular liter-
ature, in architecture, painting, sculpture, and music, in
the industrial arts, in every unforced product of the mind.

Social organization is nothing less than this variega*

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

tion of life, taken ir» the widest sense possible. It should
not be conceived as the product merely of definite and
utilitarian purpose, but as the total expression of conscious
and subconscious tendency, the slow crystallization in
many forms and colors of the life of the human spirit.

Any fairly distinct and durable detail of this structure
may be called a social type; this being a convenient term
to use when we wish to break up the whole into parts,
for analysis or description. Thus there are types of
personality, of political structure, of religion, of classes, of
the family, of art, of language; also of processes, like com-
munication, cooperation, and competition; and so on.
The whole is so various that from every new point of
view new forms are revealed. Social types are analogous
to the genera, species, and varieties of the animal world,
in being parts of one living whole and yet having a relative
continuity and distinctness which is susceptible of de-
tailed study. Like biological types, also, they exist in
related systems and orders, are subject to variation, com-
pete with one another, flourish and decay, may be flex-
ible or rigid, and may or may not form prolific crosses
with one another.

Without forgetting to see life as individuals, we must
learn to see it also as types, processes, organization, the
latter being just as real as the former. And especially,
in order to see the matter truly, should we be able to in-
terpret individuals by wholes, and vice versa.

CHAPTER HI

PRIMARY GROUPS

Meaning op Primary Groups — Family, Playground, and Neigh,
borhood— How Far Influenced by Larger Society — Mean-
ing and Permanence op "Human Nature "—Primary
Groups the Nursery of Human Nature.

By primary groups I mean those characterized by inti- \
mate face-to-face association and cooperation. 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, psycho- \
logically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common I
whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, i
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.

It is not to be supposed that the unify of the primary
group is one of mere harmony and love. It is always a
differentiated and usually a competitive unify, admitting of
self-assertion and various appropriative passions; but
these passions are socialized by sympathy, and come, or
tend to come, under the discipline of a common spirit.
The individual will be ambitious, but the chief object of

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

his ambition will be some desired place in the thought of
the others, and he will feel allegiance to common standards
of service and fair play. So the boy will dispute with his
fellows a place on the team, but above such disputes will
place the common glory of his class and school.

The most important spheres of this intimate association
and cooperation— though by no means the only ones — are
the family, the play-group of children, and the neighbor*
hood or community group of elders. These are practi-
cally universal, belonging to all times and all stages of de-
velopment; and are accordingly a chief basis of what is
universal in human nature and human ideals. The best
comparative studies of the family, such as those of Wester-
marck* or Howard,f show it to us as not only a universal
institution, but as more alike the world over than the
exaggeration of exceptional customs by an earlier school
had led us to suppose. Nor can any one doubt the general
prevalence of play-groups among children or of informal
assemblies of various kinds among their elders. Such
association is clearly the nursery of human nature in the
world about us, and there is no apparent reason to suppose
that the case has anywhere or at any time been essentially
different.

As regards play, I might, were it not a matter of common
observation, multiply illustrations of the universality and
spontaneity of the group discussion and cooperation to
which it gives rise. The general fact is that children, es-
pecially boys after about their twelfth year, live in fellow-

* The History of Human Marriage.

t A History of Matrimonial Institutions.

PRIMARY GROUPS

ships in which their sympathy, ambition and honor are
engaged even more, often, than they are in the family.
Most of us can recall examples of the endurance by boys
of injustice and even cruelty, rather than appeal from
their fellows to parents or teachers — as, for instance, in
the hazing so prevalent at schools, and so difficult, for this
very reason, to repress. And how elaborate the discussion,
how cogent the public opinion, how hot the ambitions in
these fellowships.

Nor is this facility of juvenile association, as is some-
times supposed, a trait peculiar to English and American
boys; since experience among our immigrant population
seems to show that the offspring of the more restrictive
civilizations of the continent of Europe form self-governing
play-groups with almost equal readiness. Thus Miss Jane
Addams, after pointing out that the "gang" is almost
universal, speaks of the interminable discussion which
every detail of the gang's activity receives, remarking
that "in these social folk-motes, so to speak, the young
citizen learns to act upon his own determination/'*

Of the neighborhood group it may be said, in general,
that from the time men formed permanent settlements
upon the land, down, at least, to the rise of modern in-
dustrial cities, it has played a main part in the primary,
heart-to-heart life of the people. Among our Teutonic
forefathers the village community was apparently the
chief sphere of sympathy and mutual aid for the commons
all through the "dark" and middle ages, and for many
purposes it remains so in rural districts at the present day.
In some countries we still find it with all its ancient vi-

* Newer Ideals of Peace, 177.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ftality, notably in Russia, whexe the mir, or self-governing
village group, is the main theatre of life, along with the
family, for perhaps fifty millions of peasants.

In our own life the intimacy of the neighborhood has
been broken up by the growth of an intricate mesh of
wider contacts which leaves us strangers to people who
live in the same house. And even in the country the same
principle is at work, though less obviously, diminishing
our economic and spiritual community with our neigh-
bors. How far this change is a healthy development, and
how far a disease, is perhaps still uncertain.

Besides these almost universal kinds of primary asso-
ciation, there are many others whose form depends upon
the particular state of civilization; the only essential thing,
as I have said, being a certain intimacy and fusion of
personalities. In our own society, being little bound by
place, people easily form clubs, fraternal societies and the
like, based on congeniality, which may give rise to real
intimacy. Many such relations are formed at school and
college, and among men and women brought together in
the first instance by their occupations — as workmen in the
same trade, or the like. Where there is a little common
interest and activity, kindness grows like weeds by the
roadside.

But the fact that the family and neighborhood groups
are ascendant in the open and plastic time of childhood
makes them even now incomparably more influential
than all the rest

Primary groups are primary in the sense that they
give the individual his earliest and completest experience

PRIMARY GROUPS

of social unity, and also in the sense that they do not change
in the same degree as more elaborate relations, but form a
comparatively permanent source out of which the latter are
ever springing. Of course they are not independent of the -
larger society, but to some extent reflect its spirit; as the
German family and the German school bear somewhat dis-
tinctly the print of German militarism. But this, after all, is
like the tide setting back into creeks, and does not commonly
go very far. Among the German, and still more among
the Russian, peasantry are found habits of free cooperation
and discussion almost uninfluenced by the character of
the state; and it is a familiar and well-supported view that
the village commune, self-governing as regards local af-
fairs and habituated to discussion, is a very widespread
institution in settled communities, and the continuator
of a similar autonomy previously existing in the clan.
"It is man who makes monarchies and establishes re-
publics, but the commune seems to come directly from
the hand of God."*

In our own cities the crowded tenements and the gen-
eral economic and social confusion have sorely wounded
the family and the neighborhood, but it is remarkable, in
view of these conditions, what vitality they show; and
there is nothing upon which the conscience of the time is
more determined than upon restoring them to health. •

These groups, then, are springs of life, not only for the
individual but for social institutions. They are only in *
part moulded by special traditions, and, in larger degree, 1 ^
express a universal nature. The religion or government*
of other civilizations may seem alien to us, but the chil-
* De Tooqueville, Democracy in America, vol. i» chap. 5.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

dren or the family group wear the common life, and with
them we can always make ourselves at home.

By human nature, I suppose, we may understand those
sentiments and impulses that are human in being supe-
rior 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.*
i Human nature in this sense is justly regarded as a com-
j paratively permanent element in society. Always and
t 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.

It is true, no doubt, that there are differences of race
capacity, so great that a large part of mankind are possi-
bly incapable of any high kind of social organization.
But these differences, like those among individuals of
the same race, are subtle, depending upon some obscure
intellectual deficiency, some want of vigor, or slackness
of moral fibre, and do not involve unlikeness in the generic
impulses of human nature. In these all races are very
much alike. The more insight one gets into the life of
savages, even those that are reckoned the lowest, the more
human, the more like ourselves, they appear. Take for
instance the natives of Central Australia, as described

♦These matters are expounded at some length in the writer*!
Human Nature and the Social Order.

PRIMARY GROUPS

by Spencer and Gillen,* tribes having no definite govern-
ment or worship and scarcely able to count to five. They
are generous to one another, emulous of virtue as they
understand it, kind to their children and to the aged, and
by no means harsh to women. Their faces as shown in
the photographs are wholly human and many of them at-
tractive.

And when we come to a comparison between different
stages in the development of the same race, between our-
selves, for instance, and the Teutonic tribes of the time
of Caesar, the difference is neither in human nature nor
in capacity, but in organization, in the range and com-
plexity of relations, in the diverse expression of powers
and passions essentially much the same.

There is no better proof of this generic likeness of
human nature than in the ease and joy- with which the
modern man makes himself at home in literature depicting
the most remote and varied phases of life — in Homer, in
the Nibelung tales, in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the
legends of the American Indians, in stories of frontier
life, of soldiers and sailors, of criminals and tramps, and
so on. The more penetratingly any phase of human life
is studied the more an essential likeness to ourselves is re-
vealed.

To return to primary groups: the view here main-
tained is that 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

♦The Native Tribes of Central Australia. Compare also Dar-
win's views and examples given in chap. 7 of his Descent of Man.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION . '

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 de-
veloped 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 ac-
quire it except through fellowship, and it decays in iso-
lation.

If this view does not recommend itself to common-
sense I do not know that elaboration will be of much
avail. It simply means the application at this point of
the idea that society and individuals are inseparable
phases of a common whole, so that wherever we find an
individual fact we may look for a social fact to go with it.
If there is a universal nature in persons there must be
something universal in association to correspond to it.

What else can human nature be than a trait of primary
groups? Surely not an attribute of the separate indi-
vidual — supposing there were any such thing — since its
,typical characteristics, such as affection, abibition, vanity,
and resentment, are inconceivable apart from society.
If it belongs, then, to man in association, what kind or
degree of association is required to develop it ? Evidently
nothing elaborate, because elaborate phases of society are.
transient and diverse, while human nature is compara-

PRIMARY GROUPS

tively stable and universal. In short the family and neigh*
borhood life is essential to its genesis and nothing more is.
Here as everywhere in the study of society we must
learn to see mankind in psychical wholes, rather than in
artificial separation. We must see and feel the communal
life of family and local groups as immediate facts, not as
combinations of something else. And perhaps we shall
do this best by recalling our own experience and extend-
ing it through sympathetic observation. What, in our
life, is the family and the fellowship; what do we know
of the we-feeling? Thought of this kind may help us to
get a concrete perception of that primary group-nature of
which everything social is the outgrowth.

CHAPTER IV

PRIMARY IDEALS

Nature of Primary Idealism — The Ideal of a "We" or Moral
Unity — It Does not Exclude Self-Assertion — Ideals
Springing from Hostility — Loyalty, Truth, Service —
Kindness — Lawfulness — Freedom — The Doctrine of Nat-
ural Right — Bearing of Primary Idealism upon Education
and Philanthropy.

! Life in the primary groups gives rise to social ideals
which, as they spring f^similar experiences, have much
in common throughout the human race. And these natu-

4 rally become the motive and test of social progress. Under
all systems men strive, however blindly, to realize objects
suggested by the familiar experience of primary association.
Where do we get our notions of love, freedom, justice,
and the like which we are ever applying to social institu-
tions? Not from abstract philosophy, surely, but from
the actual life of simple and widespread forms of society,
like the family or the play-group. In these relations
mankind realizes itself, gratifies its primary needs, in a
fairly satisfactory manner, and from the experience forms
standards of what it is to expect from more elaborate

t association. Since groups of this sort are never obliterated

from human experience, but flourish more or less under

all kinds of institutions, they remain an.enduring criterion

by which the latter are ultimately judged.

Of course these simpler relations are not uniform for

PRIMARY IDEALS

all societies, but vary considerably with race, with the
general state of civilization, and with the particular sort
of institutions that may prevail. The primary groups
themselves are subject to improvement and decay, and
need to be watched and cherished with a very special care.
Neither is it claimed that, at the best, they realize ideal
conditions; only that they approach them more nearly
than anything else in general experience, and so form the
practical basis on which higher imaginations are built.
They are not always pleasant or righteous, but they al-
most always contain elements from which ideals of pleas-
antness and righteousness may be formed.

The ideal that grows up in familiar association may be \
said to be a part of human nature itself. In its most \
general form it is that of a moral whole or community
wherein individual minds are merged and the higher f
capacities of the members find total and adequate ex-
pression. And it grows up because familiar association ;
fills our minds with imaginations of the thought and feel-
ing of other members of the group, and of the group as
a whole, so that, for many purposes, we really make them
a part of ourselves and identify our self-feeling with them.

Children and savages do not formulate any such ideal,
but they have it nevertheless; they see it; they see them-
selves and their fellows as an indivisible, though various,
"we," and they desire this "we" to be harmonious,
happy, and successful. How heartily one may merge
himself in the family and in the fellowships of youth is
perhaps within the experience of all of us; and we come
to feel that the same spirit should extend to our country,

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

our race, our world. "All the abuses which are the o)>
jects of reform . . . are unconsciously amended in the
intercourse of friends." *

A congenial family life is the immemorial type of moral
unity, and source of many of the terms — such as brother-
hood, kindness, and the like-which^ describe it. The
members become merged by intimate association into a
whole wherein each age and sex participates in its own
way. Each lives in imaginative contact with the minds
of the others, and finds in them the dwelling-place of his
social self, of his affections, ambitions, resentments, and
standards of right and wrong. Without uniformity, there
is yet unity, a free, pleasant, wholesome, fruitful, com-
mon life.

As to the playground, Mr. Joseph Lee, in an excellent
paper on Play as a School of the Citizen, gives the fol-
lowing account of the merging of the one in the whole
that may be learned from sport. The boy, he says,

"is deeply participating in a common purpose. The team and the
plays that it executes are present in a very vivid manner to his con-
sciousness. His conscious individuality is more thoroughly lost in
the sense of membership than perhaps it ever becomes in any other
way. So that the sheer experience of citizenship in its simplest
and essential form — of the sharing in a public consciousness, of
having the social organization present as a controlling ideal in your
heart — is very intense. . . .

Along with the sense of the team as a mechanical instrument, and
unseparated from it in the boy's mind, is the consciousness of it as
the embodiment of a common purpose. There is in team play a very
intimate experience of the ways in which such a purpose is built up
and made effective. You feel, though without analysis, the subtle
ways in which a single strong character breaks out the road ahead

* Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 283>

PRIMARY IDEALS

and gives confidence to the rest to follow; how the creative power
of one N ardent imagination, bravely sustained, makes possible the
putting through of the play as he conceives it. You feel to the marrow
of your bones how each loyal member contributes to the salvation
of all the others by holding the conception of the whole play so
firmly in his mind as to enable them to hold it, and to participate in
his single-minded determination to see it carried out. You have
intimate experience of the ways in which individual members con-
tribute to the team and of how the team, in turn, builds up their
spiritual nature . . .

And the team is not only an extension of the player's conscious-
ness; it is a part of his personality. His participation has deepened
from cooperation to membership. Not only is he now a part of
the team, but the team is a part of him." *

Moral unity, as this illustration implies, admits and
rewards strenuous ambition; but this ambition must
either be for the success of the group, or at least not in-
consistent with that. The fullest self-realization will
belong to the one who embraces in a passionate self-feeling
the aims of the fellowship, and spends his life in fighting
for their attainment. I

The ideal of moral unity I take to be the mother, as it*?
were, of all social ideals.

It is, then, not my aim to depreciate the self-assertive
passions. I believe that they are fierce, inextinguishable,
indispensable. Competition and the survival of the fittest
are as righteous as kindness and cooperation, and not
necessarily opposed to them: an adequate view will em-
brace and harmonize these diverse aspects. The point \
I wish particularly to bring out in this chapter is that the
normal self is moulded in primary groups to be a social /

* Charities and the Commons, Aug. 3, 1907.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

self whose ambitions are formed by the common thought
of the group.

In their crudest form such passions as lust, greed, re-
venge, the pride of power and the like are not, distinctively,
human nature at all, but animal nature, and so far as we
rise into the spirit of family or neighborhood association
we control and subordinate them. They are rendered
human only so far as they are brought under the disci-
pline of sympathy, and refined into sentiments, such as
love, resentment, and ambition. And in so far as they
are thus humanized they become capable of useful func-
tion.

Take the greed of gain, for example, the ancient sin of
avarice, the old wolf, as Dante says, that gets more prey
than all the other beasts.* The desire of possession is in
itself a good thing, a phase of self-realization and a cause
of social improvement. It is immoral or greedy only
when it is without adequate control from sympathy, when
the self realized is a narrow self. In that case it is a vice
of isolation or weak social consciousness, and indicates
a state of mind intermediate between the brutal and the
fully human or moral, when desire is directed toward
social objects — wealth or power — but is not social in its
attitude toward others who desire the same objects.
Intimate association has the power to allay greed. One
will hardly be greedy as against his family or close friends,
though very decent people will be so as against almost
any one else. Every one must have noticed that after

* Antica lupa,
Che piu ohe tutte l'altre bestie hai preda.

Purgatorio, xx, 10.

PRIMARY IDEALS

frank association, even of a transient character, with an-
other person, one usually has a sense of kindred with
him which makes one ashamed to act greedily at his

expense.
Those who dwell preponderantly upon the selfish aspect

of human nature and flout as sentimentalism the "altru-
istic" conception of it, make their chief error in failing
to 'see that our self itself is altruistic, that the object of
our higher greed is some desired place in the minds of
other men, and that through this it is possible to enlist
ordinary human nature in the service of ideal aims.
The improvement of society does not call for any essential
change in human nature, but, chiefly, for a larger and
higher application of its familiar impulses.

I know, also, that the most truculent behavior may be
exalted into an ideal, like the ferocity of Samuel, when he
hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord,* or of the orthodox
Christian of a former age in the destruction of heretics.
In general there is always a morality of opposition, spring-
ing from the need of the sympathetic group to assert it-
self in the struggle for existence. Even at the present
day this more or less idealizes destructives and deceit
in the conflicts of war, if not of commerce.

But such precepts are secondary, not ideals in the same

They shine by reflected light, and get their force mainly
from the belief that they express the requirements of the
"we" group in combating its enemies. Flourishing at
certain stages of development because they are requisite

* 1 Samuel, 15 : 33.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

under the prevailing conditions of destructive conflict,
they are slowly abandoned or transformed when these con-
ditions change. Mankind at large has no love of them
for their own sake, though individuals, classes, or even
nations may acquire them as a habit. With the advance
of civilization conflict itself is brought more and more
under the control of those principles that prevail in primary
groups, and, so far as this is the case, conduct which violates
such principles ceases to have any ideal value.

To break up the ideal of a moral whole into particular
ideals is an artificial process which every thinker would
probably carry out in his own way. Perhaps, however,
the most salient principles are loyalty, lawfulness, and
freedom.

In so far as one identifies himself with a whole, loyalty
to that whole is loyalty to himself; it is self-realization,
something in which one cannot fail without losing self-
respect. Moreover this is a larger self, leading out into
a wider and richer life, and appealing, therefore, to en-
thusiasm and the need of quickening ideals. One is
never more human, and as a rule never happier, than
when he is sacrificing his narrow and merely private inter-
est to the higher call of the congenial group. And with-
out doubt the natural genesis of this sentiment is in the
, intimacy of face-to-face cooperation. It is rather the
1 rule than the exception in the family, and grows up among
children and youth so fast as they learn to think and act
to common ends. The team feeling described above
j illustrates it as well as anything.

Among the ideals inseparable from loyalty are those of

PRIMARY IDEALS

truth, service, and kindness, always conceived as due to the
intimate group rather than to the world at large.

Truth or good faith toward other members of a fellow-
ship is, so far as I know, a universal human ideal. It does
not involve any abstract love of veracity, and is quite con-
sistent with deception toward the outside world, being
essentially "truth of intercourse" or fair dealing among
intimates. There are few, even among those reckoned
lawless, who will not keep faith with one who has the gift
of getting near to them in spirit and making them feel
that he is. one of themselves. Thus Judge Lindsey of
Denver has worked a revolution among the neglected
boys of his city, by no other method than that of entering
into the same moral whole, becoming part of a "we"
with them. He awakens their sense of honor, trusts it,
and is almost never disappointed. When he wishes to
send a boy to the reform school the latter promises to re-
pair to the institution at a given time and invariably does
so. Among tramps a similar sentiment prevails. "It
will be found," said a young man who had spent the sum-
mer among vagrants, "that if they are treated square they
will do the same."

The ideal of service likewise goes with the sense of
unity. If there is a vital whole the right aim of individual
activity can be no other than to serve that whole. And
this is not so much a theory as a feeling that will exist
wherever the whole is felt. It is a poor sort of an indi-
vidual that does not feel the need to devote himself to the
larger purposes of the group. In our society many feel

this need in youth and express it on the playground who

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

never succeed in realizing it among the less intimate re-
lations of business or professional life.

All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of right
intercourse within a social group. By communion minds
are fused into a sympathetic whole, each part of which
tends to share the life of all the rest, so that kindness is a
common joy, and harshness a common pain. It is the
simplest, most attractive, and most diffused of human
ideals. The golden rule springs directly from human
nature.

Accordingly this ideal has been bound up with associ-
ation in all past times and among all peoples: it was a
matter of course that when men acted together in war,
industry, devotion, sport, or what not, they formed a
brotherhood or friendship. It is perhaps only in modern
days, along with the great and sudden differentiation of
activities, that feeling has failed to keep up, and the idea
of cooperation without friendship has become familiar.

Mr. Westermarck, than whom there is no better au-
thority on a question of this sort, has filled several chap-
ters of his work on the Origin and Development of Moral
Ideas with evidence of the universality of kindness and
the kindly ideal. After showing at length that uncivilized
people recognize the duty of kindness and support from
mother to child, father to child, child to parent, and among
brethren and kinsmen, he goes on to say:* "But the duty
of helping the needy and protecting those in danger goes
beyond the limits of the family and the gens. Uncivilized
peoples are, as a rule, described as kind toward members

* Vol. i, 540 ff.
40

PRIMARY IDEALS

of their own community or tribe. Between themselves
charity is enjoined as a duty and generosity is praised as a
virtue. Indeed their customs regarding mutual aid are
often much more stringent than our own. And this ap-
plies even to the lowest savages."

Beginning with the Australians, he quotes the state-
ment of Spencer and Gillen that their treatment of one
another "is marked on the whole by considerable kind-
ness, that is, of course, in the case of members of friendly
groups, with every now and then the perpetration of acts
of cruelty." Concerning the North American Indians he
cites many writers. Catlin says " to their friends there are
no people on earth that are more kind." Adair that "they
are very kind and liberal to every one of their own tribe,
even to the last morsel of food they enjoy"; also that
Nature's school "teaches them the plain, easy rule, Do
to others as you would be done by." Morgan reports that
"among the Iroquois kindness to the orphan, hospitality
to all, and a common brotherhood were among the doctrines
held up for acceptance by their religious instructors."
An Iroquois "would surrender his dinner to feed the
hungry, vacate his bed to refresh the weary, and give up
his apparel to clothe the naked."

And so Westermarck goes on, in the exhaustive way
familiar to readers of his works, to show that like senti-
ments prevail the world over. Kropotkin has collected
similar evidence in his Mutual Aid a Factor in Civilization.
The popular notion of savages as lacking in the gentler
feelings is an error springing from the external, usually
hostile, nature of our contact with them. Indeed, a state
of things, such as is found in our own cities, where want

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

and plenty exist side by side without the latter feeling
any compulsion to relieve the former, is shocking and in-
comprehensible to many savages.

Ordinarily the ideal of kindness, in savage and civilized
societies alike, applies only to those within the sympathetic
group; the main difference between civilization and sav-
agery, in this regard, being that under the former the
group tends to enlarge. One reason for the restriction
is that kindness is aroused by sympathy, and can have
little life except as our imaginations are opened to the
lives of others and they are made part of ourselves. Even
the Christian church, as history shows, has for the most
part inculcated kindness only to those within its own pale,
or within a particular sect; and the modern ideal of a
kindness embracing all humanity (modern at least so
far as western nations are concerned) is connected with
a growing understanding of the unity of the race.

Every intimate group, like every individual, experiences
conflicting impulses within itself, and as the individual
feels the need of definite principles to shape his conduct
and give him peace, so the group needs law or rule foi* the
same purpose. It is not merely that the over-strong or
the insubordinate must be restrained, but that all alike
may have some definite criterion of what the good mem-
ber ought to do. It is a mere fact of psychology that where
a social whole exists it may be as painful to do wrong as
to suffer it — because one's own spirit is divided — and the
common need is for harmony through a law, framed in
the total interest, which every one can and must obey.

This need of rules to align differentiated impulse with

PRIMARY IDEALS

the good of the whole is nowhere more apparent than on
the playground. Miss Buck, the author of an instructive
work on Boys' Self-Governing Clubs, suggests that the
elementary form of equity is " taking turns," as at swings
and the like; and any one who has shared in a boys' camp
will recall the constant demand, by the boys themselves, for
rules of this nature. There must be a fair distribution
of privileges as to boats, games, and so on, and an equal
distribution of food. And we learn from Robert Woods
that gangs of boys on the streets of cities generally have
a "judge" to whom all disputes are referred if no agree-
ment is otherwise reached.*

No doubt every one remembers how the idea of justice
is developed in children's games. There is always some-
thing to be done, in which various parts are to be taken,
success depending upon their efficient distribution. All
see this and draw from experience the idea that there is a
higher principle that ought to control the undisciplined
ambition of individuals. "Rough games," says Miss
Buck, "in many respects present in miniature the con-
ditions of a society where an ideal state of justice, freedom
and equality prevails."! Mr. Joseph Lee, in the paper
quoted above, expounds the matter at more length and
with much insight.

You may be very intent to beat the other man in the race, but after
experience of many contests the fair promise of whose morning has
been clouded over by the long and many-worded dispute terminating
in a general row, with indecisive and unsatisfying result, you begin
dimly to perceive that you and the other fellows and the rest of the
crowd, for the very reason that you are contestants and prospective

* The City Wilderness, 116.

t Boys' Self-Governing Clubs, 4, 5.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

contestants, have interests in common — interests in the establish-
ment and maintenance of those necessary rules and regulations with-
out which satisfactory contests cannot be carried on. . . . The
child's need of conflict is from a desire not to exterminate his com-
petitor, but to overcome him and to have his own superiority ac-
knowledged. The boy desires to be somebody; but being somebody
is to him a social achievement. And though there is temptation to
pervert justice, to try to get the decision when you have not really
furnished the proof, there is also a motive against such procedure.
The person whom you really and finally want to convince is yourself.
Your deepest desire is to beat the other boy, not merely to seem to
beat him. By playing unfairly and forcing decisions in your own fa-
vor, you may possibly cheat the others, but you cannot cheat yourself.
But the decisions in most of the disputes have behind diem the
further, more obviously social, motive of carrying on a successful
game. The sense of common interest has been stretched so as to
take the competitive impulse itself into camp, domesticate it, and
make it a part of the social system. The acutely realized fact that a
society of chronic kickers can never play a game or anything else,
comes to be seen against the background of a possible orderly ar-
rangement of which one has had occasional experience, and with
which one has come at last to sympathize; there comes to be to some
extent an identification of one's own interests and purposes with the
interests and purposes of the whole. Certainly the decisions of the
group as to whether Jimmy was out at first, as to who came out last,
and whether Mary Ann was really caught, are felt as community
and not as individual decisions.*

No doubt American boys have more of the spirit and
practice of this sort of organization than those of any
other country, except possibly England: they have the
constant spectacle of self-government among their elders,
and also, perhaps, some advantage in natural aptitude
to help them on. But it is doubtful if there is any great
difference among the white peoples in the latter regard.
American children of German and Irish descent are not

* Charities and the Commons, Aug. 3, 1907, abridged.

PRIMARY IDEALS

inferior to the Anglo-Saxons, and among the newer im-
migrants the Jewish children, at least, show a marked
aptitude for organization. The question might profit-
ably be investigated in our great cities.

Of course the ideals derived from juvenile experience
are carried over into the wider life, and men always find
it easy to conceive righteousness in terms of fair play.
"The Social Question," says a penetrative writer, "is
forever an attack upon what, in some form, is thought
to be unfair privilege."*

The law or rule that human nature demands has a
democratic principle latent in it, because it must be one
congenial to general sentiment. Explicit democracy,
however — deciding by popular vote and the like — is not
primary and general like the need of law, but is rather a
mechanism for deciding what the rule is to be, and no
more natural than the appeal to authority. Indeed,
there seems to be, among children as among primitive
peoples, a certain reluctance to ascribe laws to the mere
human choice of themselves and their fellows. They
wish to assign them to a higher source and to think of
them as having an unquestionable sanction. So far as
my own observation goes, even American boys prefer to
receive rules from tradition or from their elders, when they
can. Nothing is easier than for a parent, or mentor of any
kind, to be a lawgiver to children, if only he has their con-
fidence, and if the laws themselves prove workable. But
the test of law is social and popular; it must suit the gen-
eral mind. If, for instance, a man takes a group of boys
camping, and has their confidence, they will gladly receive
* John Graham Brooks, The Social Unrest, 135.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

rules from him, expecting, of course, that they will be
good rules. But if they prove to be unreasonable and
troublesome, they will soon cease to work.

/ Freedom is that phase of the social ideal which empha-
sizes individuality 77 The whole to which we belong is
made up of diverie energies which enkindle one another
by friction; and its vigor requires that these have play.
Thus the fierc^ impulses of ambition and prid&Lay be as
organic as anything else — provided they are sufficiently hu-
manized as to their objects — anc^ are to be interfered with
only when they become destructive or oppj essive.J More-
over, we must not be required to prove to otherslhe benefi-
cence of our peculiarity, but should be allowed, if we wish,
to "write whim on the lintels of the door-post." Our de-
sires and purposes, though social in their ultimate nature,
are apt to be unacceptable on first appearance, and the
more so in proportion to their value. Thus we feel a need to
be let alone, and sympathize with a similar need in others.
This is so familiar a principle, especially among English
and Americans, to whose temperament and traditions it
is peculiarly congenial, that I need not discuss it at length.
It is a phase of idealism that comes most vividly to con-
sciousness when formal and antiquated systems of control
need to be broken up, as in the eighteenth century. It
then represented the appeal to human nature as against
outworn mechanism. Our whole social and political
philosophy still echoes that conflict.

The bearing of this view of human nature may perhaps

be made clearer by considering its relation to the familiar

PRIMARY IDEALS

but now somewhat discredited doctrine of Natural Right
This is traced from the speculations of Greek philosophers
down through Roman jurisprudence to Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, and others, who gave it its modern forms and
through whose works it became a factor in modern his-
tory. It was familiar to our forefathers and is set forth
in the Declaration of Independence, According to it
society is made up, primarily, of free individuals, who
must be held to create government and other institutions
by a sort of implied contract, yielding up a part of their
natural right in order to enjoy the benefits of organization.
But if the organization does not confer these benefits,
then, as most writers held, it is wrong and void, and the
individuals may properly reclaim their natural freedom.

Now in form this doctrine is wholly at variance wi*
evolutionary thought. To the latter, society is an organic \
growth; there is no individual apart from society, no l
freedom apart from organization, no social contract of
the sort taught by these philosophers. In its practical
applications, however, the teaching of natural right is
not so absurd and obsolete as is sometimes imagined. If
it is true that human nature is developed in primary groups
which are everywhere much the same, and that there also
springs from these a common idealism which institutions
strive to express, we have a ground for somewhat the
same conclusions as come from the theory of a natural
freedom modified by contract. Natural freedom would
correspond roughly to the ideals generated and partly
realized in primary association, the social contract to the
limitations these ideals encounter in seeking a larger ex*
pression.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

indeed, is it not true that the natural rights of this
philosophy — the right to personal freedom, the right to
labor, the right to property, the right to open competition
— are ideals which in reality sprang then as they do now
largely from what the philosophers knew of the activities
of men in small, face-to-face groups ?

The reluctance to give up ideals like those of the
Declaration of Independence, without something equally
simple and human to take their place, is healthy and need
not look far for theoretical justification.

The idea of the germinal character of primary associa-
tion is one that is fast making its way in education and
philanthropy. As we learn that man is altogether social
and never seen truly except in connection with his fellows,
we fix our attention more and more on group conditions
as the source, for better or worse, of personal character,
and come to feel that we must work on the individual
through the web of relations in which he actually lives.

The school, for instance, must form a whole with the
rest of life, using the ideas generated by the latter as the
starting-point of its training. The public opinion and
traditions of the scholars must be respected and made an
ally of discipline. Children's associations should be
fostered and good objects suggested for their activity.

In philanthropy it is essential that the unity of the
family be regarded and its natural bonds not weakened
for the sake of transient benefit to the individual. Chil-
dren, especially, must be protected from the destructive
kindness which inculcates irresponsibility in the parent.
In general tb£ heart of reform is in control of the conditions

PRIMARY IDEALS

which act upon the family and neighborhood. When the
housing, for example, is of such a character as to make a
healthy heme life impossible, the boys and girls are driven
to the streets, the men into saloons, and thus society is
diseased at its source.

Without healthy play, especially group play, human
nature cannot rightly develop, and to preserve this, in the
midst of the crowding and aggressive commercialism of
our cities, is coming to be seen as a special need of the
time. Democracy, it is now held, must recognize as one
of its essential functions the provision of ample spaces and
apparatus for this purpose, with enough judicious super-
vision to ensure the ascendency of good play traditions.
And with this must go the suppression of child labor and
other inhumane conditions.

Fruitful attention is being given to boys' fellow-
ships or "gangs." It appears — as any one who recalls
his own boyhood might have anticipated — that nearly all
the juvenile population belong to such fellowships, and
put an ardent, though often misdirected, idealism into
them. "Almost every boy in the tenement-house quarters
of the district/' says Robert A. Woods, speaking of Boston,
"is a member of a gang. The boy who does not belong is
not only the exception but the very rare exception."* In
crowded neighborhoods, where there are no playgrounds
and street sports are unlawful, the human nature of these
gangs must take a semi-criminal direction; but with better
opportunities and guidance it turns quite as naturally to
wholesome sport and social service. Accordingly social
settlements and similar agencies are converting gangs into

* The City Wilderness, 113.
49

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

clubs, with the best results; and there is also coming to
be a regular organization of voluntary clubs in affiliation
with the public schools.

It is much the same in the country. In every village
and township in the land, I suppose, there are one or
more groups of predatory boys and iioydenish girls whose
mischief is only the result of ill-directed energy. If each
of these could receive a little sympathetic attention from
kindred but wiser spirits, at least half of the crime and vice
of the next generation would almost certainly be done away
with.

CHAPTER V

THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS

Primary Ideals Underlie Democracy and Christianity — Why
They are not Achieved on a Larger Scale — What They
Require from Personality — From Social Mechanism —
The Principle of Compensation.

It will be found that those systems of larger idealism
which are most human and so of most enduring value,
are based upon the ideals of primary groups. Take,
for instance, the two systems that have most vitality at
the present time — democracy and Christianity.

The aspirations of ideal democracy — including, of
course, socialism, and whatever else may go by a special
name — are those naturally springing from the playground
or the local community; embracing equal opportunity,
fair play, the loyal service of all in the common good, free
discussion, and kindness to the weak. These are renewed
every day in the hearts of the people because they spring
from and are corroborated by familiar and homely ex-
perience. Moreover, modern democracy as a historical
current is apparently traceable back to the village com-
munity life of the Teutonic tribes of northern Europe,
from which it descends through English constitutional
liberty and the American and French revolutions to its
broad and deep channels of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

And Christianity, as a social system, is based upon the
family, its ideals being traceable to the domestic circle of a
Judaean carpenter. God is a kind father; men and women
are brothers and sisters; we are all members one of an-
other, doing as we would be done by and referring all
things to the rule of love. In so far as the church has
departed from these principles it has proved transient;
these endure because they are human.

But why is it that human nature is not more successful
in achieving these primary aims? They appear to be
simple and reasonable, and one asks why they are so little
realized, why we are not, in fact, a moral whole, a happy
family.

It is not because we do not wish it. There can be no
doubt, I should say, that, leaving aside a comparatively
few abnormal individuals, whose influence is small, men
in general have a natural allegiance to the community
ideal, and would gladly see it carried out on a large as
well as a small scale. And nearly all imaginative and as-
piring persons view it with enthusiasm, and would devote
themselves to it with some ardor and sacrifice if they saw
clearly how they could do so with effect. It is easy to
imagine types of pure malignity in people of whom we
have little knowledge, but who ever came to know any
one intimately without finding that he had somewhere
in him the impulses of a man and a brother ?

The failure to realize these impulses in practice is, of
course, due in part to moral weakness of a personal char-
acter, to the fact that our higher nature has but an im-
perfect and transient mastery of our lower, so that we never

THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS

live up to our ideals. But going beyond this and looking
at the matter from the standpoint of the larger mind, the
cause of failure is seen to be the difficulty of organization.
Even if our intentions were always good, we should not
succeed, because, to make good intentions effective, they
must be extended into a system. In attempting to do this
our constructive power is used up and our ideals confused
and discouraged. We are even led to create a kind of
institutions which, though good in certain aspects, may
brutalize or ossify the individual, so that primary idealism
in him is almost obliterated. The creation of a moral
order on an ever-growing scale is the great historical task
of mankind, and the magnitude of it explains all short-
comings.

From personality the building of a moral order re-
quires not only good impulses but character and capacity.
The ideal must be worked out with steadfastness, self-
control, and intelligence. Even families and fellowships,
though usually on a higher level than more elaborate
structures, often break down, and commonly from lack of
character in their members. But if it is insufficient here,
how much less will it suffice for a righteous state. Our
new order of life, with its great extension of structure and
its principle of freedom, is an ever severer test of the po-
litical and moral fibre of mankind, of its power to hold
itself together in vast, efficient, plastic wholes. Whatever
races or social systems fail to produce this fibre must yield
ascendency to those which succeed.

This stronger personality depends also upon training;
and whatever peoples succeed in being righteous on a

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

great scale will do so only by adding to natural capacity
an education suited to the growing demands of the situa-
tion — one at the same time broad and special, technical
and humane. There can be no moral order that does not
live in the mind of the individual.

Besides personality — or rather correlative with it —
there must be an adequate mechanism of communication
and organization. In small groups the requirements of
structure are so simple as to make little trouble, but in
proportion as the web of relations extends and diversifies,
they become more and more difficult to meet without sacri-
ficing human nature; so that, other things equal, the
freedom and real unity of the system are likely to vary in-
versely with its extent. It is only because other things
have not remained equal, because the mechanism has
been improved, that it has become possible, in a measure,
to reconcile freedom with extent.

Communication must be full and quick in order to give
that promptness in the give-and-take of suggestions upon
which moral unity depends. Gesture and speech ensure
this in the face-to-face group; but only the recent marvel-
lous improvement of communicative machinery makes a
free mind on a great scale even conceivable. If there is
no means of working thought and sentiment into a whole
by reciprocation, the unity of the group cannot be other
than inert and unhuman. This cause alone would ac-
count for the lack of extended freedom previous to the
nineteenth century.

There must also be forms and customs of rational organ-
ization, through which human nature may express itself

THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS

in an orderly and effective manner. Even children
learn the need of regular discussion and decision, while
all bodies of adults meeting for deliberation find that they
can think organically only by observance of the rules
which have been worked out for such occasions. And
if we are to have great and stable nations, it is easy to see
that these rules of order must become a body of law and
custom including most, if not all, of the familiar institu-
tions of society. These are a product of progressive in-
vention, trial, and survival as much as the railroad or the
factory, and they have in the long run the same purpose,
that of the fuller expression of human nature in a social
system.

As might be expected from these conditions, there is a
principle of compensation at work in the growth of the
larger mind. The more betterment there is, the more of
vital force, of human reason, feeling, and choice, goes into
it; and, as these are limited, improvement in one respect
is apt to be offset, at least in part or temporarily, by delay
or retrogression in others.

Thus a rapid improvement in the means of communica-
tion, as we see in our own time, supplies the basis for a
larger and freer society, and yet it may, by disordering
settled relations, and by fixing attention too much upon
mechanical phases of progress, bring in conditions of con-
fusion and injustice that are the opposite of free.

A very general fact of early political history is deteriora-
tion by growth. The small state cannot escape its des-
tiny as part of a larger world, but must expand or perish.
It grows in size, power, and diversity by the necessities

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of its struggle for existence — as did Rome, Athens, and a
hundred other states — but in so doing sacrifices human
nature to military expediency and develops a mechanical
or despotic structure. This, in the long run, produces
weakness, decay, and conquest, or perhaps revolt and
revolution. The requirements ol human nature — both
direct, as expressed in social idealism, and indirect, as
felt in the ultimate weakness and failure of systems which
disregard them — are irrepressible. Gradually, therefore,
through improvement and through the survival of higher
types in conflict, a type of larger structure is developed
which less sacrifices these requirements.

Much of what is unfree and unhuman in our modern
life comes from mere inadequacy of mental and moral
energy to meet the accumulating demands upon it In
many quarters attention and effort must be lacking, and
where this is the case social relations fall to a low plane —
just as a teacher who has too much to do necessarily
adopts a mechanical style of instruction. So what we call
"red tape" prevails in great clerical offices because much
business is done by persons of small ability, who can work
only under rule. And great bureaucratic systems, like
the Russian Empire, are of much the same nature.

In general the wrongs of the social system come much
more from inadequacy than from ill intention. It is in-
deed not to be expected that all relations should be fully
rational and sympathetic; we have to be content with in-
fusing reason and sympathy into what is most vital.

Society, then, as a moral organism, is a progressive
creation, tentatively wrought out through experiment,
struggle, and survival. Not only individuals but ideas,

THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS

institutions, nations, and races do their work upon it and
perish. Its ideals, though simple in spirit, are achieved
through endless elaboration of means.

It will be my further endeavor to throw some light upon
this striving whole by considering certain phases of its
organization, such as Communication, Public Opinion,
Sentiment, Classes, and Institutions; always trying to see
the whole in the part, the part in the whole, and human
nature in both.

PART II

COMMUNICATION

CHAPTER VI
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION

Meaning of Communication — Its Relation to Human Nature

— To Society at Large.

By Communication is here meant the mechanism ~^
through which human relations exist and develop — all
the symbols of the mind, togothop with the means of con-
veying them through space and preserving them in time.
It includes the expression of the face, attitude and gesture,
the tones of the voice, words, writing, printing, railways,
telegraphs, telephones, and whatever else may be the
latest achievement in the conquest of space and time. All
these taken together, in the intricacy of their actual com-
bination, make up an organic whole corresponding to the
organic whole of human thought; and everything in the
way of mental growth has an external existence therein.
The more closely we consider this mechanism the more
intimate will appear its relation to the inner life of man-
kind, and nothing will more help us to understand the
latter than such consideration.

There is no sharp line between the means of communi-
cation and the rest of the external world. In a sense all
objects and actions are symbols of the mind, and nearly
anything may be used as a sign — as I may signify the
moon or a squirrel to a child by merely pointing at it, or

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

by imitating with the voice the chatter of the one or draw-
ing an outline of the other. But there is also, almost
from the first, a conventional development of communi-
cation, springing out of spontaneous signs but soon losing
evident connection with them, a system of standard sym-
bols existing for the mere purpose of conveying thought;
and it is this we have chiefly to consider.

Without communication the mind does not develop a
true human nature, but remains in an abnormal and
nondescript state neither human nor properly brutal.
This is movingly illustrated by the case of Helen Keller,
who, as all the world knows, was cut off at eighteen
months from the cheerful ways of men by the loss of sight
and hearing; and did not renew the connection until she
was nearly seven years old. Although her mind was not
wholly isolated during this period, since she retained the
use of a considerable number of signs learned during
infancy, yet her impulses were crude and uncontrolled,
and her thought so unconnected that she afterward re-
membered almost nothing that occurred before the awak-
ening which took place toward the close of her seventh
year.

The story of that awakening, as told by her teacher,
gives as vivid a picture as we need have of the significance
to the individual mind of the general fact and idea of
communication. For weeks Miss Sullivan had been
spelling words into her hand which Helen had repeated
and associated with objects; but she had not yet grasped
the idea of language in general, the fact that everything
had a name, and that through names she could share her

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION

own experiences with others, and learn theirs — the idea
that there is fellowship in thought. This came quite
suddenly.

"This morning," writes her teacher, "while she was washing, she
wanted to know the name for water. ... I spelled w-a-t-e-r and
thought no more about it until after breakfast. Then it occurred to
me that with the help of this new word I might succeed in straightening
out the mug-milk difficulty [a confusion of ideas previously discussed].
We went out into the pump-house and I made Helen hold her mug
under the pump while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth
filling the mug I spelled w-a-t-e-r in Helen's free hand. The word
coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her
hand seemed to startle her. She dropped the mug and stood as one
transfixed. A new light came into her face. She spelled water
several times. Then she dropped on the ground and asked for its
name, and pointed to the pump and the trellis, and suddenly turning
round she asked for my name. I spelled -teacher.' Just then the
nurse brought Helen's httle sister into the pump-house, and Helen
spelled 'baby' and pointed to the nurse. All die way back to the
house she was highly excited, and learned the name of every object
she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty new words
to her vocabulary."

The following day Miss Sullivan writes, "Helen got up this morn-
ing like a radiant fairy. She has flitted from object to object, ask-
ing the name of everything and kissing me for very gladness." And
four days later, "Everything must have a name now. . . . She
drops the signs and pantomime she used before, so soon as she has
words to supply their place, and the acquirement of a new word
affords her the liveliest pleasure. And we notice that her face grows
more expressive each day." *

This experience is a type of what happens more gradu-
ally to all of us: it is through communication that we get
our higher development. The faces and conversation
of our associates; books, letters, travel, arts, and the like,

* The Story of My Life, 316, 317.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

by awakening thought and feeling and guiding them in
certain channels, supply the stimulus and framework for
all our growth.

' In the same way, if we take a larger view and consider
, the life of a social group, we see that communication,
including its organization into literature, art, and institu-
tions, is truly the outside or visible structure of thought,
J as much cause as effect of the inside or conscious fife of
men. All is one growth: the symbols, the traditions, the
institutions are projected from the mind, to be sure, but
in the very instant of their projection, and thereafter, they
react upon it, and in a sense control it, stimulating, de-
veloping, and fixing certain thoughts at the expense of
others to which no awakening suggestion comes. By the
aid of this structure the individual is a member not only of
a family, a class, and a state, but of a larger whole reaching
back to prehistoric men whose thought has gone to build
it up. In this whole he lives as in an element, drawing
from it the materials of his growth and adding to it what-
ever constructive thought he may express.

Thus the system of communication is a tool, a pro-^
gressive invention, whose improvements react upon man-
kind and alter the life of every individual and institution.
A study of these improvements is one of the best ways by
which to approach an understanding of the mental and
social changes that are bound up with them; because it
gives a tangible framework for our ideas — just as one who
wished to grasp the organic character of industry and com-
merce might well begin with a study of the railway sys-
tem and of the amount and kind of commodities it carries,

t>4

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION

proceeding thence to the more abstract transactions of
finance.

And when we come to the modern era, especially, we
can understand nothing rightly unless we perceive the
manner in which the revolution in communication has
made a new world for us. So in the pages that follow I
shall aim to show what the growth of intercourse implies
in the way of social development, inquiring particularly
into the effect of recent changes.

CHAPTER Vn

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

Pre- Verbal Communication — The Rise of Speech — Its Mental
and Social Function — The Function op Writing — Print-
ing and the Modern World — The Non- Verbal Arts.

The chief means of what we may call pre-verbal com-
munication are the expression of the face — especially of
the mobile portions about the eyes and mouth — the pitch,
inflection, and emotional tone of the voice; and the gestures
of the head and limbs. All of these begin in involuntary
movements but are capable of becoming voluntary, and
all are eagerly practised and interpreted by children long
before they learn to speak. They are immediately joined
to action and emotion: the inflections of the voice, for
instance, play upon the child's feelings as directly as
music, and are interpreted partly by an instinctive sensi-
bility. I have heard a child seventeen months old using
her voice so expressively, though inarticulately, that it
sounded, a little way off, as if she were carrying on an ani-
mated conversation. And gesture, such as reaching out
the hand, bending forward, turning away the head, and
the like, springs directly from the ideas and feelings it
represents.

The human face, "the shape and color of a mind and
life," is a kind of epitome of society, and if one could only
read all that is written in the countenances of men as they
pass he might find a great deal of sociology in them. He-

THE GROWTH. OF COMMUNICATION

reditary bias, family nurture, the print of the school, cur-
rent opinion, contemporary institutions, all are there,
drawn with a very fine pencil. If one wishes to get a real
human insight into the times of Henry the Eighth, for
example, he can hardly do better than to study the por-
trait drawings of Holbein; and so of other periods, in-
cluding our own, whose traits would appear conspicu-
ously in a collection of portraits. Many people can dis-
criminate particular classes, as, for instance, clergymen,
by their expression, and not a few will tell with much
accuracy what church the latter belong to and whether
they are of the lower rank or in authority. Again there is
a difference, indescribable, perhaps, yet apparent, between
the look of American and of English youths — still more of
girls — which reflects the differing social systems.

This sort of communication is, of course, involuntary.
An artificial mechanism of communication originates when ^
man begins purposely to reproduce his own instinctive
motions and cries, or the sounds, forms, and movements of
the world about him, in order to recall the ideas associated
with them. All kinds of conventional communication are
believed to be rooted in these primitive imitations, which,
by a process not hard to imagine, extend and differentiate
into gesture, speech, writing, and the special symbols of
the arts and sciences; so that the whole exterior organiza-
tion of thought refers back to these beginnings.

We can only conjecture the life of man, or of his human-
izing progenitor, before speech was achieved; but we may
suppose that facial expression, inarticulate cries and songs,*

* On the probability that song preceded speech, see Darwin,
Descent of Man, chap. 19.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

and a variety of imitative sounds and actions aroused
sympathy, permitted the simpler kinds of general ideas
to be formed, and were the medium through which tra-
dition and convention had their earliest development.
It is probable that artificial gesture language was well
organized before speech had made much headway. Even
without words life may have been an active and continu-
ous mental whole, not dependent for its unity upon mere
heredity, but bound together by some conscious community
in the simpler sorts of thought and feeling, and by the
transmission and accumulation of these through tradition.
There was presumably cooperation and instruction of a
crude sort in which was the germ of future institutions.

No one who has observed children will have any diffi-
culty in conjecturing the beginnings of speech, since
nearly every child starts in to invent a language for him-
self, and only desists when he finds that there is one all
ready-made for him. There are as many natural words
(if we may call them so) as there are familiar sounds with
definite aLiations, whether coming from human beings,
from animals, or from inanimate nature. These the child
instinctively loves to reproduce and communicate, at first
in mere sport and sociability, then, as occasion arises, with
more definite meaning. This meaning is easily ►extended
by various sorts of association of ideas; the sounds them-
selves are altered and combined in usage; and thus speech
is well begun.

Many humble inventors contribute to its growth, every
man, possibly, altering the heritage in proportion as he
puts his individuality into his speech. Variations of

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

idea are preserved in words or other symbols, and so stored
up in a continuing whole, constantly growing in bulk and
diversity, which is, as we have seen, nothing less than the
outside or sensible embodiment of human thought, in
which every particular mind lives and grows, drawing
from it the material of its own life, and contributing to it
whatever higher product it may make out of that material.

A word is a vehicle, a boat floating down from the past, .
laden with the thought of men we never saw; and in com-
ing to understand it we enter not only into the minds of
our contemporaries, but into the general mind of humanity
continuous through time. The popular notion of learn- \
ing to speak is that the child first has the idea and then '
gets from others a sound to use in communicating it; but
a closer study shows that this is hardly true even of the
simplest ideas, and is nearly the reverse of truth as regards
developed thought. In that the word usually goes before,
leading and kindling the idea — we should not have the latter
if we did. not have the word first. "This way," says the
word, "is an interesting thought: come and find it."
And so we are led on to rediscover old knowledge. Such
words, for instance, as good, right, truth, love, home, .
justice, beauty, freedom; are powerful makers of what they
stand for.

A mind without words would make only such feeble
and uncertain progress as a traveller set down in the midst
of a wilderness where there were no paths or conveyances
and without even a compass. A mind with them is like
the same traveller in the midst of civilization, with Jbeaten
roads and rapid vehicles ready to take him in any direction

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

where men have been before. As the traveller must pass
over the ground in either case, so the mind must pass
through experience, but if it has language it finds its ex-
perience foreseen, mapped out and interpreted by all the
wLdom of the palt, so Z it has not only its own experi-
ence but that of the race — just as the modern traveller
sees not only the original country but the cities and plan-
tations of men.

The principle that applies to words applies also to all
structures that are built of words, to literature and the
manifold traditions that it conveys. As the lines of Dante
are "foot-paths for the thought of Italy," so the successful
efforts of the mind in every field are preserved in their
symbols and become foot-paths by which other minds reach
the same point. And this includes feeling as well as
definite idea. It is almost the most wonderful thing about
language that by something intangible in its order and move-
ment and in the selection and collocation of words, it can
transmit the very soul of a man, making his page live
when his definite ideas have ceased to have value. In
this way one gets from Sir Thomas Browne, let us say,
not his conceits and credulities, but his high and religious
spirit, hovering, as it were, over the page.

The achievement of speech is commonly and properly
regarded as the distinctive trait of man, as the gate by
which he emerged from his pre-human state. It means
that, like Helen Keller, he has learned that everything has,
or may have, a name, and so has entered upon a life of
conscious fellowship in thought. It not only permitted
the rise of a more rational and human kind of thinking
and feeling, but was also the basis of the earliest definite

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

institutions. A wider and fuller unity of thought took
place in every group where it appeared. Ideas regard-
ing the chief interests of primitive life — hunting, warfare,
marriage, feasting and the like — were defined, communi-
cated and extended. Public opinion no doubt began to
arise within the tribe, and crystallized into current sayings
which served as rules of thought and conduct; the festal
chants, if they existed before, became articulate and his-
torical. And when any thought of special value was
achieved in the group, it did not perish, but was handed
on by tradition and made the basis of new gains. In this
way primitive wisdom and rule were perpetuated, en-
larged and improved until, in connection with ceremonial
and other symbols, they became such institutions, of gov-
ernment, marriage, religion and property as are found in
every savage tribe.

Nor must we forget that this state of things reacted
upon the natural capacities of man, perhaps by the direct
inheritance of acquired social habits and aptitudes, cer-
tainly by the survival of those who, having these, were
more fitted than others to thrive in a social life. In this
way man, if he was human when speech began to be used,
rapidly became more so, and went on accumulating a
social heritage.

So the study of speech reveals a truth which we may ]
also reach in many other ways, namely, that the growth |
of the individual mind is not a separate growth, but rather i
a differentiation within the general mind. ' Our personal '
life, so far as we can make out, has its sources partly in
congenital tendency, and partly in the stream of communi-
cation, both of which flow from the corporate life of the

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

race. The individual has no better ground for thinking
of himself as separate from humanity than he has for think-
ing of the self he is to-day as separate from the self he was
yesterday; the continuity being no more certain in the
one case than in the other. If it be said that he is separate
because he feels separate, it may be answered that to the
infant each moment is separate, and that we know our per-
sonal life to be a whole only through the growth of thought
and memory. In the same way the sense of a larger or
social wholeness is perhaps merely a question of our
growing into more vivid and intelligent consciousness of
a unity which is already clear enough to reflective observa-
tion.

It is the social function of writing, by giving ideas a
lasting record, to make possible a more certain, continu-
ous and diversified growth of the human mind. It does
for the race very much what it does for the individual.
When the student has a good thought he writes it down,
so that it may be recalled at will and made the starting-
point for a better thought in the same direction; and so
mankind at large records and cherishes its insights.

Until writing is achieved the accumulation of ideas de-
pends upon oral tradition, the capacity of which is meas-
ured by the interest and memory of the people who trans-
mit it. It must, therefore, confine itself chiefly to ideas
and sentiments for which there is a somewhat general and
constant demand, such as popular stories — like the Homeric
legends — chants, proverbs, maxims and the like. It is
true that tradition becomes more or less specialized in
families and castes — as we see, for instance, in the wide-

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

spread existence of a hereditary priesthood — but this
specialization cannot be very elaborate or very secure in
its continuance. There can hardly be, without writing,
any science or any diversified literature. These require
a means by which important ideas can be passed on un-
impaired to men distant in time and space from their
authors. We may safely pronounce, with Gibbon, that
"without some species of writing no people has ever pre-
served the faithful annals of their history, ever made any
considerable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever
possessed, in any tolerable degree of perfection, the use-
ful and agreeable arts of life."*

Nor can stable and extended government be organized
without it, for such government requires a constitution of
some sort, a definite and permanent body of law and cus-
tom, embracing the wisdom of the past regarding the
maintenance of social order.

It is quite the same with religious systems. The his-
torical religions are based upon Scriptures, the essential
part of which is the recorded teaching of the founder and
his immediate disciples, and without such a record
Christianity, Buddhism or Mohammedanism could never
have been more than a small and transient sect. There
may well have been men of religious genius among our
illiterate forefathers, but it was impossible that they should
found enduring systems.

The whole structure and progress of modern life evi-
dently rests upon the preservation, in writing, of the
achievements of the antique mind, upon the records,
especially, of Judea, Greece and Rome. To inquire what
* Decline and Fall, Milman-Smith edition, i, 354.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

we should have been without these would be like asking
what we should have been if our parents had not existed.
Writing made history possible, and the man of history
with his complex institutions. It enabled a rapid and
secure enlargement of that human nature which had
previously been confined within small and unstable groups.

If Iwriting, by giving thought permanence, brought in
k the earlier civilizationf^rinting, by giving it diffusion
opened the doors of the modern worldj

Before its advent access to the records of the race was
limited to a learned class, who thus held a kind of monopoly
of the traditions upon which the social system rested.
Throughout the earlier Middle Ages, for example, the
clergy, or that small portion of the clergy who were edu-
cated, occupied this position in Europe, and their system
was the one animate and wide-reaching mental organiza-
tion of the period. For many centuries it was rare for a
layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name.
Through the Latin language, written and spoken, which
would apparently have perished had it not been for the
Church, the larger continuity and cooperation of the
human mind was maintained. Those who could read
it had a common literature and a vague sense of unity and
brotherhood. Roman ideas were preserved, however
imperfectly, and an ideal Rome lived in the Papacy and
the Empire. Education, naturally, was controlled by
the clergy, who were also intrusted with political corre-
spondence and the framing of laws. As is well known
they somewhat recast the traditions in their own in-
terest, and were aided by their control of the commu*

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

nicating medium in becoming the dominant power in
Europe.

Printing means democracy, because it brings knowledge
within the reach of the common people; and knowledge,
in the long run, is sure to make good its claim to power.
It brings to the individual whatever part in the heritage of •
ideas he is fit to receive. The world of thought, and
eventually the world of action, comes gradually under the
rule of a true aristocracy of intelligence and character,
in place of an artificial one created by exclusive opportunity.

Everywhere the spread of printing was followed by a
general awakening due to the unsettling suggestions
which it scattered abroad. Political and religious agita-
tion, by no means unknown before, was immensely
stimulated, and has continued unabated to the present
time. "The whole of this movement," says Mr. H. C.
Lea, speaking of the liberal agitations of the early six-
teenth century, "had been rendered possible by the in-
vention of printing, which facilitated so enormously the
diffusion of intelligence, which enabled public opinion
to form and express itself, and which, by bringing into
communication minds of similar ways of thinking, af-
forded opportunity for combined action." "When,
therefore, on October 31, 1517, Luther's fateful theses
were hung on the church door at Wittenberg, they were,
as he tells us, known in a fortnight throughout Germany;
and in a month they had reached Rome and were being
read in every school and convent in Europe — a result
manifestly impossible without the aid of the printing
press."*

* The Cambridge Modern History, i, 684, 685.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The printed page is also the door by which the in-
dividual, in our own time, enters the larger rooms of life.
A good book, " the precious life blood of a master spirit
stored upon purpose to a life beyond life,"* is almost always
the channel through which uncommon minds get incite-
ment and aid to lift themselves into the higher thought that
other uncommon minds have created. " In study we hold
converse with the wise, in action usually with the foolish."f
While the mass of mankind about us is ever common-
place, there is always, in our day, a more select society
not far away for one who craves it, and a man like Abra-
^ ham Lincoln, whose birth would have meant hopeless
serfdom a few centuries ago, may get from half a dozen
books aspirations which lead him out to authority and
beneficence.

While spoken language, along with the writing and
printing by which it is preserved and disseminated, is the
main current of communication, there are from the start
many side channels.

Thus among savage or barbarous peoples we every-
where find, beside gesture language, the use of a multi-
tude of other symbols, such as the red arrow for war, the
pipe of peace, signal fires, notched sticks, knotted cords,
totems, and, among nations more advanced in culture,
coats-of-arms, flags and an infinite diversity of symbolic
ritual. There is, indeed, a world of signs outside of
language, most of which, however, we may pass by, since
its general nature is obvious enough.

* Milton, Areopagitica.

t Bacon, Antitheta on Studies.

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

The arts of painting, sculpture, music, and architecture,
considered as communication, have two somewhat differ-
ent functions : First, as mere picture or image writing, con-
veying ideas that could also be conveyed (though with a
difference) in words; and, second, as the vehicle of peculiar
phases of sentiment incommunicable in any other way.
These two were often, indeed usually, combined in the
art of the past. In modern times the former, because of
the diffusion of literacy, has become of secondary impor-
tance.

Of the picture-writing function the mosaics, in colors
on a gold ground, that cover the inner walls of St. Mark's
at Venice are a familiar instance. They set forth in
somewhat rude figures, helped out by symbols, the whole
system of Christian theology as it was then understood.
They were thus an illuminated book of sacred learning
through which the people entered into the religious tra-
dition. The same tradition is illustrated in the sculpture
of the cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims, together with
much other matter — secular history, typified by figures
of the kings of France; moral philosophy, with virtues
and vices, rewards and punishments; and emblems of
husbandry and handicraft. Along with these sculptures
went the pictured windows, the sacred relics — which, as
Gibbon says, "fixed and inflamed the devotion of the
faithful"* — the music, and the elaborate pageants and
ritual; all working together as one rich sign, in which
was incarnated the ideal life of the times.

A subtler function of the non-verbal arts is to com-
municate matter that could not go by any other road,

* Decline and Fall, Milman-Smith edition, iii, 428.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

especially certain sorts of sentiment which are thus per-
petuated and diffused.

One of the simplest and most fruitful examples of this
is the depiction of human forms and faces which embody,
as if by living presence, the nobler feelings and aspirations
of the time. Such works, in painting or sculpture, re-
main as symbols by the aid of which like sentiments grow
up in the minds of whomsoever become familiar with them.
Sentiment is cumulative in human history in the same
manner as thought, though less definitely and surely, and
Christian feeling, as it grew and flourished in the Middle
Ages, was fostered by painting as much, perhaps, as by
the Scriptures. And so Greek sculpture, from the time
of the humanists down through Winckelmann and Goethe
to the present day, has been a channel by which Greek
sentiment has flowed into modern life.

This record of human feeling in expressive forms and
faces, as in the madonnas and saints of Raphael, is called
by some critics "illustration"; and they distinguish it
from "decoration/* which includes all those elements in
a work of art which exist not to transmit something else
but for their own more immediate value, such as beauty of
color, form, composition and suggested movement. This
latter is communication also, appealing to vivid but other-
wise inarticulate phases of human instinct. Each art
can convey a unique kind of sentiment and has "its own
peculiar and incommunicable sensuous charm, its own
special mode of reaching the imagination." In a picture
the most characteristic thing is "that true pictorial qual-
ity ... the inventive or creative handling of pure line
and color, which, as almost always in Dutch painting, a£

•e
1-

THE GROWTTH OF COMMUNICATION

often also in the works of Titian or Veronese, is quite
independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject
it accompanies." in music "the musical charm— that es-
sential music, which presents no words, no matter of
sentiment or thought, separable from the special form
in which it is conveyed to us."* And so with architecture,
an art peculiarly close to social organization, so that in
many cases — as in the Place of Venice — the spirit of a
social system has been visibly raised up in stone.

It needs no argument, I suppose, to show that these arts
are no less essential to the growth of the human spirit than
literature or government.

* Walter Pater, Essay on the School of Giorgione.

CHAPTER Vm

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT AND

ANIMATION

Character of Recent Changes — Their General Effect— The
Change in the United States — Organized Gossip — Public
Opinion, Democracy, Internationalism — The Value of
Diffusion — Enlargement of Feeling — Conclusion.

The changes that have taken place since the beginning
of the nineteenth century are such as to constitute a new
epoch in communication, and in the whole system of
society. They deserve, therefore, careful consideration,
not so much in their mechanical aspect, which is familiar
to every one, as in their operation upon the larger mind.
If one were to analyze theTmechanism of intercourse^
,,w he might, perhaps, distinguishTfour factors that mainly
JjjH contribute to its efficiency, namely:

\ f Expressiveness, or the range of ideas and feelings it is
^ competent to carry.

v \ Permanence of record, or the overcoming of time.
] Swiftness, or the overcoming of space.
[Diffusion, or access to all classes of men.

Now while gains have no doubt been made in express-
iveness, as in the enlargement of our vocabulary to em-
brace the ideas of modern science; and even in permanence
of record, for scientific and other special purposes; yet
certainly the long steps of recent times have been made

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT

in the direction of swiftness and diffusion. For most
purposes our speech is no better than in the age of Eliza-
beth, if so good; but what facility we have gained in the
application of it! The cheapening of printing, permitting
an inundation of popular books, magazines and news-
papers, has been supplemented by the rise of the modern
postal system and the conquest of distance by railroads,
telegraphs and telephones. And along with these ex-
tensions of the spoken or written word have come new
arts of reproduction, such as photography, photo-en-
graving, phonography and the Uk^-of greater social im-
port than we realize — by which new kinds of impression
from the visible or audible world may be fixed and dissem-
inated.

It is not too much to say that these changes are the basis,
from a mechanical standpoint, of nearly everything that
is characteristic in the psychology of modern life. In a
general way they mean the expansion of human nature,
that is to say, of its power to express itself in social wholes. 1 *"
They make it possible for society to be organized more and
more on the higher faculties of man, on intelligence and v.
sympathy, rather than on authority, caste, and routine.
They mean freedom, outlook, indefinite possibility. The
public consciousness, instead of being confined as regards
its more active phases to local groups, extends by even
steps with that give-and-take of suggestions that the new
intercourse makes possible, until wide nations, and finally
the world itself, may be included in one lively mental
whole.

The general character of this change is well expressed

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

vy by the two words enlargement and animation. Social con*
tacts are extended in space and quickened in time, and in
the same degree the mental unity they imply becomes
wider and more alert. The individual is broadened by
coming into relation with a larger and more various life,
and he is kept stirred up, sometimes to excess, by the
multitude of changing suggestions which this life brings
to him.

From whatever point of view we study modern society
to compare it with the past or to forecast the future, we
ought to keep at least a subconsciousness of this radical
change in mechanism, without allowing for which noth-
ing else can be understood.

In the United States, for instance, at the close of the
eighteenth century, public consciousness of any active
kind was confined to small localities. Travel was slow,
uncomfortable and costly, and people undertaking a con-
siderable journey often made their wills beforehand. The
newspapers, appearing weekly in the larger towns, were
entirely lacking in what we should call news; and the
number of letters sent during a year in all the thirteen
states was much less than that now handled by the New
York office in a single day. People are far more alive
to-day to what is going on in China, if it happens to inter-
est them, than they were then to events a hundred miles
away. The isolation of even large towns from the rest of
the world, and the consequent introversion of men's
minds upon local concerns, was something we can hardly
conceive. In the country "the environment of the farm
was the neighborhood; the environment of the village

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT

was the encircling farms and the local tradition; . . . few
conventions assembled for discussion and common action;
educational centres did not radiate the shock of a new
intellectual life to every hamlet; federations and unions
did not bind men, near and remote, into that fellowship
that makes one composite type of many human' sorts.
It was an age of sects, intolerant from lack of acquaint-
ance."*

The change to the present regime of railroads, tele-
graphs, daily papers, telephones and the rest has involved
a revolution in every phase of life; in commerce, in poli-
tics, in education, even in mere sociability and gossip —
this revolution always consisting in an enlargement and
quickening of the kind of life in question.

Probably there is nothing in this new mechanism quite
so pervasive and characteristic as the daily newspaper,
which is as vehemently praised as it is abused, and in both
cases with good reason. What a strange practice it is,
when you think of it, that a man should sit down to his
breakfast table and, instead of conversing with his wife,
and children, hold before his face a sort of screen on which
is inscribed a world-wide gossip!

The essential function of the newspaper is, of course,
to serve as a bulletin of important news and a medium
for the interchange of ideas, through the printing of inter-
views, letters, speeches and editorial comment. In this
way it is indispensable to the organization of the public
mind.

The bulk of its matter, however, is best described by

* W. L. Anderson, The Country Town, 209, 210.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

7 the phrase organized gossip. The sort of intercourse
that people formerly carried on at cross-road stores or
over the back fence, has now attained the dignity of print
and an imposing system. That we absorb a flood of this
does not necessarily mean that our minds are degenerate,
but merely that we are gratifying an old appetite in a new
way. Henry James speaks with a severity natural to
literary sensibility of "the ubiquitous newspaper face,
with its mere monstrosity and deformity of feature, and
the vast open mouth, adjusted as to the chatter of Bedlam,
that flings the flood-gates of vulgarity farther back [in
America] than anywhere else on earth."* But after all
is it any more vulgar than the older kind of gossip ? No
doubt it seems worse for venturing to share with literature
the use of the printed word.

That the bulk of the contents of the newspaper is of
the nature of gossip may be seen by noting three traits
which together seem to make a fair definition of that word.
It is copious, designed to occupy, without exerting, the
mind. It consistf mostly of personalities and appeals to
superficial emotion. It is untrustworthy — except upon
a few matters of moment which the public are likely to
follow up and verify. These traits any one who is curious
may substantiate by a study of his own morning journal.

There is a better and a worse side to this enlargement of
gossip. On the former we may reckon the fact that it
promotes a widespread sociability and sense of commu-
nity; we know that people all over the country are laughing

^ at the same jokes or thrilling with the same mild excite-
ment over the foot-ball game, and we absorb a conviction
* The Manners of American Women, Harper's Bazar, May, 1907.

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT

that they are good fellows much like ourselves. It also
tends powerfully, through the fear of publicity, to enforce
a popular, somewhat vulgar, but sound and human
standard of morality. On the other hand it fosters super-
ficiality and commonplace in every sphere of thought and
feeling, and is, of course, the antithesis of literature and
of all high or fine spiritual achievement. It stands for v
diffusion as opposed to distinction.

In politics communication makes possible public opin-
ion, which, when organized, is democracy. The whole
growth of this, and of the popular education and en-
lightenment that go with it, is immediately dependent
upon the telegraph, the newspaper and the fast mail, for
there can be no popular mind upon questions of the day,
over wide areas, except as the people are promptly in-
formed of such questions and are enabled to exchange
views regarding them.

Our government, under the Constitution, was not
originally a democracy, and was not intended to be so
by the men that framed it. It was expected to be a repre-^
sentative republic, the people choosing men of character
and wisdom, who would proceed to the capital, inform
themselves there upon current questions, and deliberate
and decide regarding them. That the people might think
and act more directly was not foreseen. The Constitution
is not democratic in spirit, and, as Mr. Bryce has noted,*
might under different conditions have become the basis
of an aristocratic system.

That any system could have held even the original

* The American Commonwealth, chap. 26.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

thirteen states in firm union without the advent of mod*
ern communication is very doubtful. Political philosophy,
from Plato to Montesquieu, had taught that free states
must be small, and Frederick the Great is said to have
ridiculed the idea of one extending from Maine to Georgia.
" A large empire," says Montesquieu, "supposes a despotic
authority in the person who governs. It is necessary that
the quickness of the prince's resolutions should supply
the distance of the places they are sent to."*

Democracy has arisen here, as it seems to be arising
everywhere in the civilized world, not, chiefly, because of
changes in the formal constitution, but as the outcome of
conditions which make it natural for the people to have
and to express a consciousness regarding questions of the
day. It is said by those who know China that while that
country was at war with Japan the majority of the Chinese
were unaware that a war was in progress. Such igno-
rance makes the sway of public opinion impossible; and,
conversely, it seems likely that no state, having a vigorous
people, can long escape that sway except by repressing
the interchange of thought. When the people have in-
/ formation and discussion they will have a will, and this
must sooner or later get hold of the institutions of society.

One is often impressed with the thought that there
ought to be some wider name for the modern movement
than democracy, some name which should more distinctly
suggest the enlargement and quickening of the general
mind, of which the formal rule of the people is only one
among many manifestations. The current of new life
that is sweeping with augmenting force through the older
* The Spirit of Laws, book viii, chap. 19.

86,

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT

structures of society, now carrying them away, now leav-
ing them outwardly undisturbed, has no adequate name.

Popular education is an inseparable part of all this: the
individual must have at least those arts of reading and
writing without which he can hardly be a vital member
of the new organism. And that further development of
education, rapidly becoming a conscious aim of modern
society, which strives to give to every person a special
training in preparation for whatever function he may have
aptitude for, is also a phase of the freer and more flexible
organization of mental energy. The same enlargement
runs through all life, including fashion and other trivial
or fugitive kinds of intercourse. And the widest phase
of all, upon whose momentousness I need not dwell, is
that rise of an international consciousness, in literature,
in science and, finally, in politics, which holds out a trust-
worthy promise of the indefinite enlargement of justice
and amity.

This unification of life by a freer course of thought is
not only contemporaneous, overcoming space, but also
historical, bringing the past into the present, and making
every notable achievement of the race a possible factor in
its current life — as when, by skilful reproduction the work
of a mediaeval painter is brought home to people dwelling
five hundred years later on the other side of the globe.
Our time is one of "large discourse, looking before and
after/'

There are remarkable possibilities in this diffusive
vigor. Never, certainly, were great masses of men so
rapidly rising to higher levels as now. There are the

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

same facilities for disseminating improvement in mind and
manners as in material devices; and the new communi-
cation has spread like morning light over the world, awak-
ening, enlightening, enlarging, and filling with expectation.
Human nature desires the good, when it once perceives
* it, and in all that is easily understood and imitated great
headway is making.

Nor is there, as I shall try to show later, any good reason
to think that the conditions are permanently Unfavorable
to the rise of special and select types of excellence. The
same facility of communication which animates millions
with the emulation of common models, also makes it easy
for more discriminating minds to unite in small groups.
The general fact is that human nature is set free; Ttime
it will no doubt justify its freedom.

The enlargement affects not only thought but feeling,
favoring the growth of a sense of common humanity, of
moral unity, between nations, races and classes. Among
members of a communicating whole feeling may not always
be friendly, but it must be, in a sense, sympathetic, in-
volving some consciousness of the other's point of view.
Even the animosities of modern nations are of a human
and imaginative sort, not the blind animal hostility of a
more primitive age. They are resentments, and resent-
ment, as Charles Lamb says, is of the family of love.

The relations between persons or communities that are
without mutual understanding are necessarily on a low
plane. There may be indifference, or a blind anger due
to interference, or there may be a good-natured tolerance;
but there is no consciousness of a common nature to warm

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT

up the kindly sentiments. A really human fellow-feeling
was anciently confined within the tribe, men outside not
being felt as members of a common whole. The alien
was commonly treated as a more or less useful or dangerous
animal — destroyed, despoiled or enslaved. Even in these
days we care little about people whose life is not brought
home to us by some kind of sympathetic contact. We
may read statistics of the miserable life of the Italians
and Jews in New York and Chicago; of bad housing,
sweatshops and tuberculosis; but we care little more
about them than we do about the sufferers from the Black
Death, unless their life is realized to us in some human
way, either by personal contact, or by pictures and imag-
inative description.

And we are getting this at the present time. The re-
sources of modern communication are used in stimulating
and gratifying our interest in every phase of human life.
Russians, Japanese, Filipinos, fishermen, miners, mil-
lionaires, criminals, tramps and opium-eaters are brought
home to us. The press well understands that nothing
human is alien to us if it is only made comprehensible.

With a mind enlarged and suppled by such training,
the man of to-day inclines to look for a common nature
everywhere, and to demand that the whole world shall be
brought under the sway of common principles of kindness
and justice. He wants to see international strife allayed —
in such a way, however, as not to prevent the expansion
of capable races and the survival of better tyges; he
wishes the friction of classes reduced and each interest
fairly treated — but without checking individuality and en-
terprise. There was never so general an eagerness that

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

righteousness should prevail; the chief matter of dispute
is upon the principles under which it may be established.

I The work of communication in enlarging human nature
is-partly immediate, through facilitating contact, but even
more it is indirect, through favoring the increase of in-
telligence, the decline of mechanical and arbitrary forms
of organization, and the rise of a more humane type of
society:*} History may be regarded as a record of the strug-
gle of fnan to realize his aspirations through organization;
^/and the new communication is an efficient tool for this
purpose. Assuming that the human heart and conscience,
restricted only by the difficulties of organization, is the
arbiter of what institutions are to become, we may ex-
pect the facility of intercourse to be the starting-point of an
era of moral progress.

CHAPTER IX

MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY

The Question — Why Communication Should Foster Individu*
ality — The Contrary or Dead-Level Theory — Reconcili-
ation or these Views — The Outlook as Regards Individu-
ality.

It is a^cjuestionyof utmost interes^whether these changes
do or do not contribute to the independence and pro-
ductivity of the individual mind. Do they foster a self-
reliant personality^ capable at need of pursuing high and
rare aims,\or have they rather a levelling tendency? re-
pressive of^fthat is original and characteristic? There
are in fact opposite opinions regarding this matter, in
support of either of which numerous expressions by writers
of some weight might be collected.

From one point of view it would appear that the new
communication ought to encourage individuality of all
kinds; it makes it easier to get away from a given environ-*"
ment and to find support in one more congenial. The
world has grown more various and at the same time more
accessible, so that one having a natural bent should be
the more able to find influences to nourish it. If he has
a turn, say, for entomology, he can readily, through
journals, correspondence and meetings, get in touch with
a group of men similarly inclined, and with a congenial

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

tradition. And so with any sect of religion, or politics,
or art, or what not; if there are in the civilized world a
few like-minded people it is comparatively easy for them
to get together in spirit and encourage one another in
their peculiarity.

It is a simple and recognized principle of development
that an /enlarged life in the organism commonly involves
<* J 1 ' ^ greater differentiation in its parts^JThat the social en-
* largement of recent times has in general this character

seems plain, and has been set forth in much detail by
some writers, notably by Herbert Spencer. Many,
indeed, find the characteristic evil of the new era in an
extreme individuality, a somewhat anarchic differentia-
tion and working at cross purposes. "Probably there
was never any time," says Professor (Mackenzie^ "in
which(men tended to be a© unintelligible to each other-**
tbpy nr? tow j on account of the diversity of the objects
with which they are engaged, and of the points of view
at which they stand^*

On the other hand we have what we may call th^dead
level theory, of whi c h De Tocqueville, in his Democracy
in Americajwas apparently the chief author.Y""Modern
conditions, aotofdlflg -to4hie) break down all limits to the
spread of ideas and customs. Great populations are
brought into one mental whole, through which movements
of thought run by a contagion like that of the mob? and
instead of the individuality which was fostered by-former
obstacles, we have a universal assimilation. Each lo-
cality, it is pointed out, had formerly its peculiar accent

* Introduction to Social Philosophy, 110.

MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY

and mode of dress; while now dialects are disappearing,
and almost the same fashions prevail throughout the civ-
ilized world. This uniformity in externals is held to be
only the outward and visible sign of a corresponding level-
ling of ideas. People, it is said, have a passion to be alike,
which modern appliances enable them to gratify. Al-
ready in the eighteenth century Dr. Johnson complained
that "commerce has left the people no singularities," and
in our day many hold with John Burroughs that, " Con-
stant intercommunication, the friction of travel, of streets,
of books, of newspapers, make us all alike; we are, as it )
were, all pebbles upon the same shore, washed by the
same waves."*

Thefkey^to this matter, in my judgment, is to per-
ceive that there ariftwo kinds of individuality, one of iso-
lation and one of choice, and that modern conditions foster
the latter while they efface the former. "^They tend to
make life rational and free instead of locatand accidental.
They enlarge indefinitely the competition of ideas, and
whatever has owed its persistence merely to lack of com-
parison is likely to go, while that which is really congenial
to the choosing mind will be all the more cherished and
increased. Human nature is enfranchised, and works
on a larger scale as regards both its conformities and its
non-conformities.

Something of this may baseen in the contrast between
town and country, the latterhaving more of the individu-
ality of isolation, the former of choice7 "The rural en-
vironment/' says Mr. R. L. Hartt, speaking of country

* Nature's Way, Harper's Magazine, July, 1904.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

villages in New England, "is psychically extravagant
It tends to extremes. A man carries himself out to his
logical conclusions; he becomes a concentrated essence of
himself."* I travelled some years ago among the moun-
tains of North Carolina, at that time wholly unreached by
modern industry and communication, and noticed that
not only was the dialect of the region as a whole distinct
from that of neighboring parts of the country, but that
even adjoining valleys often showed marked differences.
Evidently this sort of local individuality, characteristic
of an illiterate people living on their own corn, pork and
neighborhood traditions, can hardly survive the new com-
munication.

It must be said, however, that rural life has other con-
ditions that foster individuality in a more wholesome way
than mere isolation, and are a real advantage in the growth
of character. Among these are control over the immediate
environment, the habit of face-to-face struggle with nature,
* and comparative security of economic position. All these
contribute to the self-reliance upon which the farming
people justly pride themselves.

In the city we find an individuality less picturesque
but perhaps more functional. There is more facility
for the formation of specialized groups, and so for the
fostering of special capacities. Notwithstanding the din
of communication and trade, the cities are, for this reason,
the chief seats of productive originality in art, science and
letters.

The difference is analogous to that between the develop-
ment of natural species on islands or other isolated areas,

* A New England HOI Town. The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1899.

MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY

and on a wide and traversable continent. The former
produces many quaint species, like the kangaroos, which
disappear when brought into contact with more capable
types; but the continent by no means brings about uni-
formity. It engenders, rather, a complex organism of
related species and varieties, each of which is compara-
tively perfect in its special way; and has become so through
the very fact of a wider struggle for existence.

So, 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.

It is, then, probable that local peculiarity of speech and
manner, and other curious and involuntary sorts of indi-
viduality, will diminish. And certainly a great deal is
thus lost in the way of local color and atmosphere, of the
racy flavor of isolated personalities and unconscious pictu-
resqueness of social types. The diversities of dress,
language and culture, which were developed in Europe
during the Middle Ages, when each little barony was the
channel of peculiar traditions, can hardly reappear. Nor
can we expect, in modern cities, the sort of architectural
individuality we find in those of Italy, built when each
village was a distinct political and social unit. Heine,
speaking of Scott, long ago referred to "the great pain
caused by the loss of national characteristics in conse-

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

quence of the spread of the newer culture — a pain which
now quivers in the heart of all peoples."

But the more vital individuality, the cultivation by
special groups of peculiar phases of knowledge, art or
conduct, of anything under the heavens in fact that a few
^people may agree to pursue, will apparently be increased.
Since uniformity is cheap and convenient, we may expect
it in all matters wherein men do not specially care to as-
sert themselves. We have it in dress and domestic archi-
tecture, for instance, just so far as we are willing to take
these things ready-made; but when we begin to put our-
selves into them we produce something distinctive.

Even languages and national characteristics, if the peo-
ple really care about them, can be, and in fact are, pre-
served in spite of political absorption and the assimilating
power of communication. There is nothing more notable
in recent history than the persistence of nationality, even
when, as in Poland, it has lost its political expression; and,
as to languages, it is said that many, such as Roumanian,
Bulgarian, Servian, Finnish, Norsk and Flemish, have
revived and come into literary and popular use during
the nineteenth century. Mr. Lecky, in his "Democracy
and Liberty"* declared that "there has been in many
forms a marked tendency to accentuate distinct national
and local types."

To assume that a free concourse of ideas will produce
uniformity is to beg the whole question. If it be true
that men have a natural diversity of gifts, free intercourse
should favor its development, especially when we consider
that strong instinct which causes man to take pleasure in

* I, 501.
96

MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY

distinguishing himself, and to abhor to be lost in the crowd.
And, as regards the actual tendency of modern life, only
an obstinate a priori reasoner will maintain with any con-
fidence the decline of individuality. Those who charge
that we possess it in extravagant excess have at least an
equal show of reason.

Nor, from the standpoint of sentiment, does the mod-
ern expansion of feeling and larger sense of unity tend
necessarily to a loss of individuality. There is no pros-
pect that self-feeling and ambition will be "lost in love's
great unity."* On the contrary these sentiments are
fostered by freedom, and are rather guided than repressed
by sympathy.

/^In a truly organic life the individual is self-conscious
and devoted to his own work, but feels himself and that
work as part of a large and joyous whole.-} He is self-
assertive, just because he is conscious of being a thread
in the great web of events, of serving effectually as a
member of a family, a state, of humanity, and of what-
ever greater whole his faith may picture. £lf we have not
yet an organic society in this sense, we have at least the
mechanical conditions that must underly ife)

* The concluding line of E. W. Sill's poem, Dare You?

CHAPTER X

MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY AND

STRAIN

Stimulating Eptbct op Modern Life — Superficiality — Strain

— Pathological Effects.

/ The gction of the neW communication's essentially
i stimulating, and so may, in some of its phases, be injurious.
It posts the individual more in the way of mental function
to take a normal part in the new order of things than it
did in the old.pNot only is hisjoutlook broadejvso that
he is incited to think and feel about a wider range of mat-
ters, fbut j)&-i2-required to be a more thorough-going
specialist in the mastery of his particular function; both
extension and intension have grown^ General culture
and technical training are alike more exigent than they
used to be, and their demands visibly increase from year
to year, not only in the schools but in life at large. The
man who does not meet them falls behind the procession,
and becomes in some sense a failure: either unable to
make a living, or narrow and out of touch with generous
movements.

Fortunately, from this point of view, our mental func-
tions are as a rule rather sluggish, so that the spur of
modern intercourse is for the most part wholesome, awak-
ening the mind, abating sensuality, and giving men idea
and purpose. Such ill effect as may be ascribed to it

MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY

seems to fall chiefly under the two heads, superficiality
and strain, which the reader will perceive to be another
view of that enlargement and animation discussed in the
last chapter but one.

There is a rather general agreement among observers
that, outside of his specialty, the man of our somewhat
hurried civilization is apt to have an impatient, touch-and-
go habit of mind as regards both thought and feeling.
We are trying to do many and various things, and are
driven to versatility and short cuts at some expense to"
truth and depth. "The habit of inattention," said De
Tocqueville about 1835, "must be considered as the great-
est defect of the democratic character"*; and recently
his judgment has been confirmed by Ostrogorski, who
thinks that deliverance from the bonds of space and time
has made the American a man of short views, wedded to
the present, accustomed to getting quick returns, and
with no deep root anywhere.f We have reduced ennui
considerably; but a moderate ennui is justly reckoned by
Comte and others as one of the springs of progress, and
it is no unmixed good that we are too busy to be unhappy.

In this matter, as in so many others, we should discrim-
inate, so far as we can, between permanent conditions
of modern life and what is due merely to change, between
democracy and confusion. There is nothing in the nature
of democracy to prevent its attaining, when transition has
somewhat abated, a diverse and stable organization of its

* Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iii, chap. 15.
t Democracy and the Organization of Political Portias, ii*
579-588.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

own sort, with great advantage to our spiritual composure
and productivity.

In the meanwhile it is beyond doubt that the constant
and varied stimulus of a confused time makes sustained

^attention difficult. Certainly our popular literature is
written for those who run as they read, and carries the
principle of economy of attention beyond anything pre-
viously imagined. And in feeling it seems to be true that
we tend toward a somewhat superficial kindliness anc?
adaptability, rather than sustained passion of any kind.
Generally speaking, mind is spread out very thin over

j our civilization; a good sort of mind, no doubt, but quite
thin.

All this may be counteracted in various ways, especially
by thoroughness in education, and is perhaps to be re-

* garded as lack of maturity rather than as incurable defect.

Mental strain, in spite of the alarming opinions some-
times expressed, is by no means a general condition in
modern society, nor likely to become so; it is confined to a
relatively small number, in whom individual weakness, or
unusual stress, or both, has rendered life too much for the
spirit. Yet this number includes a great part of those
who perform the more exacting intellectual functions in
business and the professions, as well as peculiarly weak,
N or sensitive, or unfortunate individuals in all walks of
life. In general there is apincrease of self-consciousness
and choice; there is more opportunity, more responsi-
bility, more complexity, a greater burden upon intelligence,
will and character. The individual not only can but must
deal with a flood of urgent suggestions, or be swamped

100

MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY

by themly "This age that blots out life with question
marks"* forces us to think and choose whether we are
ready or not.

Worse, probably, than anything in the way of work-
though that is often destructive — is the anxious insecurity
in which our changing life keeps a large part of the popu-
lation, the well-to-do as well as the poor. And an edu-
cated and imaginative people feels such anxieties more
than one deadened by ignorance. "In America," said
De Tocqueville, "I saw the freest and most enlightened
men placed in the happiest circumstances which the world
affords; it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon
their brows, and I thought them serious and almost sad,
even in their pleasures." f

Not long ago Mr. H. D. Sedgwick contributed to a
magazine a study of what he called "The New American
Type," J based on an exhibition of English and American
portraits, some recent, some a century old. He found
that the more recent were conspicuously marked by the
signs of unrest and strain. Speaking of Mr. Sargent's
subjects he says, "The obvious qualities in his portraits
are disquiet, lack of equilibrium, absence of principle, . . .
a mind unoccupied by the rightful heirs, as if the home
of principle and dogma had been transformed into an inn
for wayfarers. Sargent's women are more marked than
his men; women, as physically more delicate, are the first
to reveal the strain of physical and psychical malad-
justment. The thin spirit of life shivers pathetically in

* J. R. Lowell, The Cathedral.

t Democracy in America, vol. ii, book ii, chap. 13.

X Since published in a book having this title.

101

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

its 'fleshly dress 9 ; in the intensity of its eagerness it is all
unconscious of its spiritual fidgeting on finding itself astray
— no path, no blazings, the old forgotten, the new not
formed." The early Americans, he says, " were not limber
minded men, not readily agnostic, not nicely sceptical;
they were . • . eighteenth century Englishmen." Of
Reynolds' women he observes, "These ladies led lives
unvexed; natural affections, a few brief saws, a half-
dozen principles, kept their brows smooth, their cheeks
ripe, their lips most wooable." People had "a stable
physique and a well-ordered, logical, dogmatic philosophy."
The older portraits " chant a chorus of praise for national
character, for class distinctions, for dogma and belief, for
character, for good manners, for honor, for contemplation,
for vision to look upon life as a whole, for appreciation that
the world is to be enjoyed, for freedom from democracy, for
capacity in lighter mood to treat existence as a comedy
told by Goldoni."*

This may or may not be dispassionately just, but it
sets forth one side of the case — a side the more pertinent
for being unpopular — and suggests a very real though
intangible difference between the people of our time and
those of a century ago — one which all students must have
felt. It is what we feel in literature, when we compare
the people of Jane Austen with those, let us say, of the
author of The House of Mirth.

I do not propose to inquire how far the effects of strain
may be seen in an increase of certain distinctly patho-
logical phenomena, such as neurasthenia, the use of drugs,

* The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1904.

102

MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY

insanity and suicide. That it has an important working
in this way — difficult, however, to separate from that of
other factors — is generally conceded. In the growth of
suicide we seem to have a statistical demonstration of the
destructive effect of social stress at its worst; and of
general paralysis, which is rapidly increasing and has been
called the disease of the century, we are told that "it is
the disease of excess, of vice, of overwork, of prolonged
worry; it is especially the disease of great urban centres,
and its existence usually seems to show that the organism
has entered upon a competitive race for which it is not
fully equipped."

10B

PART III

THE DEMOCRATIC MIND

CHAPTER XI

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Narrowness op Consciousness in Tribal Society — Importance
op Face-to-Face Assembly — Individuality — Subconscious
Character op Wider Relations — Enlargement op Con-
sciousness — Irregularity in Growth — Breadth op Modern
Consciousness — Democracy.

In a life like that of the Teutonic tribes before they took
on Roman civilization, the social medium was small, lim-
ited for most purposes to the family, clan or village group.
Within this narrow circle there was a vivid interchange
of thought and feeling, a sphere of moral unity, of sympa-
thy, loyalty, honor and congenial intercourse. Here
precious traditions were cherished, and here also was the
field for an active public opinion, for suggestion and dis-
cussion, for leading and following, for conformity and
dissent. " In this kindly soil of the family," says Professor
Gummere in his Germanic Origins, "flourished such
growth of sentiment as that rough life brought forth.
Peace, good-will, the sense of honor, loyalty to friend and
kinsman, brotherly affection, all were plants that found
in the Germanic home that congenial warmth they needed
for their earliest stages of growth. . . . Originally the
family or clan made a definite sphere or system of life;
outside of it the homeless man felt indeed that chaos had
come again."*

* Pages 169, 171.
107

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

When we say that public opinion is modern, we mean,
of course, the wider and more elaborate forms of it. On
a smaller scale it has always existed where people have
had a chance to discuss and act upon matters of common
interest. Among our American Indians, for example,
" Opinion was a most potent factor in all tribes, and this
would be largely directed by those having popularity
and power. Officers, in fact all persons, became ex-
tremely well known in the small community of an Amerind
tribe. Every peculiarity of temperament was understood,
and the individual was respected or despised according
to his predominating characteristics. Those who were
bold and fierce and full of strategy were made war-chiefs,
while those who possessed judgment and decision were
made civil chiefs or governors."* The Germanic tribes
were accustomed to assemble in those village moots to
which the historian recurs with such reverence, where " the
men from whom Englishmen were to spring learned the
worth of public opinion, of public discussion, the worth
of the agreement, the 'common-sense' to which dis*
cussion leads, as of the laws which derive their force from
being expressions of that general conviction."!

Discussion and public opinion of this simple sort, as
every one knows, takes place also among children wher-
ever they mingle freely. Indeed, it springs so directly
from human nature, and is so difficult to suppress even
by the most inquisitorial methods, that we may assume
it to exist locally in all forms of society and at all peri-
ods of history It grows by looks and gestures where

* F. 8. Dellenbaugh, The North Americans of Yesterday, 416.
t J. It. Green, History of the English People, i, 13.

108

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

speech is forbidden, so that even in a prison there is public
opinion among the inmates. But in tribal life these local
groups contained all the vivid and conscious society there
was, the lack of means of record and of quick transmission
making a wider unity impracticable.

In the absence of indirect communication people had
to come into face-to-face contact in order to feel social
excitement and rise to the higher phases of consciousness.
Hence games, feasts and public assemblies of every sort
meant more to the general life than they do in our day.
They were the occasions of exaltation, the theatre for the
display of eloquence — either in discussing questions of
the moment or recounting deeds of the past-^-and for the
practice of those rhythmic exercises that combined dancing,
acting, poetry and music in one comprehensive and com-
munal art. Such assemblies are possibly more ancient than
human nature itself — since human nature implies a preced-
ing evolution of group life — and in some primitive form of
them speech itself is supposed by some to have been born.
Just as children invent words in the eagerness of play, and
slang arises among gangs of boys on the street, so the earl-
iest men were perhaps incited to the invention of language
by a certain ecstasy and self-forgetting audacity, like that of
the poet, sprung from the excitement of festal meetings.*

Something of the spirit of these primitive assemblies
is perhaps reproduced in the social exaltation of those festal
evenings around the camp-fire which many of us can recall,
with individual and group songs, chants, "stunts" and the

*J. Donovan, The Festal Origin of Human Speech. Mind,
October, 1891.

109

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

like; when there were not wanting original, almost im-
promptu, compositions-celebrating notable deeds or satir-
izing conspicuous individuals — which the common excite-
ment generated in the minds of one or more ingenious
persons.

It is sometimes said that the individual counted for
nothing in tribal life, that the family or the clan was the
unit of society, in which all personalities were merged.
From the standpoint of organization there is much truth
in this; that is the group of kindred was for many pur-
poses (political, economic, religious, etc.) a corporate unit,
acting as a whole and responsible as a whole to the rest
of society; so that punishment of wrong-doing, for ex-
ample, would be exacted from the group rather than from
the particular offender. But taken psychologically, to mean
that there was a lack of self-assertion, the idea is with-
out foundation. On the contrary, the barbaric mind ex-
alts an aggressive and even extravagant individuality.
Achilles is a fair sample of its heroes, mighty in valor
and prowess, but vain, arrogant and resentful — what
we should be apt to call an individualist.* The men of
the Niebelungenlied, of Beowulf, of Norse and Irish tales
and of our Indian legends are very much like him.

Consider, also, the personal initiative displayed in the
formation of a war-party among the Omahas, as described
by Dorsey, and note how little it differs from the way in
which commercial and other enterprises are started at
the present day.

* "Jura neget eibi nata, nihil non arroget armia."— Horace. An
Poet., 122.

110

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

*It is generally a young man who decides to undertake
an expedition against the enemy. Having formed his
plan he speaks thus to his friend: 'My friend, as I wish
to go on the war path, let us go. Let us boil the food as
for a feast/ The friend having consented, the two are
the leaders ... if they can induce others to follow them.
So they find two young men whom they send as messengers
to invite those whom they name. . . . When all have
assembled the planner of the expedition addresses the
Company. 'Hoi my friends, my friend and I have invited
you to a feast, because we wish to go on the war path.'
Then each one who is willing to go replies thus: 'Yes,
my friend, I am willing/ But he who is unwilling re-
plies, 'My friend, I do not wish to go, I am unwilling/
Sometimes the host says, 'Let us go by such a day. Pre-
pare yourselves/ "*

The whole proceeding reminds one also of the way
games are initiated among boys, the one who "gets it up"
having the right to claim the best position. No doubt the
structure of some tribal societies permitted of less initia-
tive than others; but such differences exist at all stages
of culture.

Self-feeling, self-assertion and the general relation of
the individual to the group are much the same at all
epochs, and there was never a time since man became
human when, as we sometimes read, "personality
emerged/' Change has taken place chiefly in the extent
and character of the group to which the individual ap-
peals, and in the ways in which he tries to distinguish

* J. O. Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, 315, 316. A publication of the
U. S. Bureau of Ethnology.

Ill

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

himself. The Germanic tribesman, the mediaeval knight,
the Renaissance artist or scholar and the modern captain
of industrj are alike ambitious: it is the object that differs.
There has, indeed, been a development of personality in
history, but it has been correlative with that of the general
life, and has brought no essential change in the relation
between the two.

In tribal life, then, since the conditions did not admit
of wider unification, public consciousness could be only
local in scope. Beyond its narrow range the cords which
held life together were of a subconscious character-
heredity, of course, with its freight of mental and social
tendency; oral tradition, often vague and devious, and a
mass of custom that was revered without being understood.
These wider relations, not being surveyed and discussed,
could not be the objects of deliberate thought and will,
but were accepted as part of the necessary order of things,
and usually ascribed to some divine source. In this way
language, laws, religion, forms of government, social
classes, traditional relations to other clans or tribes — all
of which we know to have been built up by the cumulative
workings of the human mind — were thought of as beyond
the sphere of man's control.

The wider unity existed, then as now; human develop-
ment was continuous in time and, after a blind fashion,
cooperative among contemporaries. The tools of life
were progressively invented and spread by imitation from
tribe to tribe, the fittest always tending to survive; but
jnly the immediate details of such changes were matters
af consciousness: as processes they were beyond human

112

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

cognizance. A man might adapt an ancient custom to a
fresh emergency, but he would be unaware that he was
shaping the growth of institutions.

There was even a tribal or national opinion, of a slow,
subconscious sort; a growth and consensus of ideas
upon matters of general and enduring interest, such as
religion, marriage and government. And, under un-
usual pressure, some more conscious unity of spirit
might be aroused, as among the Germans or Gauls
confederated against Rome; but this was likely to be
transient.

The central fact of history, from a psychological point
of view, may be said to be the gradual enlargement of
social consciousness and rational cooperation. The mind
constantly, though perhaps not regularly, extends the
sphere within which it makes its higher powers valid.
Human nature, possessed of ideals moulded in the family
and the commune, is ever striving, somewhat blindly for
the most part, with those difficulties of communication and
organization which obstruct their realization on a larger
scale. Whether progress is general or not we need not
now inquire; it is certain that great gains have been
made by the more vigorous or fortunate races, and that
these are regarded with emulation and hope by many of
the others.

Throughout modern European history, at least, there
has been an evident extension of the local areas within
which communication and cooperation prevail, and, on the
whole, an advance in the quality of cooperation as judged
by an ideal moral unity. It has tended to become more

113

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

free and human, more adequately expressive of communal
feeling.

Perhaps all apparent departures from this tendency
may plausibly be explained as cases of irregular growth.
If we find that vast systems of discipline, like the Roman
Empire, have broken down, we find also that these sys-
tems were of a low type, psychologically, that the best
features of them were after all preserved, and that the
new systems that arose, though perhaps less in extent,
were on the whole a higher and fuller expression of human
nature.

In the later Empire, for example, it seems plain that
social mechanism (in its proper kind and measure one
of the conditions of. freedom) had grown in such a way as
to shackle the human mind. In order to achieve and
maintain an imperial reach of control, the state had gradu-
ally been forced to take on a centralized bureaucratic
structure, which left the individual and the local group
no sphere of self-reliant development. Public spirit and
political leadership were suppressed, and the habit of
organized self-expression died out, leaving the people
without group vitality and as helpless as children. They
were not, in general, cowards or voluptuaries — it seems
that the decline of courage and domestic morals has been
exaggerated — but they had no trained and effective pub-
lic capacity. Society, as Professor Dill says, had been
elaborately and deliberately stereotyped.

The decline of vitality and initiative pervaded all spheres
of life. There were no inventions and little industrial
or agricultural progress of any kind. Literature de-

114

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

generated into rhetoric: "In the same manner," says
Longinus, "as some children always remain pigmies,
whose infant limbs have been too closely confined, thus
our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits
of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or
to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we ad-
mire in the ancients, who, living under a popular govern-
ment, wrote with the same freedom as they acted."*

The growing states of the earlier world were confronted,
whether they knew it or not, with an irreconcilable oppo-
sition between freedom and expansion. They might
retain in small areas. those simple and popular institu-
tions which nearly all the great peoples started with, and
to which they owed their vigor; or they could organize
on a larger scale a more mechanical unity. In the first
case their careers were brief, because they lacked the
military force to ensure permanence in a hostile world.
In the latter they incurred, by the suppression of human
nature, that degeneracy which sooner or later overtook
every great state of antiquity.

In some such way as this we may, perhaps, dispose of
the innumerable instances which history shows of the
failure of free organization — as in the decay of ancient
and mediaeval city republics. Not only was their freedom
of an imperfect nature at the best, but they were too small
to hold their own in a world that was necessarily, for the
most part, autocratic or customary. Freedom, though
in itself a principle of strength, was on too little a scale
to defend itself. "If a republic be small," said Montes-

* Quoted by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Milman-Smith edition,
i, 194, 195.

115

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

quieu, "it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large
it is ruined by internal imperfection."*

But how splendid, in literature, in art, and even in
arms, were many of these failures. How well did Athens,
Florence and a hundred other cities illustrate the intrinsic
strength and fecundity of that free principle to which
modern conditions permit an indefinite expansion.

The present epoch, then, brings with it a larger and,
potentially at least, a higher and freer consciousness. In
the individual aspect of life this means that each one of
us has, as a rule, a wider grasp of situations, and is thus
in a position to give a wider application to his intelligence,
sympathy and conscience. In proportion as he does
this he ceases to be a blind agent and becomes a rational
member of the whole.

Because of this more conscious relation to the larger
wholes — nations, institutions, tendencies — he takes a
more vital and personal part in them. His self-feeling
attaches itself, as its nature is, to the object of his free
activity, and he tends to feel that "love of the maker for
his work," that spiritual identification of the member
with the whole, which is the ideal of organization.

De Tocqueville found that in the United States there
was no proletariat. "That numerous and turbulent
multitude does not exist, who regarding the law as their
natural enemy look upon it with fear and distrust. It is
impossible, on the contrary, not to perceive that all classes
. are attached to it by a kind of parental affection."t

• •

* The Spirit of Laws, book ix, chap. 1.
t Democracy in America, vol. i, chap. 24.

116

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

And, notwithstanding a deep and well-grounded "social
unrest/' this remains essentially true at the present day,
and should be true of all real democracy. Where the state
is directly and obviously founded upon the thought of the
people it is impossible to get up much fundamental an-
tagonism to it; the energies of discontent are absorbed by
moderate agitation.

The extension of reach and choice favors, in the long
run, not only political but every kind of opportunity and
freedom. It opens to the individual a more vital, self-
determined and energetic part in all phases of the whole.

At the same time, the limits of human faculty make it
impossible that any one of us should actually occupy all
the field of thought thus open to him. Although stimu-
lated to greater activity than before, one must constantly
select and renounce; and most of his life will stilhbe on
the plane of custom and mechanism. He is freer chiefly
in that he can survey the larger whole and choose in what
relations he will express himself.

Indeed, an ever-present danger of the new order is that
one will not select and renounce enough, that he will swal-
low more than he can properly digest, and fail of the bene-
fits of a thorough subconscious assimilation. The more
one studies current life, the more he is inclined to look
upon superficiality as its least tractable defect.

The new conditions demand also a thorough, yet diversi-
fied and adaptable, system of training for the individual
who is to share in this freer and more exigent society.
While democracy as a spirit is spontaneous, only the
fullest development of personal faculty can make this
spirit effectual on a great scale. Our confidence in our

117

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

instincts need not be shaken, but our application of them
must be enlarged and enlightened. We must be taught
to do some one thing well, and yet never allowed to lose
our sense of the relation of that one thing to the general
endeavor.

The general or public phase of larger consciousness
is what we call Democracy. I mean by this primarily
the organized sway of public opinion. It works out also
in a tendency to humanize the collective life, to make
institutions express the higher impulses of human nature,
instead of brutal or mechanical conditions. That which
most inwardly distinguishes modern life from ancient or
mediaeval is the conscious power of the common people
trying to effectuate their instincts. All systems rest, in
a sense, upon public opinion; but the peculiarity of our
time is that this opinion is more and more rational and
self-determining. It is not, as in the past, a mere reflection
of conditions believed to be inevitable, but seeks prin-
ciples, finds these principles in human nature, and is
determined to conform life to them or know why not In
this all earnest people, in their diverse ways, are taking
part.

We find, of course, that but little can be carried out on
the highest moral plane; the mind cannot attend to many
things with that concentration which achieves adequate
expression, and the principle of compensation is ever at
work. If one thing is well done, others are overlooked,
so that we are constantly being caught and ground in our
own neglected mechanism.

On the whole, however, the larger mind involves a

118

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

democratic and humanistic trend in every phase of life.
A right democracy is simply the application on a large
scale of principles which are universally felt to be right as
applied to a small group — principles of free cooperation
motived by a common spirit which each serves according
to his capacity. Most of what is characteristic of the
time is evidently of this nature; as, for instance, our senti-
ment of fair play, our growing kindliness, our cult of
womanhood, our respect for hand labor, and our endeavor
to organize society economically or on "business princi-
ples." And it is perhaps equally evident that the ideas
which these replace — of caste, of domination, of military
glory, of "conspicuous leisure "* and the like — sprang
from a secondary and artificial system, based on con-
ditions which forbade a large realization of primary ideals.
May we not say, speaking largely, that there has al-
ways been a democratic tendency, whose advance has been
conditioned by the possibility, under actual conditions, of
organizing popular thought and will on a wide scale ?
Free cooperation is natural and human; it takes place
spontaneously among children on the playground, among
settlers in new countries, and among the most primitive
sorts of men — everywhere, in short, where the secondary
and artificial discipline has not supplanted it. The latter,
including every sort of coercive or mechanical control is,
of course, natural in the larger sense, and functional in
human development; but there must ever be some re-
sistance to it, which will tend to become effective when
the control ceases to be maintained by the pressure of ex-

* One of many illuminating phrases introduced by T. V. Veblen
in his work on The Theory of the Leisure Class.

119

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

pediency. Accordingly we see that throughout modern
history, and especially during the past century, there has
been a progressive humanism, a striving to clear away
lower forms of cooperation no longer essential, and to
substitute something congenial to natural impulse.

Discussion regarding the comparative merits of mon-
archy, aristocracy and democracy has come to be looked
upon as scholastic. The world is clearly democratizing;
it is only a question of how fast the movement can take
place, and what, under various conditions, it really in-
volves. Democracy, instead of being a single and definite
political type, proves to be merely a principle of breadth
in organization, naturally prevalent wherever men have
learned how to work it, under which life will be at least
as various in its forms as it was before.

It involves a change in the character of social discipline
not confined to politics, but as much at home in one sphere
as another. With facility of communication as its me-
chanical basis, it proceeds inevitably to discuss and experi-
ment with freer modes of action in religion, industry, edu-
cation, philanthropy and the family. The law of the
survival of the fittest will prevail in regard to social insti-
tutions, as it has in the past, but the conditions of fitness
have undergone a change the implications of which we
can but dimly foresee.

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CHAPTER Xn

THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

Public Opinion as Organization — Agreement not Essential
— Public Opinion versus Popular Impression — Public
Thought not an Average — A Group is Capable of Ex-
pression through its Most Competent Members — General
and Special Public Opinion — The Sphere op the Former
— Op the Latter — The Two are United in Personality —
How Public Opinion Rules — Effective Rule Based on
Moral Unity.

Public opinion is no mere aggregate of separate indi-
vidual judgments, but an organization, a cooperative"
product of communication and reciprocal influence. I\
may be as different from the sum of what the individuals
could have thought out in separation as a ship built by
a hundred men is from a hundred boats each built by
one man.

A group "makes up its mind" in very much the same
manner that the individual makes up his. The latterx
must give time and attention to the question, search his
consciousness for pertinent ideas and sentiments, and
work them together into a whole, before he knows what
his real thought about it is. In the case of a nation th#
same thing must take place, only on a larger scale. Each
individual must make up his mind 83 before, but in doing
so he has to deal not only with what was already in his
thought or memory, but with fresh ideas that flow in from

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

others whose minds are also aroused. Every one who
has any fact, or thought, or feeling, which he thinks is
unknown, or insufficiently regarded, tries to impart it;
and thus not only one mind but all minds are searched for
pertinent material, which is poured into the general stream
of thought for each one to use as he can. In this manner
the minds in a communicating group become a single
organic whole. Their unity is not one of identity, but of
life and action, a crystallization of diverse but related
ideas.

' It is not at all necessary that there should be agreement;
(the essential thing is a certain ripeness and stability of
thought resulting from attention and discussion. There
may be quite as much difference of opinion as there was
before, but the differences now existing are comparatively
intelligent and lasting. People know what they really
think about the matter, and what other people think.
Measures, platforms, candidates, creeds and other symbols
have been produced which serve to express and assist
cooperation and to define opposition. There has come
to be a relatively complete organization of thought, to
which each individual or group contributes in its own
peculiar way.

Take, for instance, the state of opinion in the United
States regarding slavery at the outbreak of the civil war.
No general agreement had been reached; but the popular
mind had become organized with reference to the matter,
♦which had been turned over and regarded from all points
of view, by all parts of the community, until a certain
ripeness regarding it had been reached; revealing in this

122

THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

case a radical conflict of thought between the North and
the South, and much local diversity in both sections.

One who would understand public opinion should dis*
tin^uish clearly between a true or mature opinion and a^
popular impression. The former requires earnest at-
tention and discussion for a considerable time, and when
reached is significant, even if mistaken. It rarely exists
regarding matters of temporary interest, and current talk
or print is a most uncertain index of it. A popular im-
pression, on the other hand, is facile, shallow, transient, with
that fickleness and fatuity that used to be ascribed to the
popular mind in general. It is analogous to the uncon-
sidered views and utterances of an individual, and the more
one studies it the less seriously he will take it. It may happen
that ninety-nine men in a hundred hold opinions to-day
contrary to those they will hold a month hence — partly
because they have not yet searched their own minds,
partly because the few who have really significant and
well-grounded ideas have not had time to impress them
upon the rest.

It is not unreasonable, then, to combine a very slight
regard for most of what passes as public opinion with
much confidence in the soundness of an aroused, mature,
organic social judgment.

There is a widespread, but as I believe a fallacious, idea*
that the public thought or action must in some way ex-]
press the working of an average or commonplace mind,!
must be some kind of a mean between the higher andf
lower intelligences making up the group. It would be

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

more correct to say that it is representative, meaning by
this that the preponderant feeling of the group seeks
\ definite and effectual expression through individuals
L specially competent to give it such expression. Take
ibr instance the activities of one of our colleges in inter-
collegiate athletics or debates. What belongs to the group
at large is a vague desire to participate and excel in such
competitions; but in realizing itself this desire seeks as its
agents the best athletes or debaters that are to be found.
A little common-sense and observation will show that the
expression of a group is nearly always superior, for the
purpose in hand, to the average capacity of its members.
>' I do notmean morally superior, but simply more effective,
in a direction determined by the prevalent feeling. If a
mob is in question, the brutal nature, for the time-being
ascendant, may act through the most brutal men in the
group; and in like manner a money-making enterprise
is apt to put forward the shrewdest agents it can find,

without regard for any moral qualities except fidelity to
itself.

' But if the life of the group is deliberate and sympathetic,
its expression may be morally high, on a level not merely
of the average member, but of the most competent, of the
^4>est. Th e average theory as applied to public conscious-
ness is wholly out of place. The public mind may be on a
lower plane than that of the individual thinking in sepa-
ration, or it may be on a higher, but is almost sure to be on
a different plane; and no inkling of its probable character
can be had by taking a mean. One mind in the right,
whether on statesmanship, science, morals, or what not,

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THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

may raise all other minds to its own point of view — be-
cause of the general capacity for recognition and deference
— just as through our aptitude for sudden rage or fear
one mind in the wrong may debase all the rest.

This is the way in which right social judgments are
reached in matters so beyond commonplace capacity as
science, philosophy, and much of literature and art. All
good critics tell us that the judgment of mankind, in the
long run, is sure and sound. The world makes no mis-
take as to Plato, though, as Emerson said, there are never
enough understanding readers alive to pay for an edition
of his works. This, to be sure, is a judgment of the few;
and so, in a sense, are all finer judgments. The point is
that the many have the sense to adopt them.

And let us note that those collective judgments in lit-
erature, art and science which have exalted Plato and
Dante and Leonardo and Michelangelo and Beethoven
and Newton and Darwin, are democratic judgments, in
the sense that every man has been free to take a part in
proportion to his capacity, precisely as the citizen of a
democracy is free to take a part in politics. Wealth and
station have occasionally tried to dictate in these matters,
but have failed.

It is natural for an organism to use its appropriate
organ, and it would be as reasonable to say that the ca-
pacity of the body for seeing is found by taking an average
of the visual power of the hand, nose, liver, etc., along
with that of the eye, as that the capacity of a group for a
special purpose is that of its average member. If a group
does not function through its most competent instru-
ments, it is simply because of imperfect organization.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

It is strange that people who apply the average theory
to democracy do not see that if it were sound it must ap-
ply to all the social phenomena of history, which is a record
of the works of the collective mind. Since the main
difference between democracy and ancient or mediaeval
systems is merely that the former is less restricted by time,
space and caste, is essentially an appeal to free human
power as against what is merely mechanical or conven-
tional; by what magic is this appeal to deprive us of our
ancient privilege of acting through our efficient individuals ?

One who ponders these things will see that the princi-
ples of collective expression are the same now as ever, and
that the special difficulties of our time arise partly from
confusion, due to the pace of change, and partly from the
greater demands which a free system makes upon human
capacity. The question is, whether, in practice, de-
mocracy is capable of the effective expression to which
no very serious theoretical obstacle can be discerned.
It is a matter of doing a rather simple thing on a vaster and
more complicated scale than in the past.

L Public opinion is no uniform thing, as we are apt to
3ume, but has its multifarious differentiations. We
may roughly distinguish a general opinion, in which al-
most everybody in the community has a part, and an in-
finite diversity of special or class opinions — of the family,
the club, the school-room, the party, the union, and so on.
And there is an equal diversity in the kind of thought
with which the public mind may be concerned: the con-
tent may be of almost any sort. Thus there are group
ideals, like the American ideal of indissoluble unity among

126

THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

(he states, the French ideal of national glory, or the ideals
of honor and good-breeding cherished in many families;
and there are group beliefs, regarding religion, trade,
agriculture, marriage, education and the like. Upon all
matters in which the mind has, in the past, taken a lively
interest there are latent inclinations and prepossessions,
and when these are aroused and organized by discussion
they combine with other elements to form public opinion.
Mr. Higginson, recounting his experience in the Massa-
chusetts legislature, speaks of "certain vast and inscruta-
ble undercurrents of prejudice . . . which could never
be comprehended by academic minds, or even city-bred
minds," but which were usually irresistible. They re-
lated to the rights of towns, the public school system, the
law of settlement, roads, navigable streams, breadth of
wheels, close time of fishing, etc. "Every good debater
in the House, and every one of its recognized legal au-
thorities, might be on one side, and yet the smallest con-
test with one of these latent prejudices would land them
in a minority/'*

This diversity merely reflects the complexity of organ-
ization, current opinion and discussion being a pervasive
activity, essential to growth, that takes place throughout
the system at large and in each particular member.
General opinion existing alone, without special types of
thought as in the various departments of science and art,
would indicate a low type of structure, more like a mob
than a rational society. It is upon these special types, and
the individuals that speak for them, that we rely for the

* On the Outskirts of Public Life, The Atlantic Monthly, Feb.,
1898.

127

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

guidance of general opinion (as, for instance, we rely upon
economists to teach us what to think about the currency),
and the absence of mature speciality involves weakness
and flatness of general achievement This fault is often
charged to democracy, but it should rather be said that
democracy is substituting a free type of speciality, based
upon choice, for the old type based upon caste, and
that whatever deficiency exists in this regard is due
chiefly to the confused conditions that accompany transi-
tion.

General public opinion has less scope than is commonly
imagined. It is true that with the new communication,
the whole people, if they are enough interested, may form
public judgments even upon transient questions. But
it is not possible, nor indeed desirable, that they should
be enough interested in many questions to form such
judgments. A likeness of spirit and principle is essential
to moral unity, but as regards details differentiation is
and should be the rule. The work of the world is mostly
of a special character, and it is quite as important that a
man should mind his own business — that is, his own par-
ticular kind of general service — as that he should have
public spirit. Perhaps we may say that the main thing
is to mind his private business in a public spirit — always re-
membering that men who are in a position to do so should
make it their private business to attend to public affairs.
It is not indolence and routine, altogether, but also an
inevitable conflict of claims, that makes men slow to exert
their minds upon general questions, and underlies the
political maxim that you cannot arouse public opinion

128

THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

upon more than one matter at a time. It is better that
the public, like the general-in-chief of an army, should be
relieved of details and free to concentrate its thought on
essential choices.

I have only a limited belief in the efficacy of the refer-
endum and similar devices for increased participation of
the people at large in the details of legislation. In so far
as these facilitate the formation and expression of public
will upon matters to whicm the public is prepared to give
earnest and continuous attention, they are serviceable; but
if many questions are submitted, or those of a technical
character, the people become confused or indifferent,
and the real power falls into the hands of the few who
manage the machinery.

The questions which can profitably be decided by this
direct and general judgment of the public are chiefly those
of organic change or readjustment, such, for instance, as
the contemporary question of what part the government
is to take in relation to the consolidation of industries.
These the people must decide, since no lesser power will
be submitted to, but routine activities, in society as in
individuals, are carried on without arousing a general
consciousness. The people are also, as I shall shortly
point out, peculiarly fit to make choice among conspicuous
personalities.

Specialists of all sorts — masons, soldiers, chemists,
lawyers, bankers, even statesmen and public officials — are
ruled for the most part by the opinion of their special
group, and have little immediate dependence upon the
general public, which will not concern itself with them so

129

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

long as their work is not palpably inefficient or in some
way distasteful.

Yet special phases of thought are not really independent,
but are to be looked upon as the work of the public mind
acting with a less general consciousness — partly automatic
like the action of the legs in walking. They are still re-
sponsible to the general state of opinion; and it is usually
a general need of the special product, as shoes, banks,
education, medical aid and so on, that gives the special
group its pecuniary support and social standing. More-
over, the general interest in a particular group is likely
to become awakened and critical when the function is
disturbed, as with the building trades or the coal-mine oper-
ators in case of a strike; or when it becomes peculiarly
important, as with the army in time of war. Then is the
day of reckoning when the specialist has to render an
account of the talents entrusted to him.

The separateness of the special group is also limited
by personality, by the fact that the men who perform the
specialty do not in other matters think apart from the rest
of the society, but, in so far as it is a moral whole, share its
general spirit and are the same men who, all taken together,
are the seat of public opinion. How far the different
departments of a man's mind, corresponding to general
and special opinion, may be ruled by different principles,
is a matter of interest from the fact that every one of us
is the theatre of a conflict of moral standards arising in
this way. It is evident by general observation and con-
fession that we usually accept without much criticism the
principles we become accustomed to in each sphere of

130

THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

activity, whether consistent with one another or not
Yet this is not rational, and there is and must ever be a
striving of conscience to redress such conflicts, which are
really divisions in society itself, and tend toward anarchy.
It is an easy but weak defence of low principles of conduct,
in business, in politics, in war, in paying taxes, to say that
a special standard prevails in this sphere, and that our
behavior is justified by custom. We cannot wholly es-
cape from the customary, but conscience should require of
ourselves and others an honest effort to raise its standard,
even at much sacrifice of lower aims. Such efforts are
the only source of betterment, and without them society
must deteriorate.

In other words, it is the chief and perhaps the only
method of moral and intellectual progress that the thought
and sentiment pertaining to the various activities should
mingle in the mind, and that whatever is higher or more
rational in each should raise the standard of the others.
If one finds that as a business man he tends to be greedy
and narrow, he should call into that sphere his sentiments
as a patriot, a member of a family and a student, and he
may enrich these latter provinces by the system and
shrewdness he learns in business. The keeping of closed
compartments is a principle of stagnation and decay.

The rule of public opinion, then, means for the most
part a latent authority which the public will exercise when
sufficiently dissatisfied with the specialist who is in im-
mediate charge of a particular function. It cannot extend
to the immediate participation of the group as a whole
in the details of public business.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

This principle holds good in the conduct of government
as well as elsewhere, experience showing that the politics
of an intricate state is always a specialty, closer to the
public interest, perhaps, than most specialties, but ordi-
narily controlled by those who, for whatever reason, put
their main energy into it. Professional politicians, in
this sense, are sure to win as against the amateur; and
if politics is badly managed the chief remedy is to raise
the level of the profession.

De Tocqueville says that " the people reign in the Ameri-
can political world as the Deity does in the universe.
They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything
comes from them and is absorbed by them/'* And we
may add that, also like the Deity, they do things through
agents in whom the supposed attributes of their master
are much obscured.

- There are some who say we have no democracy, be-
cause much is done, in government as elsewhere, in neglect
or defiance of general sentiment. But the same is true
under any form of sovereignty; indeed, much more true
under monarchy or oligarchy than under our form. The
rule of the people is surely more real and pervasive than
that of Louis XIV or Henry VIII. No sovereign possesses
completely its instruments, but democracy perhaps does
so more nearly than any other.

When an important function, such as government, or
trade or education, is not performed to the satisfaction
of watchful consciences, the remedy is somewhat as fol-
lows. A rather general moral sentiment regarding the
matter must be aroused by publishing the facts and ex-

* Democracy in America, vol. i, chap. 4.

132

THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

posing their inconsistency with underlying standards of |
right. This sentiment will effect little so long as it is
merely general, but if vigorous it rapidly begets organs
through which to work. It is the nature of such a senti-
ment to stimulate particular individuals or groups to
organize and effectuate it The press has a motive to
exploit and increase it by vivid exposition of the state of
affairs; enthusiasm, seeking for an outlet, finds it in this
direction; ambition and even pecuniary interest are enlisted
to gratify the demand. Effective leadership thus arises,
and organization, which thrives in the warmth of public
attention, is not long wanting. Civic leagues and the like
— supposing that it is a matter of politics — unite with
trusted leaders and the independent press to guide the
voter in choosing between honesty and corruption. The
moral standard of the professional group begins to rise:
a few offenders are punished, many are alarmed, and
things which every one has been doing or conniving at
are felt as wrong. In a vigorous democracy like that of
the United States, this process is ever going on, on a great
scale and in innumerable minor groups: the public mind,
like a careful farmer, moves about its domain, hoeing
weeds, mending fences and otherwise setting things to
rights, undeterred by the fact that the work will not stay
done.

Such regeneration implies the existence of a real,
though perhaps latent, moral unity in the group whose
standards are thus revived and applied. It is, for instance,/
of untold advantage to all righteous movements in the
United States, that the nation traditionally exists to the

133

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ends of justice, freedom and humanity. This tradition
means that there is already a noble and cherished ideal,
no sincere appeal to which is vain; and we could as well
dispense with the wisdom of the Constitution as with the
sentiment of the Declaration of Independence.

On the same principle, it is a chief factor in the misgov-
ernment of our cities that they are mostly too new and
heterogeneous to have an established consciousness. As
soon as the people feel their unity, we may hopefully look
for civic virtue and devotion, because these things require
a social medium in which to work. A man will not de-
vote himself, ordinarily, where there is no distinct and
human whole to devote himself to, no mind in which his
devotion will be recognized and valued. But to a vital
and enduring group devotion is natural, and we may
expect that a self-conscious city, state, university or pro-
fession will prove to be a theatre of the magnanimous
virtues.

CHAPTER XIII

WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

The Masses the Initiators of Sentiment — They Live in the
Central Current of Experience — Distinction or Privilege
Apt to Cause Isolation — Institutional Character of
Upper Classes — The Masses Shrewd Judges of Persons —
This the Main Ground for Expecting that the People Will
Be Right in the Long Run — Democracy Always Repre-
sentative — Conclusion.

The function of leaders in defining and organizing
the confused tendencies of the public mind is evident
enough, but just what the masses themselves contribute
is perhaps not so apparent.* The thought of the un-
distinguished many is, however, not less important, not
necessarily less original, than that of the conspicuous few;
the originality of the latter, just because it is more con-
spicuous, being easy to overestimate. Leadership is
only salient initiative; and among the many there may
well be increments of initiative which though not salient
are yet momentous as a whole.

The originality of the masses is to be found not so much
in formulated idea as in sentiment. In capacity to feel
and to trust those sentiments which it is the proper aim
of social development to express, they are, perhaps, com-
monly superior to the more distinguished or privileged
classes. The reason is that their experience usually

* Some discussion of leadership will be found in Human Nature
and the Social Order, chaps. 8 and 9.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

keeps them closer to the springs of human nature, and
so more under the control of its primary impulses.

Radical movements aiming to extend the application
of higher sentiment have generally been pushed on by the
common people, rather than by privileged orders, or by
conspicuous leadership of any sort.* This seems to be
true of Christianity in all ages, and of the many phases
of modern democracy and enfranchisement. In American
history, particularly, both the revolution which gave us
independence and the civil war which abolished slavery
and reunited the country, were more generally and stead-
fastly supported by the masses than by people of edu-
cation or wealth. Mr. Higginson, writing on the Cow-
ardice of Culture,! asserts that at the opening of the
Revolution the men of wealth and standing who took the
side of liberty were so few that they could be counted, and
that "there was never a period in our history, since the
American Nation was independent, when it would not
have been a calamity to have it controlled by its highly
educated men alone." And in England also it was the
masses who upheld abolition in the colonies and sympa-
thized with the North in the American struggle.

The common people, as a rule, live more in the central
current of human experience than men of wealth or dis-
tinction. Domestic morality, religious sentiment, faith
in man and God, loyalty to country and the like, are the
fruit of the human heart growing in homely conditions,

* So Mr. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, chap. 76. Some
emphasis should be given to the phrase " pushed on," as distinguished
from "initiated."

t In the Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1905.

136

WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

and they easily wither when these conditions are lost
To be one among many, without individual pretension,
is in one way a position of security and grandeur One
stands, as it were, with the human race at his back, sharing
its claim on truth, justice and God. Qui quoerit habere
private, amittit communia; * the plain man has not con-
spicuously gained private things, and should be all the
richer in things that are common, in faith and fellowship.
Nothing, perhaps, is healthy that isolates us from the com-
mon destiny of men, that is merely appropriative and not
functional, that is not such as all might rejoice in if they
understood it.

Miss Jane Addams has advanced a theory ,f far from
absurd, that the confused and deprived masses of our cities,
collected from all lands by immigration, are likely to be
the initiators of new and higher ideals for our civilization.
Since "ideals are born of situations/' they are perhaps
well situated for such a function by the almost complete
destruction, so far as they are concerned, of old traditions
and systems. In this promiscuous mingling of elements
everything is cancelled but human nature, and they are
thrown back upon that for a new start. They are an
"unencumbered proletariat" notable for primary faith
and kindness, "simple people who carry in their hearts
a desire for mere goodness. They regularly deplete their
scanty livelihood in response to a primitive pity, and, in-
dependent of the religions they have professed, of the
wrongs they have suffered, and of the fixed morality they

* Who seeks to have private things loses common things. Thomaf
a Kempis, De Imitatione Christi, book iii, chap. 13, sec. 1.
t In her book, Newer Ideals of Peace.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

have been taught, they have an unquenchable desire that
charity and simple justice shall regulate men's relations."*

Some tendency to isolation and spiritual impoverish-
ment is likely to go with any sort of distinction or privilege.
Wealth, culture, reputation, bring special gratifications.
These foster special tastes, and these in turn give rise to
special ways of living and thinking which imperceptibly
separate one from common sympathy and put him in a
special class. If one has a good income, for instance, how
natural it is to spend it, and how naturally, also, that
expenditure withdraws one from familiar intercourse
with people who have not a good income. Success means
possessions, and possessions are apt to imprison the spirit.

It has always been held that worldly goods, which of
course include reputation as well as wealth, make the
highest life of the mind difficult if not impossible, devo-
tional orders in nearly all religions requiring personal
poverty and lowliness as the condition of edification.
Tantum homo impeditur et distrahitur, quantum sibi res
atirahitj "Sloth or cowardice," says a psychologist,
"creep in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard
• • • lives based on having are less free than lives based
on either doing or being.":): "It is easier for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle." Not for nothing have
men of insight agreed upon such propositions as these.

Distinction, also, is apt to go with an exaggerated self-
consciousness little favorable to a natural and hearty

* Newer Ideals of Peace, chap. 1.

f De Imitatione Christi, book ii, chap. 1, sec. 7.

t William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 319.

138

WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

participation in the deeper currents of the general life.
Ambition and the passion for difference are good in their
way, but like most good things they are bought at a price,
in this case a preoccupation with ideas that separate one
from immediate fellowship. It is right to have high and
unusual aims and activities, but hard to keep them free
from pride, mistrust, gloom and other vices of isolation.
Only a very sane mind can carry distinction and fellow-
shipUoX spilling either.

In the social regard paid to wealth and standing we
symbolize our vague sense of the value of personal faculty
working in the service of the whole, but it requires an
unusual purity and depth of social feeling for the possessor
of faculty not to be demoralized by this regard, which is —
perhaps necessarily — almost disassociated from definite
and cogent responsibility. I mean that the eminent usually
get the credit of virtue as it were ex officio, whether they
really have it or not. We find therefore that power, in-
stead of being simply higher service, is generally more
or less corrupt or selfish, and those who are raised up are
so much the more cast down. At the best they make some
sacrifice of innocence to function; at the worst they de-
stroy themselves and debauch society.

Even vulgarity (by etymology the vice of the crowd)
if we take it to mean undisciplined selfishness and pre-
tension, flourishes at least as much among the prosperous
as among the handworking people. Wealth which is not
dominated by noble tradition or by rare personal inspira-
tion falls into vulgarity because it permits the inflation of
those crude impulses which are much kept down in the
poor by the discipline of hardship. Whatever is severely

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

necessary can never be vulgar, while only nobleness can
prevent the superfluous from being so. And a superficial,
functionless education and refinement is nearly as vulgar
as uninspired wealth. So it has been remarked that when
artists paint our contemporary life they are apt to choose
it as humble ad possible in order " to get down below the
strata which vulgarity permeates."*

Moreover, conspicuous and successful persons are more
likely than the commonalty to be institutionized, to have
sacrificed human nature to speciality. To succeed in the
hour one must be a man of the hour, and must ordinarily
harness his very soul to some sort of contemporary activity
which may after all be of no real worth. An upper class
is institutional in its very essence, since it is control of
institutions that makes it an upper class, and men can
hardly keep this control except as they put their hearts
into it. Successful business men, lawyers, politicians,
clergymen, editors and the like are such through identify-
ing their minds, for better or worse, with the present ac-
tivities and ideals of commercial and other institutions.
"Seldom does the new conscience, when it seeks a teacher
to declare to men what is wrong, find him in the dignitaries
of the church, the state, the culture, that is. The higher
the rank the closer the tie that binds those to what is but
ought not to be."f

The humbler classes are somewhat less entangled in
spirit. It is better to have the hand subdued to what it
works in than the soul; and the mechanic who sells to the

* P. G. Hamerton, Thoughts About Art, 222.
f Henry D. Lloyd, Man the Social Creator, 101.

140

WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

times only his ten hours a day of muscular work is perhaps
more free to think humanly the rest of the time than his
employer. He can also more easily keep the habit of
simple look and speech, since he does not have to learn
to conceal his thoughts in the same degree that the lawyer,
the merchant and the statesman do. Even among
students I have observed, in the matter of openness of
countenance, a marked difference, on the whole, between
the graduates of an engineering school and those of a law
school, very much in favor of the former.* Again, the
hand laborer is used to reckoning his wages by the hour —
so much time so much pay — and would feel dishonest if
he did anything else. But in the professions, and still
more in commerce and finance, there is, as a rule, no definite
measure of service, and men insensibly come to base their
charges on their view of what the other man will pay; thus
perilously accustoming themselves to exploit the wealth
or weakness of others.

The life of special institutions is often transient in pro-
portion to its speciality, and it is only natural that com-
mercial and professional activity should deal largely with
evanescent interests of little dignity in themselves. The
"demand" of the public which the merchant has to meet,
is in great part a thing of vanity, if not of degradation,
which it can hardly be edifying to supply. Indeed, many,
if not most, business men play their occupation as a game,
rather than in a spirit of service, and are widely infected
by the fallacy that they are justified in selling anything

* I mean merely that the law graduates look sophisticated — not
dishonest. They have learned to use voice and facial expression
as weapons of controversy.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

that the people will buy. Simple minds are revolted by
the lack of tangible human service in many of the higher-
paid occupations, and young men enter them for the pay
alone when their better impulses would lead them to pre-
fer hand labor.

The sentiment of the people is most readily and suc-
cessfully exercised in their judgment of persons. Mon-
tesquieu, in discussing republican government, advocated
on this ground an almost universal manhood suffrage in
the choosing of representatives. "For," says he, "though
few can tell the exact degree of men's capacities, yet there
are none but are capable of knowing in general whether
the person they choose is better qualified than most of
his neighbors."* The plainest men have an inbred
shrewdness in judging human nature which makes them
good critics of persons even when impenetrable to ideas.
This shrewdness is fostered by a free society, in which
every one has to make and hold his own place among his
fellows; and it is used with much effect in politics and
elsewhere as a guide to sound ideas.

Some years ago, for instance, occurred a national elec-
tion in which the main issue was whether silver should or
should not be coined freely at a rate much above its bullion
value. Two facts were impressed upon the observer of
this campaign: first, the inability of most men, even of
education, to reason clearly on a somewhat abstract ques-
tion lying outside of their daily experience, and, second,
the sound instinct which all sorts of people showed in
choosing sides through leadership. The flow of nonsense

* The Spirit of Laws, book xi, chap. 6.

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WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

on both parts was remarkable, but personality was the
determining influence. It was common to hear men say
that they should vote for or against the proposition because
they did or did not trust its conspicuous advocates; and
it was evident that many were controlled in this way who
did not acknowledge it, even to themselves. The general
result was that the more conservative men were united
oh one side, and the more radical and shifting elements
on the other.

The real interest of the voter at our elections is usually
in personality. One likes or dislikes A, who is running for
alderman, and votes accordingly, without knowing or
caring what he is likely to do if elected. Or one opposes

B, because he is believed to be in league with the obnoxious

C, and so on. It is next to impossible to get a large or in-
telligent vote on an impersonal matter, such as the con-
stitutional amendments which, in most of our states, have
to be submitted to the people. The newspapers, reflecting
the public taste, say little about them, and the ordinary
voter learns of them for the first time when he comes to
the polls. Only a measure which directly affects the
interests or passions of the people, like prohibition of the
liquor traffic, will call out a large vote.

On this shrewd judgment of persons the advocate of
democracy chiefly grounds his faith that the people will
be right in the long run. The old argument against him
runs as follows: democracy is the rule of the many; the
many are incompetent to understand public questions;
hence democracy is the rule of incompetence. Thus
Macaulay held that institutions purely democratic must

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

sooner or later destroy liberty or civilization or ooth; and
expected a day of spoliation in the United States, "for
with you the majority is the government and has the rich
absolutely at its TOercy."* More recent writers of stand-
ing have taken the same view, like Lecky, who de-
clares that the rule of the majority is the rule of igno-
rance, since the poor and the ignorant are the largest pro-
portion of the population.f

To this our democrat will answer, "The many, whether
rich or poor, are incompetent to grasp the truth in its
abstractness, but they reach it through personal symbols,
they feel their way by sympathy, and their conclusions
are at least as apt to be right as those of any artificially
selected class." And he will perhaps turn to American
history, which is, on the whole, a fairly convincing demon-
stration that the masses are not incapable of temperate
and wise decision, even on matters of much difficulty.
That our antecedents and training have been peculiarly
fortunate must be conceded.

The crudely pessimistic view is superficial not only in
underestimating the masses and overestimating wealth —
which is, in our times at least, almost the only possible
basis of a privileged class — but in failing to understand
the organic character of a mature public judgment. Is it
not a rather obvious fallacy to say that because the igno-
rant outnumber the educated, therefore the rule of the
majority is the rule of ignorance? If fifty men consult

* From a letter written to an American correspondent in 1857 and
printed in the appendix to Trevelyan's Macaulay.

t Democracy and Liberty, vol. i, chap. 1, page 25 and passim.
Some of Lecky's expressions, however, are more favorable to de-
mocracy

144

WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

together, forty of whom are ignorant regarding the matter
in hand and ten informed, will their conclusions necessarily
be those of ignorance? Evidently not, unless in some
improbable manner the forty separate from the ten and
refuse to be guided by them. Savages and gangs of boys
on the street choose the most sagacious to lead in counsel,
and even pirates will put the best navigators in charge of
the ship. The natural thing, as we have seen, is for a
group to defer to its* most competent members. Lecky
would himself have maintained this in the case of Parlia-
ment, and why should it not be true of other groups ? I
see no reason why the rule of the majority should be the
rule of ignorance, unless they are not only ignorant but
fools; and I do not suppose the common people of any
capable race are that.

I was born and have lived nearly all my life in the
shadow of an institution of higher learning, a university,
supported out of the taxes of a democratic state and gov-
erned by a board elected directly by the people. So far
back as I can remember there have not been wanting
pessimists to say that the institution could not prosper
on such a basis. "What," they said, "do the farmers
know or care about the university? how can we expect
that they should support astronomy and Sanscrit and the
higher mathematics ?" In fact there have been troublous
times, especially in the earlier days, but the higher learn-
ing has steadily won its way in open discussion, and the
university is now far larger, higher in its standards, better
supported and apparently more firmly established in
popular approval than ever before. What more exacting
test of the power of democracy to pursue and effectuate

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

high and rather abstract ideals could there well be than
this f One who lives in the midst of such facts cannot but
discover something rather doctrinaire in the views of
Macaulay and Lecky.

If it be true that most people judge men rather than
ideas, we may say that democratic society is representative
not only in politics but in all its thought. Everywhere a
few are allowed to think and act for the rest, and the essence
of democratic method is not in the direct choice of the peo-
ple in many matters, but in their retaining a conscious
power to change their representatives, or to exercise direct
choice, when they wish to do so. All tolerable government
is representative, but democracy is voluntarily so, and
differs from oligarchy in preserving the definite respon-
sibility of the few to the many. It may even happen, as
in England, that a hereditary ruling class retains much of
its power by the consent of a democratized electorate, or,
as in France, thaf a conception of the state, generated
under absolute monarchy, is cherished under the rule of
the people.

As for popular suffrage, it is a crude but practical device
for ascertaining the preponderant bent of opinion on a
definite issue. It is in a sense superficial, mechanical, al-
most absurd, when we consider the difference in real
significance among the units; but it is simple, educative,
and has that palpable sort of justice that allays contention.
No doubt spiritual weight is the great thing, but as there is
no accepted way to measure this, we count one man one
vote, and trust that spiritual differences will be expressed
through persuasion.

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WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

There is, then, iio essential conflict between democracy
and specialization in any sphere. It is true that as the
vital unity of a group becomes more conscious each
member tends to feel a claim on everything the group does.
Thus the citizen not only wishes the government — of the
village, the state or the nation — to be an expression of
himself; but he wishes the same regarding the schools,
manufactures, trade, religion and the advance of knowl-
edge. He desires all these things to go on in the best way
possible, so as to express to the fullest that human nature
that is in himself. And as a guaranty of this he demands
that they shall be conducted on an open principle, which
shall give control of them to the fittest individuals. Hating
all privilege not based on function, he desires power to
suppress such privilege when it becomes flagrant. And
to make everything amenable, directly or indirectly, to
popular suffrage, seems to him a practical step in this direc-
tion.

Something like this is in the mind of the plain man of our
time; but he is quite aware of his incompetence to carry
on these varied activities directly, either in government
or elsewhere, and common-sense teaches him to seek his
end by a shrewd choice of representatives, and by develop-
ing a system of open and just competition for all functions.
The picture of the democratic citizen as one who thinks
he can do anything as well as anybody is, of course, a
caricature, and in the United States, at least, there is a
great and increasing respect for special capacity, and a
tendency to trust it as far as it deserves. If people are
sometimes sceptical of the specialist — in political economy
let us say — and inclined to prefer their own common-sense,

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

it is perhaps because they have had unfortunate experience
with the former. On the whole, our time is one of the
"rise of the expert," when, on account of the rapid elabo-
ration of nearly all activities, there is an ever greater de-
mand for trained capacity. Far from being undemo-
cratic, this is a phase of that effective organization of the
public intelligence which real democracy calls for. In
short, as already suggested, to be democratic, or even to be
ignorant, is not necessarily to be a fool.

So in answer to the question, Just what do the undis-
tinguished masses of the people contribute to the general
thought ? we may say, They contribute sentiment and com-
mon-sense, which gives momentum and general direction to
progress, and, as regards particulars, finds its way by a
shrewd choice of leaders. It is into the obscure and in-
articulate sense of the multitude that the man of genius
looks in order to find those vital tendencies whose utter-
ance is his originality. As men in business get rich by
divining and supplying a potential want, so it is a great
part of all leadership to perceive and express what die
people have already felt

148

CHAPTER XIV

DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT

The Crowd-Theory of Modern Life — The Psychology of
Crowds — Modern Conditions Favor Psychological Con-
tagion — Democracy a Training in Self-Control — Th»
Crowd not Always in the Wrong — Conclusion; the Case
of France.

Certain writers, impressed with the rise of vast de-
mocracies within which space is almost eliminated by
ease of communication, hold that we are falling under the
rule of Crowds, that is to say, of bodies of men subject
by their proximity to waves of impulsive sentiment and
action, quite like multitudes in physical contiguity. A
crowd is well known to be emotional, irrational and sup-
pressive of individuality: democracy, being the rule of
the crowd, will show the same traits.

The psychology of crowds has been treated at length
by Sighele,* Le Bonf and other authors who, having
made a specialty of the man in the throng, are perhaps

* Scipio Sighele, La folia delinquente. * French translation La
foule criminelle.

t Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules. English translation
The Crowd.

The whole subject, including the question of "prophylactics"
against the mob-mind, is well discussed in Professor E. A. Ross's
Social Psychology

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

somewhat inclined to exaggerate the degree in which he
departs from ordinary personality. The crowd mind is
not, as is sometimes said, a quite different thing from that
of the individual (unless by individual is meant the higher
self), but is merely a collective mind of a low order which
stimulates and unifies the cruder impulses of its members.
The men are there but they "descend to meet." The
loss of rational control and liability to be stampeded
which are its main traits are no greater than attend almost
any state of excitement — the anger, fear, love and the like,
of the man not in the crowd.

And the intimidating effect of a throng on the individual
— the stage-fright, let us say, of an inexperienced speaker
— is nothing unique, but closely resembles that which we
have all felt on first approaching an imposing person;
seeming to spring from that vague dread of unknown
power which pervades all conscious life. And like the
latter, it readily wears off, so that the practised orator is
never more self-possessed than with the crowd before him.

The peculiarity of the crowd-mind is mainly in the
readiness with which any communicable feeling is spread
and augmented. Just as a heap of firebrands will blaze
when one or two alone will chill and go out, so the units
of a crowd "inflame each other by mutual sympathy and
mutual consciousness of it."* This is much facilitated
by the circumstance that habitual activities are usually in
abeyance, the man in a throng being like one fallen over-
board in that he is removed from his ordinary surround-
ings and plunged into a strange and alarming element
At once excited and intimidated, he readily takes on a sug*
* Whately in his note to Bacon's essay on Discourse.

150

DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT

gested emotion — as of panic, anger or self-devotion—
and proceeds to reckless action.

It must be admitted that modern conditions enable such
contagion to work upon a larger scale than ever before,
so that a wave of feeling now passes through the people,
by the aid of the newspaper, very much as if they were
physically a crowd — like the wave of resentment, for in-
stance, that swept over America when the battle-ship
Maine was destroyed in Havana harbor. The popular
excitement over athletic contests is a familiar example.
During the foot-ball season the emotion of the crowd
actually present at a famous game is diffused throughout
the country by prompt and ingenious devices that depict
the progress of the play; and, indeed, it is just to get into
this excitement, and out of themselves and the humdrum
of routine, that thousands of people, most of whom know
next to nothing of the game, read the newspapers and
stand about the bulletin boards. And when a war breaks
out, the people read the papers in quite the same spirit
that the Roman populace went to the arena, not so much
from any depraved taste for blood, as to be in the thrill.
Even the so-called " individualism " of our time, and the
unresting pursuit of "business/* are in great part due to a
contagion of the crowd. People become excited by the
game and want to be in it, whether they have any definite
object or not; and once in they think they must keep up
the pace or go under.

Is democracy, then, the rule of the crowd, and is there a
tendency in modern times toward the subjection of so-
ciety to an irrational and degenerate phase of the mind ?

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

This question, like others relating to the trend of modern
life, looks differently according to the points of view from
which it is approached. In general we may say that the
very changes which are drawing modern populations
together into denser wholes bring also a discipline in
organization and self-control which should remove them
further and further from the mob state.

It is agreed by writers on the crowd that men are little
likely to be stampeded in matters regarding which they
have a trained habit of thought — as a fireman, for instance,
will be apt to keep his head when the fire-alarm sounds.
And it is just the abser ;e of this that is the mark of a crowd,
which is not made by mere numbers and contiguity, but
by group excitability arising from lack of stable organiza-
tion. A veteran army is not a crowd, however numerous
and concentrated; and no more perhaps is a veteran
democracy, though it number twenty million voters.

A healthy democracy is indeed a training in judgment
and self-control as applied to political action; and just
as a fireman is at home on trembling ladders and amidst
choking fumes, so the free citizen learns to keep his head
amid the contending passions and opinions of a "fierce
democratic." Having passed safely through many dis-
turbances, he has acquired a confidence in cool judgment
and in the underlying stability of things impossible to
men who, living under a stricter control, have had no such
education. He knows well how to discount superficial
sentiment and "the spawn of the press on the gossip of
the hour." It is, then, the nature of ordered freedom to
train veterans of politics, secure against the wild impulses
of a rabble — such as made havoc in Paris at the close of

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DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT

the Franco-Prussian war — and in modern times, when
power cannot be kept away from the people, such a train-
ing is the main guaranty of social stability. Is it not ap-
parent to judicious observers that our tough-fibred, loose-
jointed society takes agitation more safely than the more
rigid structures of Europe?

Nor is it merely in politics that this is true, for it is the
whole tendency of a free system to train men to stand on
their own feet and resist the rush. In a fixed order, with
little opening for initiative or differentiated development,
they scarcely realize themselves as distinct and self-
directing individuals, and from them one may expect the
traits of Le Bon's fovles; hardly from the shrewd farmers
and mechanics of American democracy.

It looks at first sight as if, because of their dense hu-
manity, the great cities in which the majority of the popu-
lation are apparently to live must tend to a mob like state
of mind; but except in so far as cities attract the worse
elements of the people this is probably not the case.
Mob phenomena generally come from crowd excitement
ensuing upon a sluggish habit of life and serving as an
outlet to the passions which such a life stores up. We find
the mob. and the mob-like religious revival in the back coun-
ties rather than among the cheerful and animated people
that throng the open places of New York or Chicago.

Moreover, it is hardly true that "the multitude is al-
ways in the wrong ";* and conclusions may be no less

* Attributed to the Earl of Roscommon. See Bartlett's Familiar
Quotations.

Sir Thomas Browne characteristically describes the multitude
as *that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder,

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

sound and vital for being reached under a certain exalta-
tion of popular enthusiasm. The individual engaged in
private affairs and without the thrill of the common life
is not more apt to be at the height of his mental being than
the man in the crowd. A mingling of these influences seems
to produce the best results, and the highest rationality,
while it involves much plodding thought in its prepara-
tion, is likely to come to definite consciousness and ex-
pression in moments of some excitement. As it is the
common experience of artists, poets and saints that their
best achievements are the outcome of long brooding
culminating in a kind of ecstasy, so the clearest notes of
democracy may be struck in times of exaltation like that
which, in the Northern United States, followed the attack
on Fort Sumter. The impulsiveness which marks popu-
lar feeling may express some brutal or trivial phase of
human nature, or some profound moral intuition, the only
definite test being the persistence of the sentiment which
thus comes to light; and if it proves to have the lasting
warrant of the general conscience it may be one of those
voices of the people in which posterity will discover the
voice of God.

The view that the crowd is irrational and degenerate
is characteristic of an intricate society where reading has
largely taken the place of assembly as a stimulus to thought.
In primitive times the social excitement of religious and
other festivals represented the higher life; as it still does

seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but confused to-
gether, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious
than Hydra." Religio Medici, part ii, sec. 1. This is the very man
that urged the burning of witches after the multitude was ready to
give it up.

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DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT

in backwoods communities, and to sluggish temperaments
everywhere. Even in the towns our higher sentiments
are largely formed in social meetings of one sort or an-
other, accompanied by music, acting, dancing or speech-
making, which draw one out of the more solitary currents
of his thought and bring him into livelier unity with his
fellows.

There is really no solid basis in fact or theory for the
view that established democracy is the rule of an irrespon-
sible crowd. If not true of America, it fails as a general
principle; and no authoritative observer has found it to
be the case here. Those who hold the crowd-theory seem
to be chiefly writers, whether French or not, who generalize
from the history of France. Without attempting any dis-
cussion of this, I may suggest one or two points that we
are perhaps apt to overlook. It is, for one thing, by no
means clear that French democracy has shown itself to
lack the power of self-control and deliberate progress.
Its difficulties — the presence of ancient class divisions, of
inevitable militarism, and the like — have been immeasu-
rably greater than ours, and its spirit one with which we
do not readily sympathize. France, I suppose, is little
understood in England or the United States, and we prob-
ably get our views too much from a school of French
writers whose zeal to correct her faults may tend to ex-
aggerate them. The more notorious excesses of the French
or Parisian populace — such as are real and not a fiction
of hostile critics — seem to have sprung from that exercise of
power without training inevitable in a country where
democracy had to come by revolution. And* again, a certain

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

tendency to act in masses, and lack of vigorous local and
private initiative, which appears to characterize France,
is much older than the Revolution, and seems due partly
to race traits and partly to such historical conditions as
the centralized structure inherited from absolute monarchy.

id*

CHAPTER XV

DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

Ihb Problem — Democracy Should bb Distinguished from
Transition — The Dead-Level Theory op Democracy —
Confusion and Its Effect* — " Individualism " May not
be Favorable to Distinguished Individuality — Con-
temporary Uniformity — Relative Advantages of America
and Europe — Haste, Superficiality, Strain — Spiritual
Economy of a Settled Order — Commercialism — Zeal for
Diffusion — Conclusion.

What shall we say of the democratic trend of the mod-
ern world as it affects the finer sort of intellectual achieve-
ment? While the conscious sway of the masses seems
not uncongenial to the more popular and obvious kinds
of eminence, as of statesmen, inventors, soldiers, finan-
ciers and the like, there are many who believe it to be
hostile to distinction in literature, art or science. Is
there hope for this also, or must we be content to offset
the dearth of greatness by the abundance of mediocrity ?

This, I take it, is a matter for a 'priori psychological
reasoning rather than for close induction from fact. The
present democratic movement is so different from any-
thing in the past that historical comparison of any large
sort is nearly or quite worthless. And, moreover, it is
so bound up with other conditions which are not essential
to it and may well prove transient, that even contempo-
rary fact gives us very little secure guidance. All that is \^
really practicable is a survey of the broad principles at
work and a rough attempt to forecast how they may

J57

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

work out. An inquiry of this sort seems to me to lead
to conclusions somewhat as follows.

First, there is, I believe, no sound reason for thinking

that the democratic spirit or organization is in its essential

nature hostile to distinguished production. Indeed, one

who holds that the opposite is the case, while he will not

jbe able to silence the pessimist, will find little in fact or

'theory to shake his own faith.

Second, although democracy itself is not hostile, so
far as we can make out its nature by general reasoning,
there is much that is so in the present state of thought,
both in the world at large and, more particularly, in the
United States.

In this, as in all discussions regarding contemporary
tendency, we need to discriminate between democracy
and transition. At present the two go together because
democracy is new; but there is no reason in the nature of
things why they should remain together. As popular
rule becomes established it proves capable of developing
a stability, even a rigidity, of its own; and it is already ap-
parent that the United States, for instance, just because
democracy has had its way there, is less liable to sudden
transitions than perhaps any other of the great nations.

It is true that democracy involves some elements of
) permanent unrest. Thus, by demanding open oppor-
tunity and resisting hereditary stratification, it will prob-
ably maintain a competition* of persons more general, and
as regards personal status more unsettling, than anything
the world has been used to in the past. But personal
competition alone is the cause of only a small part of the

158

DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

stress and disorder of our time; much more being due
to general changes in the social system, particularly in
industry, which we may describe as transition. And
moreover, competition itself is in a specially disordered
or transitional state at present, and will be less disquiet-
ing when a more settled state of society permits it to be
carried on under established rules of justice, and when a
discriminating education shall do a large part of its work.
In short, democracy is not necessarily confusion, and we
shall find reason to think that it is the latter, chiefly,
that is opposed to distinction.

The view that popular rule is in its nature unsuited to
foster genius rests chiefly on the dead-level theory. Equal-
ity not distinction is said to be the passion of the masses,
diffusion not concentration. Everything moves on a
vast and vaster scale: the facility of intercourse is melt-
ing the world into one fluid whole in which the single in-
dividual is more and more submerged. The era of salient
personalities is passing away, and the principle of equality,
which ensures the elevation of men in general, is fatal to
particular greatness. "In modern society/' said De
Tocqueville, the chief begetter of this doctrine, "every-
thing threatens to become so much alike that the peculiar
characteristics of each individual will soon be entirely lost
in the general aspect of the world/' * Shall we agree with
this or maintain with Plato that a democracy will have
the greatest variety of human nature ? f

* Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iv, chap. 7. But elsewhere
he expresses the opinion that this levelling and confusion is only
temporary. See, for example, book iii, chap. 21.

t Republic, book viii.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

Perhaps the most plausible basis for this theory is the
levelling effect ascribed by many to the facilities for com-
munication that have grown up so surprisingly within the
past century. In a former chapter I have said much upon
this matter, -holding that we must distinguish between the
individuality of choice and that of isolation, and giving
reasons why the modern facility of intercourse should be
favorable to the former.

To this we may add that the mere fact of popular rule
has no inevitable connection, either friendly or hostile,
with variety and vigor of individuality. If France is
somewhat lacking in these, it is not because she is demo-
cratic, but because of the race traits of her people and her
peculiar antecedents; if America abounds in a certain
kind of individuality, it is chiefly because she inherited
it from England and developed it in a frontier life. In
either case democracy, in the sense of popular government,
is a secondary matter.

Certainly, America is a rather convincing proof that
democracy does not necessarily suppress salient personal-
ity. So far as individuality of spirit is concerned, our life
leaves little to be desired, and no trait impresses itself
more than this upon observers from the continent of
Europe. "All things grow clear in the United States/'
says Paul Bourget, "when one understands them as an
immense act of faith in the social beneficence of individual
energy left to itself."* The "individualism" of our
social system is a commonplace of contemporary writers.
Nowhere else, not even in England, I suppose, is there
more respect for non-conformity or more disposition to
* Outre-Mer. English Translation, 306.

160

DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

assert it. In our intensely competitive life men learn to
value character above similarity, and one who has char-
acter may hold what opinions he pleases. Personality,
as Mr. Brownell points out in contrasting the Americans
with the French, is the one thing of universal interest
here: our conversation, our newspapers, our elections are
dominated by it, and our great commercial transactions
are largely a struggle for supremacy among rival leaders.*
The augmenting numbers of the people, far from obscur-
ing the salient individual, only make for him a larger
theatre of success; and personal reputation — whether for
wealth, statesmanship, literary achievement, or for mere
singularity — is organized on a greater scale than ever be-
fore. One who is familiar with any province of American
life, as for example, that of charitable and penal reform,
is aware that almost every advance is made through the
embodiment of timely ideas in one or a few energetic indi-
viduals who set an example for the country to follow.
Experience with numbers, instead of showing the insig-
nificance of the individual, proves that if he has faith and
a worthy aim there is no limit to what he may do; and
we find, accordingly, plenty of courage in starting new
projects. The country is full of men who find the joys
of self-assertion, if not always of outward success, in the
bold pursuit of hazardous enterprises.

If there is a deficiency of literary and artistic achieve-
ment in a democracy of this kind, it is due to some other
cause than a general submergence of the individual in
the mass.

The dead-level theory, then, is sufficiently discredited
* See the final chapter of his French Traits.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

as a general law by the undiminished ascendency of salient
individualities in every province of activity. The enlarge-
ment of social consciousness does not alter the essential
relation of individuality to life, but simply gives it a
greater field of success or failure. The man of genius
may meet with more competition, but if he is truly great a
larger world is his. To imagine that the mass will sub-
merge the individual is to suppose that one aspect of so-
ciety will stand still while the other grows. It rests upon a
superficial, numerical way of thinking, which regards
individuals as fixed units each of which must become less
conspicuous the more they are multiplied. But if the
man of genius represents a spiritual principle his influence
is not fixed but grows with the growth of life itself, and is
limited only by the vitality of what he stands for. Surely
the great men of the past — Plato, Dante, Shakespeare
and the rest — are not submerged, nor in danger of being;
nor is it apparent why their successors should be.

The real cause of literary and artistic weakness (in so
far as it exists) I take to be chiefly the spiritual disorgan-
ization incident to a time of rather sudden transition.
How this condition, and others closely associated with it,
are unfavorable to great aesthetic production, I shall try
f to point out under the four heads, confusion, commercial-
ism, haste and zeal for diffusion.

With reference to the higher products of culture, not
only the United States, but in some degree contemporary
civilization in general, is a confused, a raw, society, not
as being democratic but as being new. It is our whole
newspaper and factory epoch that is crude, and scarcely

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PEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

more so in America than in England or Germany; the
main difference in favor of European countries being that
the present cannot so easily be separated from the con-
ditions of an earlier culture. It is a general trait of the
time that social types are disintegrated, old ones going
to pieces and new ones not perfected, leaving the indi-
vidual without adequate discipline either in the old or in
the new.

Now works of enduring greatness seem to depend,
among other things, on a certain ripeness of historical
conditions. No matter how gifted an individual may be,
he is in no way apart from his time, but has to take that
and make the best of it he can; the man of genius is in
one point of view only a twig upon which a mature ten-
dency bears its perfect fruit. In the new epoch the vast
things in process are as yet so unfinished that individual
gifts are scarce sufficient to bring anything to a classical
completeness; so that our life remains somewhat inarticu-
late, our literature, and still more our plastic art, being in-
adequate exponents of what is most vital in the modern
spirit.

The psychological effect of confusion is a lack of mature
culture groups, and of what they only can do for intel-
lectual or aesthetic production. What this means may,
perhaps, be made clearer by a comparison drawn from
athletic sports. We find in our colleges that to produce
a winning foot-ball team, or distinguished performance
in running or jumping, it is essential first of all to have
a spirit of intense interest in these things, which shall
arouse the ambition of those having natural gifts, support
them in their training and reward their succors With-

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

out this group spirit no efficient organization, no high
standard of achievement, can exist, and a small institution
that has this will easily surpass a large one that lacks it.
And experience shows that it takes much time to perfect
such a spirit and the organizations through which it is
expressed.

In quite the same way any ripe development of pro-
ductive power in literary or other art implies not merely
capable individuals but the perfection of a social group,
whose traditions and spirit the individual absorbs, and
which floats him up to a point whence he can reach unique
achievement. The unity of this group or type is spiritual,
not necessarily local or temporal, and so may be difficult
to trace, but its reality is as sure as the principle that man
is a social being and cannot think sanely and steadfastly
except in some sort of sympathy with his fellows. There
must be others whom we can conceive as sharing, cor-
roborating and enhancing our ideals, and to no one is
such association more necessary than the man of genius.

The group is likely to be more apparent or tangible
in some arts than in others: it is generally quite evident
in painting, sculpture, architecture and music, where a
regular development by the passage of inspiration from
one artist to another can almost always be traced. In
literature the connections are less obvious, chiefly because
this art is in its methods more disengaged from time and
place, so that it is easier to draw inspiration from distant
sources. It is also partly a matter of temperament, men
of somewhat solitary imagination being able to form
their group out of remote personalities, and so to be al-
most independent of time and place. Thus Thoreau

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DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

lived with the Greek and Hindoo classics, with the old
English poets, and with the suggestions of nature; but
even he owed much to contemporary influences, and the
more he is studied the less solitary he appears. Is not
this the case also with Wordsworth, with Dante, with all
men who are supposed to have stood alone ?

The most competent of all authorities on this question
— Goethe — was a full believer in the dependence of genius
on influences. "People are always talking about orig-
inality," he says, "but what do they mean? As soon as
we are born the world begins to work upon us, and this
goes on to the end. And after all what can we call our
own except energy, strength and will ? If I could give
an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and con-
temporaries, there would be but a small balance in my
favor."* He even held that men of genius are more
dependent upon their environment than others; for, being
thinner-skinned, they are more suggestible, more perturba-
ble, and peculiarly in need of the right sort of surroundings
to keep their delicate machinery in fruitful action.

No doubt such questions afford ground for infinite
debate, but the underlying principle that the thought of
every man is one with that of a group, visible or invisible,
is sure, I think, to prove sound; and if so it is indispensa-
ble that a great capacity should find access to a group
whose ideals and standards are of a sort to make the most
of it.

Another reason whv the rawness of the modern world
is unfavorable to great production is that the ideals them-
selves which a great art should express share in the gen-
* Conversation with Eckermann, May 12, 1825.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

eral incompleteness of things and do not present themselves
to the mind clearly defined and incarnate in vivid symbols.
Perhaps a certain fragmentariness and pettiness in con-
temporary art and literature is due more to this cause
than to any other — to the fact that the aspirations of the
time, large enough, certainly, are too much obscured in
smoke to be clearly and steadily regarded. We may be-
lieve, for example, in democracy, but it can hardly be
said that we see democracy, as the middle ages, in their
art, saw the Christian religion.

From this point of view of groups and organization
it is easy to understand why the "individualism" of our
epoch does not necessarily produce great individuals.
Individuality may easily be aggressive and yet futile, be-
cause not based on the training afforded by well-organ-
ized types — like the fruitless valor of an isolated soldier.
Mr. Brownell points out that the prevalence of this sort
of individuality in our art and life is a point of contrast
between us and the French. Paris, compared with New"
York, has the "organic quality which results from variety
of types," as distinguished from variety of individuals.
"We do far better in the production of striking artistic
personalities than we do in the general medium of taste
and culture. We figure well, invariably, at the Salon. . . .
Comparatively speaking, of course, we have no milieu"*

The same conditions underlie that comparative uni-
formity of American life which wearies the visitor and
implants in the native such a passion for Europe. When

* French Traits, 385, 387, 393.
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DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

a populous society springs up rapidly from a few trans-
planted seeds, its structure, however vast, is necessarily
somewhat simple and monotonous. A thousand towns,
ten thousand churches, a million houses, are built on the
same models, and the people and the social institutions
do not altogether escape a similar poverty of types. No
doubt this is sometimes exaggerated, and America does
present many picturesque variations, but only a reck-
less enthusiasm will equal them with those of Europe.
How unspeakably inferior in exterior aspect and in many
inner conditions of culture must any recent civilization
be to that, let us say, of Italy, whose accumulated riches
represent the deposit of several thousand years.

Such deposits, however, belong to the past; and as re-
gards contemporary accretions the sameness of Lon-
don or Rome is hardly less than that of Chicago. It is
a matter of the epoch, more conspicuous here chiefly be-
cause it has had fuller sweep. A heavy fall of crude
commercialism is rapidly obscuring the contours of history.

In comparison with Europe America has the advantages
that come from being more completely in the newer cur-
rent of things. It is nearer, perhaps, to the spirit of the
coming order, and so perhaps more likely, in due time, to
give it adequate utterance in art. Another benefit of be-
ing new is the attitude of confidence that it fosters. If
America could hardly have sustained the assured mastery
of Tennyson, neither, perhaps, could England an opti-
mism like that of Emerson. In contrast to the latter,
Carlyle, Ruskin and Tolstoi — prophets of an older world
shadowed by a feeling of the ascendency and inertia

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of ancient and somewhat decadent institutions. They
are afraid of them, and so are apt to be rather shrill in
protest. An American, accustomed to see human nature
have pretty much its own way, has seldom any serious
mistrust of the outcome. Nearly all of oui writers — as
Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Thoreau.
Whitman, even Hawthorne — have been of a cheerful and
wholesome personality.*

On the other hand, an old civilization has from its
mere antiquity a richness and complexity of spiritual life
that cannot be transplanted to a new world. The immi-
grants bring with them the traditions of which they feel
in immediate need, such as those necessary to found the
state, the church and the family; but even these lose
something of their original flavor, while much of what is
subtler and less evidently useful is left behind. We must
remember, too, that the culture of the Old World is chiefly
I a class culture, and that the immigrants have mostly come
from a class that had no great part in it.

With this goes loss of the visible monuments of culture
inherited from the past — architecture, painting, sculpture,
ancient universities and the like. Burne-Jones, the Eng-
lish painter, speaking of the commercial city in which he
spent his youth, says: ... "if there had been one cast
from ancient Greek sculpture, or one faithful copy of a
great Italian picture, to be seen in Birmingham when I
was a boy, I should have begun to paint ten years before
I did . . • even the silent presence of great works in
your town will produce an impression on those who see
them, and the next generation will, without knowing
* Poe is the only notable exception that occurs to me.

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DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

how or why, find it easier to learn than this one does
whose surroundings are so unlovely."*

Nor is American life favorable to the rapid crystallize
tion of a new artistic culture; it is too transient and rest-
less; transatlantic migration is followed by internal move-
ments from east to west and from city to country; while
on top of these we have a continuous subversion of in-
dustrial relations.f

Another element of special confusion in our life is the
headlong mixture of races, temperaments and traditions
that comes from the new immigration, from the irruption
by millions of peoples from the south and east of the Old
World. If they were wholly inferior, as we sometimes
imagine, it would perhaps not matter so much; but the
truth is that they contest every intellectual function with
the older stock, and, in the universities for instance, are
shortly found teaching our children their own history and
literature. They assimilate, but always with a difference,
and in the northern United States, formerly dominated by
New England influences, a revolution from this cause is
well under way. It is as if a kettle of broth were cooking
quietly on the fire, when some one should come in and add
suddenly a great pailful of raw meats, vegetables and
spices — a rich combination, possibly, but likely to re-
quire much boiling. That fine English sentiment that
came down to us through the colonists more purely, per-
haps, than to the English in the old country, is passing

♦Memorials of Edward Burne- Jones, ii, 100, 101.

t Our most notable group of writers — flourishing at Concord and
Boston about 1850 — is, of course, connected with the maturing, in
partial isolation, of a local type of culture, now disintegrated and
dispersed on the wider currents of the time.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

away — as a distinct current, that is — lost in a flood of
cosmopolitan life. Before us, no doubt, is a larger hu-
manity, but behind is a cherished spirit that can hardly
live again; and, like the boy who leaves home, we must
turn our thoughts from an irrevocable past and go hope-
fully on to we know not what.

In short, our world lacks maturity of culture organiza-
tion. What we sometimes call — truly enough as regards
its economic life — our complex civilization, is simple to
the point of poverty in spiritual structure. We have cast
off much rubbish and decay and are preparing, we may
reasonably hope, to produce an art and literature worthy
of our vigor and aspiration, but in the past, certainly, we
have hardly done so.

Haste and the superficiality and strain which attend
upon it are widely and insidiously destructive of good work
in our day. No other condition of mind or of society —
not ignorance, poverty, oppression or hate-kiUs art as
haste does. Almost any phase of life may be ennobled if
there is only calm enough in which the brooding mind
may do its perfect work upon it; but out of hurry nothing
noble ever did or can emerge. In art human nature
should come to a total, adequate expression; a spiritual
tendency should be perfected and recorded in calmness
and joy. But ours is, on the whole, a time of stress, of
the habit of incomplete work; its products are unlovely
and unrestful and such as the future will have no joy in.
The pace is suited only to turn out mediocre goods on a
vast scale.

It is, to put the matter otherwise, a loud time. The

170

DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

newspapers, the advertising, the general insistence of
suggestion, have an effect of din, so that one feels that he
must raise his voice to be heard, and the whispers of the
gods are hard to catch. Men whose voices are naturally
low and fine easily lose this trait in the world and begin
to shout like the rest. That is to say, they exaggerate
and repeat and advertise and caricature, saying too much
in the hope that a little may be heard. Of course, in the
long run this is a fatal delusion; nothing will really be
listened to except that whose quiet truth makes it worth
hearing; but it is one so rooted in the general state
of things that few escape it. Even those who preserve
the lower tone do so with an effort which is in itself
disquieting.

A strenuous state of mind is always partial and special,
sacrificing scope to intensity and more fitted for execution
than insight. It is useful at times, but if habitual cuts
us off from that sea of subconscious spirit from which all
original power flows. "The world of art," says Paul
Bourget, speaking of America, "requires less self-con-
sciousness — an impulse of life which forgets itself, the
alternations of dreamy idleness with fervid execution."*
So Henry Jamesf remarks that we have practically lost
the faculty of attention, meaning, I suppose, that un-
strenuous, brooding sort of attention required to produce
or appreciate works of art — and as regards the prevalent
type of business or professional mind this seems quite true.

It comes mainly from having too many things to think
of, from the urgency and distraction of an epoch and a

* Outre-Mer, 25.

•f In his essay on Balzac.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

country in which the traditiQnal structures that support
the mind and save its energy have largely gone to pieces.
The endeavor to supply by will functions that in other
conditions would be automatic creates a rush which imi-
tation renders epidemic, and from which it is not easy to
escape in order to mature one's powers in fruitful quiet.

There is an immense spiritual economy in any settled
state of society, sufficient, so far as production is concerned,
to offset much that is stagnant or oppressive; the will is
saved and concentrated; while freedom, as De Tocque-
ville noted, sometimes produces "a small, distressing
motion, a sort of incessant jostling of men, which annoys
and disturbs the mind without exciting or elevating it."*
The modern artist has too much choice. If he attempts
to deal largely with life, his will is overworked at the ex-
pense of Aesthetic synthesis. Freedom and opportunity
are without limit, all cultures within his reach and splendid
service awaiting performance. But the task of creating
a glad whole seems beyond any ordinary measure of talent.
The result in most cases — as has been said of architecture
— is "confusion of types, illiterate combinations, an evi-
dent breathlessness of effort and striving for effect, with
the inevitable loss of repose, dignity and style."f A
mediaeval cathedral or a Greek temple was the culmina-
tion of a long social growth, a gradual, deliberate, corpo-
rate achievement, to which the individual talent added
only the finishing touch. The modern architect has, no

* Democracy in America, vol. ii, book i, chap. 10.

t Henry Van Brunt, Greek Lines, 225. Some of these phrases,
such as "illiterate combinations," could never apply to the work of
good architects.

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DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

doubt, as much personal ability, but the demands upon
it are excessive; it would seem that only a transcendent
synthetic genius of the calibre of Dante could deal ade-
quately with our scattered conditions.

The cause of strain is radical and somewhat feverish
change, not democracy as such. A large part of the
people, particularly the farming class, are little affected
by it, and there are indications that in America, where it
has been greater than elsewhere, the worst is now over.

By commercialism, in this connection, we may under-
stand a preoccupation of the ability of the people with ma-
terial production and with the trade and finance based
upon it. This again is in part a trait of the period, in
part a peculiarity of America, in its character as a new
country with stumps to get out and material civilization
to erect from the ground up.

The result of it is that ability finds constant oppor-
tunity and incitement to take a commercial direction, and
little to follow pure art or letters. A man likes to succeed
in something, and if he is conscious of the capacity to
make his way in business or professional life, he is indis-
posed to endure the poverty, uncertainty and indifference
which attend the pursuit of an artistic calling. Less pros-
perous societies owe something to that very lack of oppor-
tunity which makes it less easy for artistic ability to take
another direction.

An even greater peril is the debasing of art by an un-
cultured market. There seem to be plenty of artists of
every kind, but their standard of success is mostly low.
The beginner too early gets commercial employment in

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

which he is not held up to any high ideal. This brings
us back to the lack of a well-knit artistic tradition to edu-
cate both the artist and the public, the lack of a type,
"the non-existence," as Mr. Russell Sturgis says, "of
an artistic community with a mind of its own and a cer-
tain general agreement as to what a work of art ought to
be. ,, This lack involves the weakness of the criticism
which is required to make the artist see himself as he ought
to be. "That criticism is nowhere in proportion to the
need of it," says Henry James, "is the visiting observer's
first and last impression — an impression so constant that
it at times swallows up or elbows out every other."

The antipathy between art and the commercial spirit,
however, is often much overstated. As a matter of his-
tory art and literature have flourished most conspicuously
in prosperous commercial societies, such as Athens, Flor-
ence, Venice, the communes of the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, the trading cities of Germany, the
Dutch Republic and the England of Elizabeth. Nothing
does more than commerce to awaken intelligence, enter-
prise and a free spirit, and these are favorable to ideal
production. It is only the extreme one-sidedness of our
civilization in this regard that is prejudicial.

It is also true — and here we touch upon something per-
taining more to the very nature of democracy than the
matters so far mentioned — that the zeal for diffusion which
springs from communication and sympathy has in it
much that is not directly favorable to the finer sorts of
production.

Which is the better, fellowship or distinction ? There

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DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

is much to be said on both sides, but the finer spirits of
our day lean toward the former, and find it more human
and exhilarating to spread abroad the good things the
world already has than to prosecute a lonesome search
for new ones. I notice among the choicest people I
know — those who seem to me most representative of the
inner trend of democracy — a certain generous contempt
for distinction and a passion to cast their lives heartily
on the general current. But the highest things are largely
those which do not immediately yield fellowship or diffuse
joy. Though making in the end for a general good, they
are as private in their direct action as selfishness itself,
from which they are not always easily distinguished.
They involve intense self-consciousness. Probably men
who follow the whispers of genius will always be more
or less at odds with their fellows.

Ours, then, is an Age of Diffusion. The best minds
and hearts seek joy and self-forgetfulness in active service,
as in another time they might seek it in solitary worship;
God, as we often hear, being sought more through human
fellowship and less by way of isolate self-consciousness
than was the case a short time since.

I need hardly particularize the educational and philan-
thropic zeal that, in one form or another, incites the better
minds among our contemporaries and makes them feel
guilty when they are not in some way exerting themselves
to spread abroad material or spiritual goods. No one
would wish to see this zeal diminished; and perhaps it
makes in the long run for every kind of worthy achieve-
ment; but its immediate effect is often to multiply the
commonplace, giving point to De Tocqueville's reflection

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

that "in aristocracies a few great pictures are produced,

in democratic countries a vast number of insignificant

ones."* In a spiritual as well as a material sense there

is a tendency to fabricate cheap goods for an uncritical

market

"Men and gods are too extense." t

Finally, all theories that aim to deduce from social con-
ditions the limits of personal achievement must be re-
ceived with much caution. It is the very nature of a virile
sense of self to revolt from the usual and the expected and
pursue a lonesome road. Of course it must have support,
but it may find this in literature and imaginative inter-
course. So, in spite of everything, we have had in America
men of signal distinction — such, for instance, as Emerson,
Thoreau and Whitman — and we shall no doubt have more.
We need fear no dearth of inspiring issues; for if old
ones disappear energetic minds will always create new
ones by making greater demands upon life.

The very fact that our time has so largely cast off all
sorts of structure is in one way favorable to enduring
production, since it means that we have fallen back upon
human nature, upon that which is permanent and es-
sential, the adequate record of which is the chief agent in
giving life to any product of the mind.

* Democracy in America, vol. ii, book i, chap, lit
f Emerson, Alphonso of Castile.

CHAPTER XVI
THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

Meaning and General Trend of Sentiment — Attenuation —
Refinement — Sense of Justice — Truth as Justice — As
Realism — As Expediency — As Economy of Attention —
Hopefulness.

By sentiment I mean socialized feeling, feeling which
has been raised by thought and intercourse out of its
merely instinctive state and become properly human.
It implies imagination, and the medium in which it chiefly
lives is sympathetic contact with the minds of others.
Thus love is a sentiment, while lust is not; resentment is,
but not rage; the fear of disgrace or ridicule, but not
animal terror, and so on. Sentiment is the chief motive-
power of life, and as a rule lies deeper in our minds and
is less subject to essential change than thought, from
which, however, it is not to be too sharply separated.

Two traits in the growth of sentiment are perhaps
characteristic of modern life, both of which, as will ap-
pear, are closely bound up with the other psychological
changes that have already been discussed.

First a trend toward diversification: under the im-
pulse of a growing diversity of suggestion and intercourse
many new varieties and shades of sentiment are devel-
oped. Like a stream which is distributed for irrigation,

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

the general current of social feeling is drawn off into man)
small channels.

Second a trend toward humanism, meaning by this a
wider reach and application of the sentiments that natu-
rally prevail in the familiar intercourse of primary groups.
Following a tendency evident in all phases of the social
mind, these expand and organize themselves at the ex-
pense of sentiments that go with the more formal or op-
pressive structures of an earlier epoch.

The diversification of sentiment seems to involve some
degree of attenuation, or decline in volume, and also some
growth of refinement.

By the former I mean that the constant and varied
demands upon feeling which modern life makes — in con-
trast to the occasional but often severe demands of a
more primitive society — give rise, very much as in the case
of the irrigating stream, to the need and practice of more
economy and regularity in the flow, so that "animated
moderation "* in feeling succeeds the alternations of
apathy and explosion characteristic of a ruder condition.
Thus our emotional experience is made up of diverse
but for the most part rather mild excitements, so that the
man most at home in our civilization, though more nimble
in sentiment than the man of an earlier order, is perhaps
somewhat inferior in depth. Something of the same
difference can be seen between the city man and the
farmer; while the latter is inferior in versatility and readi-
ness of feeling, he has a greater store of it laid up, which
is apt to give superior depth and momentum to such
* Bagehot's phrase. See his Physics and Politics.

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THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

sentiment as he does cherish. Who has not experienced
the long-minded faithfulness and kindness, or perhaps
resentment, of country people, and contrasted them
with the less stable feelings of those who live a more urbane
life?

In saying that life tends toward refinement it is only
a general trend that is asserted. We must admit that
many phases of refined sentiment have been more per-
fectly felt and expressed in the past than they are now;
but this is a matter of the maturity of special types of
culture, rather than of general progress. Thus the
Italian Renaissance produced wonders of refinement in
art, as in the painting, let us say, of Botticelli; but it was,
on the whole, a bloody, harsh and sensual time compared
with ours, a time when assassination, torture and rape
were matters of every day. So, also, there is a refinement
of the sense of language in Shakespeare and his con-
temporaries which we can only admire, while their plays
depict a rather gross state of feeling. A course of reading
in English fiction, beginning with Chaucer and ending
with James, Howells and Mrs. Ward, would certainly
leave the impression that our sensibilities had, on the
whole, grown finer.

And this is even more true of the common people than
of the well-to-do class with which literature is chiefly oc-
cupied: the tendency to the diffusion of refinement being
more marked than its increase in a favored order. The
sharp contrast in manners and feelings between the
"gentleman," as formerly understood, and the peasant,
artisan and trading classes has partly disappeared.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

Differences in wealth and occupation no longer necessitate
differences in real culture, the opportunities for which
are coming to be open to all classes, and in America, at
least, the native-bred farmer or handworker is not ur
commonly, in essential qualities, a gentleman.

The general fact is that the activities of life, to which
feeling responds, have become more various and subtle
and less crudely determined by animal conditions. Mate-
rial variety and comfort is one phase of this: we become
habituated to a comparatively delicate existence and so
are trained to shun coarseness. Communication, by
giving abundance and choice of social contacts, also acts
to diversify and refine sentiment; the growth of order dis-
accustoms us to violence, and democracy tends to remove
the degrading spectacle of personal or class oppression.

This modern refinement has the advantage that, being
a general rise in level rather than the achievement of a
class or a nation, it is probably secure. It is not, like the
refinement of Greece, the somewhat precarious fruit of
transient conditions, but a possession of the race, in no
more danger of dying out than the steam-engine.

To the trend toward humanism and the sentiments — such
as justice, truth, kindness and service-thaf go with it, I
shall devote the rest of this chapter and the one that
follows:

The basis of all sentiment of this kind is the sense of
community, or of sharing in a common social or spiritual
whole, membership in which gives to all a kind of inner
equality, no matter what their special parts may be. It is
felt, however, that the differences among men should b«

180

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

functional and intrinsic, not arbitrary or accidental. The
sense of justice is usually strong among the members
of a sympathetic group, the basis for determining what
is just being the perception of some purpose which every
one is to serve, each in his own way, so that he who
rightly holds a higher place is the one who can function
best for the common good. It does not hurt my self-
respect or my allegiance to remain a common seaman
while another becomes captain of the ship, provided I
recognize that he is the fitter man for the place; and if the
distribution of stations in society were evidently of this
sort there would be no serious protest against it. What
makes trouble is the growth of an ideal of fair play which'
the actual system of things does not satisfy.

The widening of sympathy and the consciousness of
larger unity have brought the hope and demand for a
corresponding extension of justice; and all sorts of hu-
manity — not to speak of the lower animals— profit by
this wider sentiment. Classes seek to understand each
other; the personality of women and children is recog-
nized and fostered; there is some attempt to sympa-
thize with alien nations and races, civilized or savage, and
to help them to their just place in the common life of
mankind.

Our conception of international rights reflects the
same view, and the American, at least, desires that his
country should treat other countries as one just man
treats another, and is proud when he can believe that
she has done so. It is surely of seme significance that
in the most powerful of democracies national selfish-
ness, in the judgment of a competent European observer,

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

is less cynical and obtrusive than in any of the great states
of Europe.*

Truth is a kind of justice, and wherever there is identi-
fication of oneself with the life of the group it is fostered,
and lying tends to be felt as mean and impolitic. Serious
falsehood among friends is, I believe, universally abhorred
— by savages and children as well as by civilized adults.
To he to a friend is to hit him from behind, to trip him
up in the dark, and so the moral sentiment of every group
attempts to suppress falsehood among its members, how-
ever it may be encouraged as against outsiders. "Where-
fore," says St. Paul, "putting away lying, speak every
man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of
another."f

Our democratic system aims to be a larger organization
of moral unity, and so far as it is so, in the feeling of the
individual, it fosters this open and downright attitude
toward his fellows. In idea, and largely in fact, we are a
commonwealth, of which each one is a member by his
will and intelligence, as well as by necessity, and with
which, accordingly, the human sentiment of loyalty
among those who are members one of another is naturally
in force. The very disgust with which, in a matter
like assessment for taxation, men contemplate the
incompatibility that sometimes exists between truth
and fairness, is a tribute to the prevailing sentiment of
sincerity.

An artificial system, that is one which, however solid

* See James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, chap. 87.
t Ephesians, iv, 25.

182

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

its hidden foundations — and of course all systems rest
on fact of some sort — does not visibly flow from princi-
ples of truth and fairness, fails to arouse this loyalty of
partnership. One may be devoted to it, but his devotion
will be based rather on reverence for something above
him than on a sense of participation, and will call for sub-
mission rather than for straightforward dealing. It
would seem that lying and servility are natural in the atti-
tude of a subject toward a master, that is toward a supe-
nor but uncomprehending power; while truth is gene Jed
in sympathy. Tyranny may be said to make falsehood a
virtue, and in contemporary Russia, for instance, stealth
and evasion are the necessary and justifiable means of
pursuing the aims of human nature.

Another reason for the association of freedom with truth
is that the former is a training in the sense of social cause
and effect; the free play of human forces being a constant
demonstration of the power of reality as against sham.
The more men experiment intelligently with life, the more
they come to believe in definite causation and the less in
trickery. Freedom means continuous experiment, a
constant testing of the individual and of all kinds of social
ideas and arrangements. It tends, then, to a social
realism; "Her open eyes desire the truth." The best
people I know are pervaded by the feeling that life is so
real that it is not worth while to make believe. "Knights
of the unshielded heart," they desire nothing so much as
to escape from all pretense and prudery and confront
things as they really are — confident that they are not ir-
remediably bad. I read in a current newspaper that

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

" brutal, unvarnished, careless frankness is the pose of
the new type of girl. She has not been developed in a
school of evasion. To pretend you gave a hundred dol-
lars for a gown when you really gave fifty for it, is a sorry
jest for her and a waste of time. . . . If she owns to the
new gown she tells you its cost, the name of the inexpen-
sive dressmaker who made it, and just where she econo-
mized in its price."

There is a tribute to truth in the very cynicism and
shamelessness with which flagitious politicians and finan-
ciers declare and defend their practices. Like Napoleon
or Macchiavelli they have at least cast off superstition and
are dealing with reality, though they apprehend it only in a
low and partial aspect. If they lie, they do so deliberately,
scientifically, with a view to producing a certain effect upon
people whom they regard as fools. It only needs that this
rational spirit should ally itself with higher sentiment and
deeper insight in order that it should become a source of
virtue.

I will not here inquire minutely how far or in what
sense honesty is the best policy, but it is safe to say that
the more life is organized upon a basis of freedom and
justice the more truth there is in the proverb. When
the general state of things is anarchical, as in the time of
Macchiavelli, rationalism may lead to the cynical use
of falsehood as the tool suited to the material; nor is it
deniable that this is often the case at the present day.
But modern democracy aims to organize justice, and in
so far as it succeeds it creates a medium in which truth
tends to survive and falsehood to perish. We all wish to

184

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

live in such a medium: there is nothing more grateful
than the conviction that the order of things is sincere, is
founded on reality of some sort; and in a good measure
the American, for instance, does have this conviction. It
makes democracy a soft couch for the soul: one can let
himself go and does not have to make believe; pretence
is no part of the system; be your real self and you will
find your right place.

€<

I know how the great basement of all power
Is frankness, and a true tongue to the world;
And how intriguing secrecy is proof
Of fear and weakness, and a hollow state."

An artificial system must maintain itself by suppressing
the free play of social forces and inculcating its own arti-
ficial ideas in place of those derived from experience.
Free association, free speech, free thinking, in so far as
they touch upon matters vital to authority, are and always
have been put down under such systems, and this means
that the whole mind of the people is emasculated, as the
mind of Italy was by Spanish rule and religious reaction
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "Oriental
mendacity " is ascribed to the insecurity of life and prop-
erty under arbitrary rule; but it is not merely life and
property that are affected. The very idea of truth and
reason in human affairs can hardly prevail under a system
which affords no observation to corroborate it. The
fact that in diplomacy, for instance, there is a growing
belief that it pays to be simple and honest, I take to
be a reflection of the fact that the international system,
based more and more on intelligent public opinion, is

186

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

gradually coming to be a medium in which truth is fit to
live.

Perhaps something of this hostility to truth will linger
in all establishments, however they may be humanized:
they all involve a kind of vested interest in certain ideas
which is not favorable to entire frankness. It sometimes
appears that one who would be quite honest and stand
for human nature should avoid not only religious, political
and educational allegiance, but law, journalism, and all
positions where one has to speak as part of an institution.
As a rule the great seers and thinkers have stood as much
aside from institutions as the nature of the human mind
permits.

Still another reason for the keener sense of truth in our
day is the need to economize attention. In societies
where life is dull, fiction, circumlocution and elaborate
forms of intercourse serve as a sort of pastime; and the
first arouses no resentment unless some definite injury
is attempted by it. Although the Chinese are upright in
keeping their pecuniary engagements, we are told that
mere truth is not valued by them, and is not inculcated
by their classic moralists. So in Italy the people seem to
think that a courteous and encouraging lie is kinder than
the bare truth, as when a man will pretend to give you
information when he knows nothing about the matter.
A strenuous civilization like ours makes one intolerant
of all this. It is not that we are always hurried; but we
are so often made to feel the limitations of our attention
that we dislike to waste it. Thought is life, and we wish
to get the most reality for a given outlay of it that is to be

186

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT
had. We wish to come at once to the Real Thing,
whether it be a business proposition or the most subtle
theory.

Another sentiment favored by the times is social courage
and hopefulness, a disposition to push forwaid with con-
fidence regarding the future both of the individual and of
society at large. That this attitude is the prevalent one,
in American democracy at least, nearly all observers are
agreed. "Let any one," says Dr. Lyman Abbott, "stand
on one of our great highways and watch the countenances
of the passers-by; the language written on most of them
is that of eagerness, ambition, expectation, hope."*
There is something ruthless about this headlong opti-
mism, which is apt to deny and neglect failure and despair,
as certain religious sects of the day deny and neglect
physical injury; but it answers its purpose of sustaining
the combatants. It springs from a condition in which
the individual, not supported in any one place by a rigid
system, is impelled from childhood to trust himself to
the common current of life, to make experiments, to ac-
quire a habit of venture and a working knowledge of
social forces. The state of things instigates endeavor,
and, as a rule, rewards it sufficiently to keep up one's
courage, while occasional failure at least takes away that
vague dread of the unknown which is often worse than
the reality. Life is natural and vivid, not K the wax-works
of an artificial order, and has that enlivening effect that
comes from being thrown back upon human nature. A
real pessimism— one which despairs of the general trend

* In Shaler's United States, ii, 594.

187

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of things — is rare and without much influence, even the
revolutionary sects maintaining that the changes they
desire are in the line of a natural evolution. Discontent
is affirmative and constructive rather than stagnant: it
works out programmes and hopefully agitates for their
realization. There is a kind of piety and trust in God
to be seen in the confidence with which small bodies of
men anticipate the success of principles they believe to be
right

dip

CHAPTER XVII

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT; Continued

Nature of the Sentiment of Brotherhood — Favored by Com-
munication and Settled Principles — How Far Contempo-
rary Life Fosters It — How Far Uncongenial To It — Gen-
eral Outcome in this Regard — The Spirit of Service —
The Trend of Manners — Brotherhood in Relation to
Conflict — Blame — Democracy and Christianity.

The sentiment of mutual kindness or brotherhood is a
simple and widespread thing, belonging not only to man
in every stage of his development, but extending, in a
crude form, over a great part of animal life. Prince
Kropotkin, in his Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution, has
collected illustrations of its universality and significance.
". . . the necessity of communicating impressions," he
says, "of playing, of chattering, or of simply feeling the
proximity of other kindred living beings pervades nature,
and is, as much as any other physiological function, a dis-
tinctive feature of life and impressionability ."* Darwin
perceived, what Kropotkin and others have illustrated
with convincing fulness, that this fusing kindliness under-
lies all higher phases of evolution, and is essential to the
cooperative life in which thought and power are developed.
The popular notion that kindly sentiment can only be a
hindrance to the survival of the fittest is a somewhat per-
nicious misapprehension.

This sentiment flourishes most in primary groups,
where, as we have seen, it contributes to an ideal of moral
unity of which kindness is a main part. Under its in-

'Page 65.
IS9

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

fluence the I-feeling becomes a we-feeling, which seeks
no good that is not also the good of the group. And the
humanism of our time strives with renewed energy to
make the we-feeling prevail also in the larger phases of
life. "We must demand/' says a writer who lives very
close to the heart of the people,* " that the individual shall
be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and
shall be content to realize his activity only in connection
with the activity of the many." Huxley at one time felt
this so strongly as to say, "If I had 400 pounds a year I
would never let my name appear to anything I did or
shall do."f

Such utterances, though significant, are one-sided, and
it is perhaps more in the way of real progress to demand,
not that the sense of personal achievement shall be given
up, but that it shall be more allied with fellow-feeling.
The sort of ambition congenial to the we-feeling is one
directed toward those common aims in which the success
of one is the success of .all, not toward admiration or
riches. Material goods, one feels, should not be appro-
priated for pride or luxury, but, being limited in amount,
should be used in a consciousness of the general need,
and apportioned by rules of justice framed to promote a
higher life in the whole.

Much might be said of the we-feeling as joy:

Perche quanto si dice piu li nostro,
Tanto possiede piu di ben ciascuno,
£ piu di caritate arde in quel chiostro.J

* Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 275.

t Quoted in The Commons, October, 1903.

X Dante, Purgatorio, 15, 55-57. He is speaking of Paradise.

190

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

For there, as much the more as one says Our,
So much the more of good each one possesseth,
And more of charity in that cloister burns.*

There is nothing more wholesome or less pursued by
compunction. To mingle our emotions with fellowship
enlarges and soothes them; even resentment on behalf of
us is less rankling than on behalf of only me, and there
is something cheerful in suffering wrong in friendly com-
pany. One of the most obvious things about selfish-
ness is the unhappiness of it, the lack of imaginative ex-
patiation, of the inspiration of working consciously with
a vast whole, of "the exhilaration and uplift which come
when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught
into the forward intuitive movement of the mass."f
Fellowship is thus a good kind of joy in that it is indefinitely
diffusible; though by no means incapable of abuse, since
it may be cultivated at the expense of truth, sanity and
individuality.

Everything that tends to bring mankind together in
larger wholes of sympathy and understanding tends to
enlarge the reach of kindly feeling. Among the condi-
tions that most evidently have this effect are facility of
communication and the acceptance of common princi-
ples. These permit the contact and fusion of minds and
tend to mould the group into a moral whole.

In times of settled principles and of progress in the arts
of communication the idea of the brotherhood of man has
a natural growth; as it had under the Roman Empire.
On the other hand, it is dissipated by whatever breaks up

* Longfellow's Translation.

t Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 272.

191

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

die moral unity and makes human interests seem incon-
sistent. Not only war, but all kinds of destructive or un-
regulated competition, in which the good of one party
appears to be a private good gained by the harm of an-
other, are reflected in the mind by unkindly feeling.
What human nature needs is — not the disappearance of
opposition, which would be death — but the suppression
of destructive forms, and the control of all forms by prin-
ciples of justice and kindness, so that men may feel that
the good survives.

As regards the bearing of contemporary conditions upon
the spirit of brotherhood, we find forces at work so con-
flicting that it is easy to reach opposite conclusions, ac-
cording to the bias of the observer.

The enlargement of consciousness has brought a broad-
ening of sentiment in all directions. As a rule kindly feel-
ing follows understanding, and there was never such op-
portunity and encouragement to understand as there is
now. Distant peoples — Russians, Chinese and South
Sea Islanders; alienated classes — criminals, vagrants,
idiots and the insane, are brought close to us, and the
natural curiosity of man about his fellows is exploited
and stimulated by the press. Indeed, the decried habit
of reading the newspapers contributes much to a general
we-feeling, since the newspaper is a reservoir of common-
place thought of which every one partakes — and which he
knows he may impute to every one else — pervading the
world with a conscious community of sentiment which
tends toward kindliness.

Even more potent, perhaps, is the indirect action of

192

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

communication in making it possible to organize all phases
of life on a larger scale and on a more human basis; in
promoting democracy and breaking down caste. Under
a democratic system the masses have means of self-ex-
pression; they vote, strike, and print their views. They
have power, and this, at bottom, is the source of all respect
and consideration. People of other classes have to think
of them, feel with them and recognize them as of a com-
mon humanity. Moreover, in tending to wipe out con-
ventional distinctions and leave only those that are func-
tional, democracy fosters the notion of an organic whole,
from which all derive and in which they find their value.
A sense of common nature and purpose is thus nourished,
a conscious unity of action which gives the sense of fellow-
ship. It comes to be assumed that men are of the same
stuff, and a kind of universal sympathy — not incompatible
with opposition — is spread abroad. It is realized that
"there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit/'

On the other hand, our life is full of a confusion which
often leaves the individual conscious only of his separate-
ness, engaged in a struggle which, so far as he sees, has
no more relation to justice and the common good than a
dog-fight. Whether he win or lose makes, in this case,
little difference as to the effect upon his general view of
life: he infers that the world is a place where one must
either eat or be eaten; the idea of the brotherhood of man
appears to be an enervating sentimentalism, and the true
philosophy that of the struggle for existence, which he
understands in a brutal sense opposite to the real teaching
of science. Nothing could be more uncongenial to the we-

193

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

feeling than this view, which unfortunate experience has
prepared many to embrace, taking from life, as it does, its
breadth and hopefulness, the joy and inspiration of work-
ing in a vast and friendly whole.

Probably most of us are under the sway of both of these
tendencies. We feel the new idealism, the sweep and
exhilaration of democracy, but we practise, nevertheless,
a thrifty exploitation of all the private advantages we can
decently lay our hands on; nor have we the moral vigor
to work out any reconciliation of these principles. Ex-
perience shows, I think, that until a higher sentiment,
like brotherly kindness, attains some definite organiza-
tion and programme, so that men are held up to it, it is
remarkably ineffective in checking selfish activities.
People drift on and on in lower courses, which at bottom
they despise and dislike, simply because they lack energy
and initiative to get out of them. How true it is that
many of us would like to be made to be better than we
are. I have seen promising idealists grow narrow,
greedy and sensual — and of course unhappy — as they pros-
pered in the world; for no reason, apparently, but lack of
definite stimulation to a higher life. There is firm ground
for the opinion that human nature is prepared for a higher
organization than we have worked out.

Certainly there is, on the whole, a more lively and hope-
ful pursuit of the brotherhood of man in modern democ-
racy than there ever was, on a large scale, before. One
who is not deaf to the voices of literature, of social agita-
tion, of ordinary intercourse, can hardly doubt this. The
social settlement and similar movements express it, and

194

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

so, more and more, does the whole feeling of our society
regarding richer and poorer. Philanthropy is not only
extending, but undergoing a revolution of principle from
alms to justice and from condescension to fellowship.
The wealthy and the educated classes feel, however vaguely,
that they must justify their advantages to their fellow
men and their own consciences by making some public use
of them. Gifts—well meant if not always wise — to education,
science and philanthropy are increasing, and there was
never, perhaps, a more prevalent disposition to make un-
usual mental acquirements available toward general culture.

Even the love of publicity and display, said to mark
our rich people, has its amiable side as indicating a desire
to impress general opinion, rather than that of an ex-
elusive class. Indeed, if there is anywhere in American
society an exclusive and self-sufficient kind of people, they
are not a kind who have much influence upon the general
spirit.

The same sentiment incites us, in our better moments,
to shun habits, modes of dress and the like that are not
good in themselves and merely accentuate class lines; to
save on private and material objects so as to have the
more energy to be humanly, spiritually, alive. This,
for example, is the teaching of Thoreau, whose works,
especially his Walden, have latterly a wide circulation.
If Thoreau seems a little too aloof and fastidious to rep-
resent democracy, this is not the case with Whitman, who
had joy in the press of cities, and whose passion was to
"utter the word Democratic, the word En Masse."* His
diants express a great gusto in common life: "All this I

* Leaves of Grass (1884), page 9.

195

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine; 1
am the man, I suffered, I was there." * "Whoever de-
grades another degrades me."f "By God! I will accept
nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on
the same terms." { "I believe the main purport of
these states is to found a superb friendship, exalte, pre-
viously unknown." §

On the whole, Americans may surely claim that there
was never before a great nation in which the people felt
so much like a family, had so kindly and cheerful a sense
of a common life. It is not only that the sentiment has a
wider range; there is also more faith in its future, more
belief that government and other institutions can be made
to express it. And the popular agitation of all countries
manifests the same belief — socialism, and even anarchism,
as well as the labor movement and the struggle against
monopoly and corruption.

A larger spirit of service is the active side of democrats
feeling. A life of service of some sort — in behalf of the clan
or tribe, of the chief, of the sovereign, of the mistress, of
the Church, of God — has always been the ideal life, since
no imaginative and truly human mind contents itself with
a separate good: what is new is that the object of this
service tends to become wider, with the modern expan-
sion of the imagination, and to include all classes, all
nations and races, in its ideal scope. The narrower
boundaries do not disappear, but as they become lesj dis-
tinct the greater whole becomes more so. As the chili
grows until he can see over the hedges bounding his earl*

* /<Jem, 59. 1 1**™* 48. % Idem, 48. i Idem, J i0.

196

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

playground, so the democratized individual has outgrown
the limits of the clan or the caste.

In the United States, at least, the feeling that every-
body ought to be doing something useful is so established
that there is no influential class within which idleness is
respectable. Whatever narrowness there may be in this
spirit, in the way of undervaluing activities whose useful-
ness is of an inobvious sort, it is sound on the whole and
does incalculable service in redeeming riches from vul-
garity and corruption. If it be true, as is asserted, that
the children of the wealthy, with us, are on the whole less
given to sloth and vice than the same class in older coun-
tries, the reason is to be found in a healthier, more organic
state of public opinion which penetrates all classes with
the perception that the significance of the individual lies
in his service to the whole. That this sentiment is gain-
ing in our colleges is evident to those who know anything of
these institutions. Studies that throw light on the nature
and working of society, past or present, and upon the op-
portunities of service or distinction which it offers to the
individual, are rapidly taking the place, for purposes of
culture, of studies whose human value is less, or not so
apparent. Classes in history — political, industrial and
social — in economics, in government and administration,
in sociology and ethics, in charities and penology, are
larger year by year. And the young people, chiefly
from the well-to-do classes, who seek these studies, are
one and all adherents of the democratic idea that priv-
ilege must be earned by function.

The tendency of manners well expresses that of senti-
ment, and seems to be toward a spontaneous courtesy,

197

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

expressing truth and equality as against the concealment
and, sometimes, the arrogance, of mere polish. The best
practice appears to be to put yourself, on approaching an-
other, into as open and kindly a frame of mind toward him
as you can, but not to try to express more than you feel,
preferring coldness to affected warmth. Democracy is
too busy and too fond of truth and human nature to like
formality^ except as an occasional amusement. A merely
formal politeness goes with a crystallized society, indicating
a certain distrust of human nature and desire to cloak or
supplant it by propriety. Thus a Chinese teacher, having
a rare opportunity to send a message to his old mother,
called one of his pupils saying, "Here, take this paper and
write me a letter to my mother." This proceeding struck
the observer as singular, and he enquired if the lad was
acquainted with the teacher's mother, learning that the
boy did not even know there was such a person. "How,
then, was he to know what to say, not having been told ?"
To this the schoolmaster made reply: "Doesn't he know
quite well what to say ? For more than a year he has been
studying literary composition, and he is acquainted with
a number of elegant formulas. Do you think he does
not know perfectly well how a son ought to write to a
mother?" The letter would have ahswered equally well
for any other mother in the Empire* Here is one ex-
treme, and the kindly frontiersman with "no manners at
all" is at the other.

No doubt form, in manners as well as elsewhere, is
capable of a beauty and refinement of its own, and prob-
ably raw democracy goes to an anarchic excess in depreci-
* Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, 181.

198

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

ating it; but the sentiment of reality which demands that
form and content should agree, is perhaps a permanent
factor in the best manners.

Conflict, of some sort, is the life of society, and progress
emerges from a struggle in which each individual, class
or institution seeks to realize its own idea of good. The
intensify of this struggle varies directly as the vigor of the
people, and its cessation, if conceivable, would be death.
There is, then, no prospect of an amiable unanimity, and
the question arises, What change, if any, in the nature of
opposition and of hostility, accompanies the alleged growth
of the sense of brotherhood ?

The answer to this is probably best sought by asking our-
selves what is the difference between the opposition of
friends and that of enemies. Evidently the former may
be as energetic as the latter, but it is less personal: that
is, it is not directed against the opponent as a whole, but
against certain views or purposes which the opponent —
toward whom a kindly feeling is still cherished — for the
time being represents. The opposition of enemies, on
the other hand, involves a personal antagonism and is
gratified by a personal injury.

Well-conducted sports are a lesson to every one that
fair and orderly opposition may even promote good fellow-
ship; and familiarity with them, in primary groups, is an
excellent preparation for the friendly competition that
ought to prevail in society at large. Indeed it is only
through opposition that we learn to understand one an-
other. In the moment of struggle the opposing agent
may arouse anger, but afterward the mind, more at ease.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

views with respect and interest that which has exhibited
so much force. It seems evident, for instance, that the
self-assertion of the wage-earning class, so far as it is
orderly and pursuant of ideals which all classes share,
has commanded not only the respect but the good will of
the people at large. Weakness — intrinsic weakness, the
failure of the member to assert its function — is instinctively
despised. I am so far in sympathy with the struggle for
existence as to think that passive kindliness alone, apart
from self-assertion, is a demoralizing ideal, or would be
if it were likely to become ascendant. But the self which
is asserted, the ideal fought for, must be a generous one —
involving perhaps self-sacrifice as that is ordinarily under-
stood-or the struggle is degrading.

The wider contact which marks modern life, the sup-
pling of the imagination which enables it to appreciate
diverse phases of human nature, the more instructed sense
of justice, brings in a larger good will which economizes
personal hostility without necessarily diminishing oppo-
sition. In primitive life the reaction of man against man
is crude, impulsive, wasteful. Violent anger is felt against
the opponent as a whole and expressed by a general as-
sault. Civilized man, trained to be more discriminating,
strikes at tendencies rather than persons, and avoids
so far as possible hostile emotion, which he finds painful
and exhausting. As an opponent he is at once kinder
and more formidable than the savage.

Perhaps the most urgent need of the present time, so
far as regards the assuaging of antipathy, is some clearer
consciousness of what may be called, in the widest sense,
the rules of the game; that is, for accepted ideals of justice

200

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

which conscience and public opinion may impose upon
reasonable men, and law upon the unreasonable. In
the lack of clear notions of right and duty the orderly test
of strength degenerates into a scuffle, in which the worst
passions are released and low forms of power tend to
prevail — just as brutal and tricky methods prevail in ill-
regulated sports. We need a popular ethics which is at
once Christian and evolutionary, recognizing unity ot
spirit alongside of diversity of standpoint; a cooperative
competition, giving each individual, group or race a fair
chance for higher self-assertion under conditions so just
as to give the least possible occasion for ill-feeling. Some-
thing of this sort is in fact the ideal in accordance with
which modern democracy hopes to reconstruct a some-
what disordered world.

There is a French maxim, much quoted of late, to the
effect that to understand all is to pardon all: all animosity,
as some interpret this, is a mistake; when we fully under-
stand we cease to blame. This, however, is only a half-
truth, and becomes a harmful fallacy when it is made to
stand for the whole. It is true that if we wholly lose our-
selves in another's state of mind blame must disappear:
perhaps nothing is felt as wrong by him who does it at
the very instant it is done. But this is more than we have
a right to do: it involves that we renounce our moral in-
dividuality, the highest part of our being, and become a
mere intelligence. The fact that every choice is natural
to the mind that chooses does not make it right.

The truth is that we must distinguish, in such questions
as this, two attitudes of mind, the active and the con-

201

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

templative, both natural and having important functions,
but neither by itself sufficient. Pure contemplation sees
things and their relations as a picture and with no sense
of better or worse; it does not care; it is the ideal of science
and speculative philosophy. If one could be completely
in this state of mind he would cease to be a self altogether.
All active personality, and especially all sense of right and
wrong, of duty, responsibility, blame, praise and the like,
depend upon the mind taking sides and having particular
desires and purposes.

The unhappiness of bad men, maintained by Socrates,
depends upon their badness being brought home to them
in conscience. If, because of their insensibility or lack
of proper reproof, the error of their way is not impressed
upon them, they have no motive to reform. The fact
that the evil-doer has become such gradually, and does
not realize the evil in him, is no reason why we should
not blame him; it is the function of blame to make him and
others realize it, to define evil and declare it in the sight
of men. We may pardon the evil-doer when he is dead,
or has sincerely and openly repented, not while he remains
a force for wrong.

It seems that the right way lies between the old vin-
dictiveness and the view now somewhat prevalent that
crime should be regarded without resentment, quite like
a disease of the flesh. The resentment of society, if just
and moderate, is a moral force, and definite forms of
punishment are required to impress it upon the general
mind. If crime is a disease it is a moral disease and calls
for moral remedies, among which is effective resentment
It is right that one who harms the state should go to prison

202

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

in the sight of all; but it is right also that all should under-
stand that this is done for the defence of society, and not
because the offender is imagined to be another kind of
man from the rest of us.

The democratic movement, insomuch as it feels a com-
mon spirit in all men, is of the same nature as Christian-
ity; and it is said with truth that while the world was never
so careless as now of the mechanism of religion, it was
never so Christian in feeling. A deeper sense of a com-
mon life, both as incarnated in the men about us and as
inferred in some larger whole behind and above them—
in God— belongs to the higher spirit of democracy as it
does to the teaching of Jesus.

He calls the mind out of the narrow and transient self
of sensual appetites and visible appurtenances, which all
of us in our awakened moments feel to be inferior, and
fills it with the incorrupt good of higher sentiment. We
are to love men as brothers, to fix our attention upon the
best that is in them, and to make their good our own am-
bition.

Such ideals are perennial in the human heart and as
sound in psychology as in religion. The mind, in its best
moments, is naturally Christian; because when we are
most fully alive to the life about us the sympathetic be-
comes the rational; what is good for you is good for me
because I share your life; and I need no urging to do
by you as I would have you do by me. Justice and kind-
ness are matters of course, and also humility, which comes
from being aware of something superior to your ordinary
self. To one in whom human nature is fully awake " Love

203

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

your enemies and do good to them that despitefully use
you" is natural and easy, because despiteful people are
seen to be in a state of unhappy aberration from the higher
life of kindness, and there is an impulse to help them to
get back. The awakened mind identifies itself with other
persons, living the sympathetic life and following the golden
rule by impulse.

To put it otherwise, Christ and modern democracy
alike represent a protest against whatever is dead in in-
stitutions, and an attempt to bring life closer to the higher
impulses of human nature. There is a common aspiration
to effectuate homely ideals of justice and kindness. The
modern democrat is a plain man and Jesus was another.
It is no wonder, then, that the characteristic thought of
the day is preponderantly Christian, in the sense of shar-
ing the ideals of Christ, and that in so far as it distrusts
the Church it is on the ground that the Church is not
Christian enough.

But how far, after all, is this brotherly and peaceful
sentiment, ancient or modern, applicable to life as we
know it? Is it feasible, is it really right, is it not a senti-
ment of submission in a world that grows by strife ? After
what has already been said on this, it is perhaps enough
to add here that neither in the life of Christ nor in modern
democracy do we find sanction for submission to essential,
moral wrong. Christ brought a sword which the good
man of our day can by no means sheathe: his counsels of
submission seem to refer to merely personal injuries,
which it may be better to overlook in order to keep the
conflict on a higher plane. If we mean by Christianity
an understanding and brotherly spirit toward all men

#>4

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

and a reverence for the higher Life behind them, ex-
pressed in an infinite variety of conduct according to
conditions, it would seem to be always right, and always
feasible, so far as we have strength to rise to it.

The most notable reaction of democracy upon religious
sentiment is no doubt a tendency to secularize it, to fix it
upon human life rather than upon a vague other world.
So soon as men come to feel that society is not a machine,
controlled chiefly by the powers of darkness, but an ex-
pression of human nature, capable of reflecting whatever
good human nature can rise to; so soon, that is, as there
comes to be a public will, the religious spirit is drawn into
social idealism. Why dream of a world to come when
there is hopeful activity in this ? God, it seems, is to be
found in human life as well as beyond it, and social
service is a method of his worship. "If ye love not your
brother whom ye have seen, how can ye love God whom
ye have not seen?"

An ideal democracy is in its nature religious, and its
true sovereign may be said to be the higher nature, 01
God, which it aspires to incarnate in human institutions

*£

PART IV

SOCIAL CLASSES

CHAPTER XVin
THE HEREDITARY OR CASTE PRINCIPLE

Nature and Use of Classes — Inheritance and Competition
the Two Principles upon which Classes are Based — Con-
ditions in Human Nature Making for Hereditary Classes
— Caste Spirit.

Speaking roughly, we may call any persistent social
group, other than the family, existing within a larger
group, a class. And every society, except possibly the
most primitive, is more or less distinctly composed of
classes. Even in savage tribes there are, besides families
and clans, almost always other associations: of warriors,
of magicians and so on; and these continue throughout
all phases of development until we reach the intricate group
structure of our own time. Individuals never achieve their
life in separation, but always in cooperation with a group
of other minds, and in proportion as these cooperating
groups stand out from one another with some distinct-
ness they constitute social classes.

We may say of this differentiation, speaking generally,
that it is useful. The various functions of life require
special influences and organization, and without some
class spirit, some speciality in traditions and standards,
nothing is we'I performed. Thus, if our physicians were
not, as regards their professional activities, something
of a psychological unit, building up knowledge and senti-

209

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ment by communication, desiring the approval and dread-
ing the censure of their colleagues, it would be worse not
only for them but for the rest of us. There are no doubt
class divisions that are useless or harmful, but something
of this nature there should be, and I have already tried to
show that our own society suffers considerably from a lack
of adequate group differentiation in its higher mental
activities.

Fundamental to all study of classes are the two principles,
of inheritance and of competition, according to which
their membership is determined. The rule of descent, as
in the hereditary nobility of England or Germany, gives a
fixed system, the alternative to which is some kind of se-
lection — by election or appointment as in our politics; by
purchase, as formerly in the British army and navy; or
by the informal action of preference, opportunity and en-
deavor, as in the case of most trades and professions at the
present day.

Evidently these two principles are very much inter-
mingled in their working. The hereditary distinctions
must have a beginning in some sort of selective struggle,
such as the military and commercial competition from
which privileged famiHes have emerged in the past, and
never become so rigid as not to be modified by similar
processes. On the other hand, inherited advantages, even
in the freest society, enter powerfully into every kind of
competition.

Another consideration of much interest is that the strict
rule of descent is a biological principle, making the social
organization subordinate to physical continuity of life,

310

THE HEREDITARY OR CASTE PRINCIPLE

while selection or competition brings in psychical elements,
of the most various qualities to be sure, but capable at the
best of forming society on a truly rational method.

Finally it is well to recognize that there is a vast sum
of influences governed by no ascertainable principle at
all, which go to assign the individual his place in the class
system. After allowing for inheritance and for everything
which can fairly be called selection (that is, for all definite
and orderly interaction between the man and the system),
there remains a large part which can be assigned only
to chance. This is particularly true in the somewhat
tumultuous changes of modern life.

When a class is somewhat strictly hereditary, we may
call it % caste — a name originally applied to the hereditary
classes of India, but to which it is common, and certainly
convenient, to give a wider meaning.

Perhaps the best way to understand caste is to open our
eyes and note those forces at work among ourselves which
might conceivably give rise to it.

On every side we may see that differences arise, and
that these tend to be perpetuated through inherited asso-
ciations, opportunities and culture. The endeavor to
secure for one's children whatever desirable thing one has u^
gained for oneself is a perennial source of caste, and this
endeavor flows from human nature and the moral unity
of the family. If a man has been able to save money,
he anxiously invests it to yield an income after his death;
if he has built up a business, it is his hope that his children
may succeed him in it; if he has a good handicraft, he
wishes his boys to learn it. And so with less tangible

211

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

goods — education, culture, religious and moral ideas-
there is no good parent but desires his children to have
more than the common inheritance of what is best in these
things. It is, perhaps, safe to say that if the good of his
children could be set on one side and the good of all the rest
of the world over against it on the other, the average parent
would desire that evil might befall the latter rather than
the former. And much of the wider social spirit of recent
times comes from the belief that we cannot make this sepa-
ration, and that to secure the real good of our children we
must work for the common advancement.

That this endeavor to secure a succession in desirable
function is not confined to the rich we may see, for instance,
in the fact that labor unions often have regulations tend-
ing to secure to the children of members a complete or par-
tial monopoly of the opportunities of apprenticeship. In
Chicago, not long since, only the son of a plumber could
learn the plumber's trade.

As being the actual possessor of the advantages in ques-
tion, the parent is usually in a position either to hand
them over directly to his children, or to make their acqui-
sition comparatively easy. Wealth, the most obvious
and tangible source of caste, is transmissible, even in the
freest societies, under the sanction and protection of law.
And wealth is convertible not only into material goods
but, if the holder has a little tact and sense, into other
and finer advantages — educational opportunities, business
and professional openings, travel and intercourse with
people of refinement and culture. Against this we must,
of course, offset the diminished motive to exertion, the
lack of rough-and-tumble experience, and other disad-

212

THE HEREDITARY OR CASTE PRINCIPLE

vantages which inherited wealth, especially if large, is
apt to bring with it; but that it does, as a rule, perpetuate
the more conventional sorts of superiority is undeniable.

And such intangible advantages as culture, manners,
good associations and the like, whether associated with
wealth or not, are practically heritable, since they are
chiefly derived by children from a social environment de-
termined by the personality and standing of their parents.

Indeed, irrespective of any intention toward or from
inheritance, there is a strong drift toward it due to mere
familiarity. It is commonly the line of least resistance.
The father knows much about his own trade and those
closely related to it, little about others; and the son shares
his point of view. So when the latter comes to fix upon a
career he is likely, in the absence of any decided individu-
ality of preference, to take the way that lies most open to
him. Of course he may lack the ability to carry the pa-
ternal function; but this, though common enough, does
not affect the majority of cases. The functions that re-
quire a peculiar type of natural ability, while of the first
importance, since they include all marked originality,
are not v^ numerous, sound character and Lning!
with fair intelligence, being ordinarily sufficient. Even in
the learned professions, such as law, medicine, teaching
and the ministry, the great majority of practitioners hold
their own by common sense and assiduity rather than by
special aptitude. To the best of my observation, there are
many men serving as foremen in various sorts of handi-
craft, or as farmers, who have natural capacity adequate
for success in law, commerce or politics. A man of good,
all-round ability will succeed in that line of work which

213

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

he finds ready to his hand, but only a few will break
away from their antecedents and seek a wholly different
line. And if their work affords them health, thought and
mastery, why should they wish to change it if they could ?

I would not have it supposed, however (because I dwell
thus upon opportunity), that I agree with those whose
zeal for education and training leads them to depreciate
natural differences. I do not know how to talk with men
who believe in native equality: it seems to me that they
lack common sense and observation. How can they fail
to see that children in the same family, even twins, as
Mr. Galton has shown,* are often widely divergent in
ability, one destined to leadership and another to obscurity ?

The two variables of personality, "nature and nurture,"
are without doubt of equal diversity and importance, and
they must work together to bring about any notable
achievement. Natural ability is essential; but, no matter
how great, it cannot know or develop its power without
opportunity. Indeed, great natural faculty is often more
dependent on circumstance than is mediocrity — because
of some trait, like extreme sensitiveness, that unfits it for
miscellaneous competition. Opportunity, moreover, means
different things in different cases, and is not to be identified
with wealth or facile circumstances of any sort. Some
degrees and kinds of difficulty are helpful, others not.

And yet, leaving out, on the one hand, unusual talent
or energy, and, on the other, decided weakness or dulness,
the mass of men are guided chiefly by early surroundings
and training, which determine for them, in a general way,

* See the memoir on the subject in his Inquiries into Human
faculty.

214

THE HEREDITARY OR CASTE PRINCIPLE

what sort of life they will take up, and contribute much to
their success or failure in it. Society, even in a com-
paratively free country, is thus vaguely divided into hered-
itary strata or sections, from which the man>ritv do not
depart.

If the transmission of function from father to son has
become established, a caste spirit, a sentiment in favor
of such transmission and opposed to the passage from one
class into another, may arise and be shared even by the
unprivileged classes. The individual then thinks of him-
self and his family as identified with his caste, and sympa-
thizes with others who have the same feeling. The caste
thus becomes a psychical organism, consolidated by com-
munity of sentiment and tradition. In some measure
the ruling class in England, for example, has hung to-
gether in this way, and the same is partly true of the lower
orders. No doubt there is generally some protest against
a hereditary system on the part of restless members of the
lower castes — certainly this was always the case in Europe
— but it may be practically insignificant.

And out of caste sentiment arise institutions, social,
political and economic — like the mediaeval system in Eu-
rope, much of which still survives — whose tendency is to
define and perpetuate hereditary distinctions.

I have, perhaps, said enough to make it clear that an
impulse toward caste is found in human nature itself.
Whether it spreads through and dominates the system of
life, as in India, or remains subordinate, as with us, de-
pends upon the strength or weakness of other impulses
which limit its operation. As certain types of vegetation,

215

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

like the ferns, which at one time were dominant in the
forests, are now overshadowed by plants of higher organ-
ization, so caste, which we must, on the whole, reckon
to be an inferior principle, tends to be supplanted by
something freer and more rational.

CHAPTER XIX

CONDITIONS FAVORING OR OPPOSING THE GROWTH

OF CASTE

Three Conditions Affecting the Increase or Diminution of
Caste — Race Caste — Immigration and Conquest* — Grad-
ual Differentiation of Functions; Medlsval Caste;
India — Influence of Settled Conditions — Influence of
the State of Communication and Enlightenment — Con-
clusion.

There seem to be three conditions which, chiefly, make
for the increase or diminution of the caste principle.
These are, first, likeness or unlikeness in the constituents
of the population; second, the rate of social change
(whether we have to do with a settled or a shifting system),
and, finally, the state of communication and enlighten-
ment. Unlikeness in the constituents! a settled system
and a low state of communication and enlightenment
favor the growth of caste, and vice versa. The first pro-
vides natural lines of cleavage and so makes it easier to
split into hereditary groups; the second gives inheritance
time to consolidate its power, while the third means the
absence of those conscious and rational forces which are
its chief rivals.

The most important sorts of unlikeness in the constitu-
ents of the population are perhaps three: differences in

217

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

race; differences, apart from race, due to immigration 01
conquest, and unlikeness due to the gradual differentiation
of social functions within a population originally homo-
geneous.

Two races of different temperament and capacity,
distinct to the eye and living side by side in the same com-
munity, tend strongly to become castes, no matter how
equal the social system may otherwise be. The difference,
as being hereditary, answers in its nature to the idea of
caste, and the external sign serves to make it conscious and
definite.

The race caste existing in the Southern United States
illustrates the impotence of democratic traditions to over-
come the caste spirit when fostered by obvious physical
and psychical differences. This spirit is immeasurably
strong on the part of the whites, and there is no apparent
prospect of its diminution.

The specially caste nature of the division — as distin-
guished from those personal differences which democratic
tradition recognizes — is seen in the feeling, universal
among the whites, that the Negro must be held apart
and subordinate not merely as an individual, or any num-
ber of individuals, but as a race, a social whole. That is,
the fact that many individuals of this race are equal, and
some superior, to the majority of whites does not, in the
opinion of the latter, make it just or expedient to treat
them apart from the mass of their race. To dine with a
Negro, to work or play by his side, or to associate in any
relation where superiority cannot be asserted, is held to
be degrading and of evil example, no matter what kind
of Negro he may be. It is the practice and policy of

218

CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF CASTE

the dominant race to impress upon the Negro that he be-
longs by birth to a distinct order out of which he can in no
way depart. There or nowhere he must find his destiny.
If he wishes to mingle with whites it must be as an acknowl-
edged inferior. As a servant he may ride in the same
railway car, but as a citizen he may not do so.

Thoughtful whites justify this attitude on the ground,
substantially, that a race is an organic whole — bound to-
gether by heredity and social connection — and that it is
practically necessary to recognize this in dealing with race
questions. The integrity of the white race and of white
civilization, they say, requires Negro subordination (sep-
aration being impracticable), and the only available line
of distinction is the definite one of color. A division on
this line is even held to be less invidious — as involving no
judgment of individuals — as well as more feasible, than
one based on personal traits. Particular persons cannot,
in practice, be separated from their families and other ante-
cedents, and if they could be the example of mixture on
an equal footing would be demoralizing.

This argument is probably sound in so far as it re-
quires the recognition of the two races as being, for some
purposes, distinct organisms. In this regard it is per-
haps better sociology than the view that every one should
be considered solely on his merits as an individual.

At the same time it is only too apparent that our appli-
cation of this doctrine is deeply colored with that caste
arrogance which does not recognize in the Negro a spiritual
brotherhood underlying all race difference and possible
"inferiority." The matter of unequal ability, in races
as in individuals, is quite distinct from that sharing in a

219

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

common spirit and service from which no human being
can rightly or Christianly be excluded. The idea that he
is fundamentally a man like the rest of us cannot and
should not be kept from the Negro any more than from
other lowly orders of people. Science, religion and the
democratic spirit all give him a right to it; and the white
man cannot deny it to him without being false to his own
best self. Anything in our present attitude which does
deny it we must hope to be transitory, since it is calcu-
lated, in a modern atmosphere, to generate continuing
disquiet and hatred. It belonged with slavery and is in-
congruous with the newer world.

These may be subtleties, but subtlety is the very sub-
stance of the race question, the most vital matter being
not so much what is done as the spirit in which it is done.

The practical question here is not that of abolishing
castes but of securing just and kindly relations between
them, of reconciling the fact of caste with ideals of freedom
and right. This is difficult but not evidently impossible,
and a right spirit, together with a government firmly re-
pressive of the lower passions of both races, should go far
to achieve it. There seems to be no reason in the nature
of things why divergent races, like divergent individuals,
should not unite in a common service of the ideals to
which all human nature bears allegiance — I mean ideals
of kindness, fair play and so on. And the white man, in
claiming superiority, assumes the chief responsibility for
bringing this state of things to pass.

When peoples of the same race mingle by migration,
the effect, as regards classes, depends chieflv on their

220

CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF CASTE

states of civilization and the character of the migration,
as hostile or friendly. The peaceful advent of kindred
settlers, like the English immigrants to the United States>
creates no class divisions. If they differ in language and
customs, like the Germans, or are extremely poor and igno-
rant, like many of the Irish, they are held apart for a
time and looked down upon, but as they establish them-
selves and gradually prove their substantial equality with
the natives, they may become indistinguishable from
the latter. Of recent years, however, the arrival by
millions of peoples somewhat more divergent — especially
Italians, Slavs and Jews — has introduced distinctions
in which race as well as culture plays an appreciable
part.

Much depends, of course, upon the special character
of the institutions and traditions that thus come into
contact. Some societies are rigid and repellent in their
structure, while others, like the United States, are
almost ideally constituted to invite and hasten assimila-
tion.

Conquest has been one of the main sources of caste the
world over. The hostile tradition it leaves may continue
indefinitely; servile functions are commonly forced upon
the conquered, and the consciousness of superiority leads
the conquerors to regard intermarriage as shameful. A
servile caste, strictly hereditary, existed even among the
primitive German tribes from which most of us are de-
scended, and intermarriage with freemen was severely
punished. "The Lombard," says Mr. Gummere, "killed
a serf who ventured to many a free woman, . . . West
Goths and Burgundians scourged and burnt them both,

221

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

while the Saxons punished an unequal marriage of any sort
with death of man and wife/' 4 '

The unlikeness out of which caste grows may not be
original, as in the case of race difference or conquest, but
may arise gradually by the differentiation of a homoge-
neous people. Any distinct social group, having its special
group sympathies and traditions, has some tendency to
pass on its functions and ideas to the children of its mem-
bers, promoting association and intermarriage among
them, and thus taking on a caste character.

Accordingly, any increase in the complexity of social
functions — political, religious, military or industrial —
such as necessarily accompanies the enlargement of a
social system, may have a caste tendency, because it
separates the population into groups corresponding to
the several functions; and this alone may without doubt
produce caste if the conditions are otherwise favorable.

Something of this sort seems to have followed upon the
conquest by the Germanic tribes of Roman territory, and
the consequent necessity of administering a more complex
system than their own. As the new order took shape it
showed a tendency toward more definite inheritance of
rank and function than existed in the tribal society. This
was due partly, no doubt, to the influence of Roman
traditions, but the very nature of the civilization required
it. That is, functions became more diverse and of such a
character as to separate the citizens into distinct classes,
the principal ones being warriors of various degrees (com-
bining military functions with the control of land), clergy

* Germanic Origins, 154
222

CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF CASTE

artisans and peasants. The military and landholding
class, uniting the force of arms with that of wealth, natu-
rally dominated the others; the artisans, especially in the
towns, maintained a free status which served later as the
nucleus of a democratic tendency; the peasants became
serfs. As the conditions did not permit organization on
any free or open principle— there being little facility of
travel, diffusion of knowledge or unfixed wealth — the
hereditary principle naturally prevailed. Only the clergy,
monopolizing most of the knowledge and communication
of the time and fortified by celibacy against inheritance,
maintained a comparatively open organization. It is
well known that lands, and the local rule that went with
them, held at first as a personal trust, gradually became
a family property, and we are told that when the Emperor
Conrad, in 1037, issued his edict making fiefs hereditary
in Italy, he only did for the south "by a single stroke
what gradual custom and policy had slowly procured for
the north."* Offices, armorial devices and other priv-
ileges generally followed the same course, and the servile
status of serfs was also transmitted to children.

The feudal system was based on inheritance of function,
and had two well-defined castes, the knightly, consisting
originally of those whose ability to maintain a horse and
equipment placed them in the rank of effective warriors,
and the servile. Between these marriage was impossible.
Intercourse of any kind was scanty and, on the part of the
superior order, contemptuous. "A boy of knightly birth
was reared in ceremony. From his earliest childhood
he learnt to look upon himself and his equals as of a differ-
* Tout, The Empire and The Papacy, 59.

223

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ent degree and almost of a different nature from his fellow
creatures who were not of gentle condition. Heraldic
pride and the distinction of degree were among his first
impressions. " * Socially and psychologically the mediaeval
nobility lived in their caste, not in the world at large. It
was the sphere of the social self; the knight looked to
it and not to a general public for sympathy and recog-
nition: he was far closer in spirit to the chivalry of hostile
nations than to the commons of his own. But the plain
people were out of all this, and were regarded with a con-
tempt at least as great as that felt in our day for the Negro
at the South. The whole institution of chivalry, with its
attendant ideas, ideals and literature, was a thing of caste
which recognized no common humanity in the lower orders
of society, and whatever it did for the world in the way of
developing the knightly ideal of valor, devotion and cour-
tesy — an ideal later transformed into that of the gentle-
man and now coming to pervade all classes — was a product
of caste spirit.

The feudal courts, large and small, the tournaments,
festivals and military expeditions, including the cru-
sades, were facilities of communication through which
this caste, not only in single countries but throughout
Europe, was enabled to have a common thought and
sentiment.

Without doubt, however, the lower caste had also its
unity and organization, its group traditions, customs and
standards; mostly lost to us because they never achieved
a literary record. This was an inarticulate caste; but it
is probable that village communities were the spheres of a

* Cornish, Chivalry, 183.

224

CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF CASTE

vigorous cooperative life in which the best traits of human
nature were fostered.

In India also the elaborate caste systems, although due
in part to conquest, seem also to have come about by
the hardening of occupation-classes. The priests, pow-
erful because of their supposed intercourse with super-
human powers, taught their mystic traditions to their
children and so built up a hereditary corporation, known,
finally, as the Brahman caste. The military caste was
apparently formed in a similar manner, while in industry
"veneration for parental example and the need of an ex-
act transmission of methods"* rendered all employ-
ments hereditary. In fact, says one writer, the caste
system was in its origin "simply an instinctive effort for
the organization of labor/' t In the case of so intricate a
caste society as that of India much may also be ascribed
to the reaction of the theory upon the system. When the
idea that caste is natural had become prevalent and sancti-
fied, it tended to create caste where it would not otherwise
have existed.

A settled state of society is favorable, and change
hostile, to the growth of caste, because it is necessary
that functions should be continuous through several gen-
erations before the principle of inheritance can become
fixed. Whatever breaks up existing customs and tra-
ditions tends to abolish hereditary privilege and throw
men into a rough struggle, out of which strong, coarse
natures emerge as victors, to found, perhaps, a new aristoc-
racy. Thus the conquest of southern Europe by northern

* Samuel Johnson, Oriental Religions, India, 241. f *&*<*•

225

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

tribes led to a period of somewhat confused readjustment,
in which men of natural power bettered their status.
The classes which emerged were as much the result of
competition as derived by inheritance from those of tribal
society. And so the openness of classes in our own day
may be due as much to confusion as to a permanent de-
cline in the caste principle.

That a low state of communication and of enlighten-
ment are favorable to caste, while intelligence — especially
political intelligence — and facility of intercourse antag-
onize it, becomes evident when we consider what, psy-
chologically speaking, caste is. It is an organization of
the social mind on a biological principle. That functions
should follow the line of descent instead of adjusting them-
selves to individual capacity and preference, evidently
means the subordination of reason to convenience, of
freedom to order. The ideal principle is not biological
but moral, based, that is, on the spiritual gifts of indi-
viduals without regard to descent. Caste, then, is some-
thing which, we may assume, will give way to this higher
principle whenever the conditions are such as to permit
the latter to work successfully; and this will be the case
when the population is so mobilized by free training and
institutions that just and orderly selection is practicable.

The diffusion of intelligence, rapid communication, the
mobilization of wealth by means of money, and the like,
mark the ascendency of the human mind over material
and biological conditions. Popular government becomes
possible, commercial and industrial functions — other
things equal — come under more open competition, and

226

CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF CASTE

free personal development of all sorts is fostered. The
general sentiment also, perceiving the superiority of free
organization to caste, becomes definitely hostile to the
latter and antagonizes it by public educational and other
opportunities. The most effective agent in keeping classes
comparatively open is an adequate system of free training
for the young, tending to make all careers accessible to
those who are naturally fit for them. In so far as there
is such a system early education becomes a process of selec-
tion and discipline which permits ability to serve its pos-
sessor and the world in its proper place. In our own so-
ciety — we may note in passing — this calls for a great de-
velopment of public education, especially in the way of
trade schools and the like, and also for an effective cam-
paign against child-labor, bad housing and whatever else
shuts off opportunity.

But before this mobility is achieved, caste is perhaps the
only possible basis for an elaborate social structure; the
main flow of thought is then necessarily in local channels.
The people cannot grasp the life of which they are a part
in any large way, or have a free and responsible share in it,
but are somewhat mechanically held in place by habit and
tradition. Those special relations to the system of govern-
ment, religion or industry which are implied in classes,
since they cannot be determined by rational selection,
must be fixed in some traditional way, and the most
available is the inheritance of functions.

We may expect, then, that complex, stationary societies
of low mental organization will tend toward caste. That
this is true, in a general way, is shown by the prevalence of

227

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

caste in Oriental nations to-day, and in the later history
of the great empires of antiquity. It goes without saying
that each society has its peculiarities which only special
study could elucidate

CHAPTER XX

THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE

The Question — How Far the Inheritance Principle Actually
Prevails — Influences Favoring Its Growth — Those An-
tagonizing It — The Principles of Inheritance and Equal
OppoRTUNrrr as Affecting Social Efficiency — Conclusion.

A vert pertinent question is that of the part which the
hereditary or caste principle is likely to play in the coming
life; whether it is probable that caste, other than that due
to race, will arise in modern society; or that the hereditary
principle will, to any degree, have increased ascendency.

The answer should probably be that the principle is al-
ways powerful, and may gain somewhat as conditions be-
come more settled, but certainly can never produce true
caste in the modern world.

As regards the power, in general, of the inheritance
tendency, I have perhaps said enough already. The in-
heritance of property, notwithstanding the perennial
agitation of communism, is probably as secure as any
institution can be — because there is apparently nothing
practicable to take its place as a means to economic sta-
bility. And with inheritance of property goes, in all
prosperous countries, a class of people who come without
effort into wealth and all its advantages: their number
and riches are certainly on the rapid increase. The less
formal inheritance of culture, opportunity and position is
equally real.

229

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

As to occupation, even now a census would perhaps
show that the majority of young men follow that of their
father, or one cognate to it. Most farmers' sons probably
remain farmers (in spite of the well-known drift to the
towns), most mechanics' sons become mechanics, and a
large proportion of the children of professional men enter
the professions. The child of a well-to-do parent is
given, as a matter of course, the education, often long and
expensive, which is required for entrance upon a profession,
and is coming to be necessary also for commerce. Not
only this, but he is made to feel from childhood that success
in achieving a professional or business position is expected
of him; he must get it or lose the respect of his family
and friends. In the majority of cases — though the mi-
nority on the other side is no small one — these oppor-
tunities and incitements, together with the power to wait
and choose which judicious paternal support gives him,
are effective in drawing out his energies and directing them
continuously upon the desired point. Certainly they will
not make a good lawyer or a captain of industry out
of a fool, nor will the lack of them keep decisive
natural ability from exercising these functions; but with
the common run of men, having fair capacity not
very definitely inclined in a special direction, they are
potent. Paternal suggestion and backing must be used
with great discretion and often fail entirely, but no
man of the world, so far as I know, regards them as
unimportant

If we ask whether the influence of inheritance is likely
to increase or diminish, we find, on studying the situation

230

THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE

as a whole, a conflict of tendencies the precise outcome of
which can only be guessed at.

As favoring the growth of the principle and the crystal-
lization of classes^ we have chiefly two considerations?
the probability of more settled conditions, and the in-
fluence of that sharper differentiation of functions which
modern life involves.

Social change, as already pointed out, is a main force
in breaking up the inheritance of function, and to this
must largely be attributed the comparative weakness of
the principle in the United States. The changes inci-
dent to the settlement of a new country, coinciding with
those incident to an economic revolution, have set every-
thing afloat and brought in a somewhat confused and dis-
orderly sort of competition. Our cities, especially, are
aggregates of immigrants, most of whom have broken
away from early associations, and a large part of whom
are performing functions unheard of by their fathers, tf
is hardly possible that trades should become hereditary
when most of them endure less than one man's lifetime/
And something of the same uncertainty runs through com-
merce and the professions.

Without predicting any great decline in the pace of in-
vention, we may yet expect that the next fifty years will
see a great deal of the consolidation that comes with ma-
turity. The population will be comparatively established,
in place at least, and the forces making for inheritance
will have a chance to work. An immense body of trans-
mitted wealth will exist, and democratic influences will
have all they can do to keep it from generating an aristo-
cratic spirit. Industries, professions and trades can hardly

231

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

fail to be more stable than they have been, and the rural
population, as always, will be a stronghold of the forces
that favor inheritance.

The sentiment of regard for ancestry, of which caste
is the extreme expression, is likely to increase in this and
in all new countries. As communities grow older the fam-
ily line comes more and more under public observation.
It is seen, and displayed in memory, wherever any sort
of continuity is preserved, and, being seen, it is judged, and
the individual shares the credit or discredit of his kin.
While this influence is now weak in the United States,
on the whole, and is almost absent in the recent and con-
fused life of our cities, it is gaining rapidly wherever — as
is generally the case in the East and Southeast outside of
large towns — the conditions are settled enough to make
the family as a whole a matter of observation. And there
can be little doubt that it is increasing in the West wherever
it has a similar chance.

In some ways this greater recognition of descent is
wholesome. A sense of being part of a kindred, of bear-
ing the honor of a continuing group as well as of a perish-
ing individual, tends to make one a better man; and from
this point of view our somewhat disintegrated society
might well have more of it.

As to the sharper differentiation that goes with modern
life, we see it on all hands. The city is more clearly marked
off from the country, in its functions, and is itself broken
up into quarters the inhabitants of which have often little
or no intercourse with those of other quarters. Trades
and professions subdivide into specialties, and, a more
elaborate training being demanded, it is more necessary

232

THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE

than formerly that a man should know from the start
what he wants to do and assiduously prepare himself to
do it. Not forgetting that there is another side to this,
a side of unification implied in these differences, one may
yet say that in themselves they tend to separate people
more sharply into social groups which might conceivably
become hereditary.

The forces antagonizing inheritance of function come
chiefly under two heads, the opposition of ambitious
young men and the general current of democratic senti-
ment.

Caste means restriction of opportunity, and conse-
quently lies across the path of the most energetic part of
the people. Its rule can prevail only where individual
self-assertion is restrained by ignorance and formal in-
stitutions. Under our flexible modern conditions, it is
safe to say, no system can endure that does not make a
point of propitiating the formidable ambition of youth
by at least an apparent freedom of opportunity. Even
the inheritance of property is constantly questioned in
the minds of the young, and nothing but the lack of a
plausible alternative prevents its being more seriously ,
assailed. And since this stronghold of inequality can {^/
hardly be shaken, there is all the more demand that it be
offset by opening every other kind of advantage, especially
in the way of education and training, to whomsoever may
be fit to profit by it.

Somewhat vaguer but perhaps even more effective than
the resistance of young men is the opposition of the gen-
eral current of sentiment to any growth of inheritance at

233

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

the expense of opportunity. To abolish extrinsic in-
equalities and give each a chance to serve all in his own fit
way, is undoubtedly the democratic ideal. In politics
this is expressed by doing away with hereditary privilege
and basing everything on popular suffrage; in education it
is seeking an expression quite as vital by striving to open
to every one the training to any function for which he may
show fitness. But the spirit of unity and brotherhood is
far from satisfied with what has been achieved in these
directions, and aspires to bring home to every child that
fair access to the fruits of progress which, in spite of theo-
retical liberty, is now widely lacking. It calls for social
democracy, the real presence of freedom and justice in
every fibre of the social fabric. To this spirit any increase
of the privileges, already unavoidably great, which come
by inheritance, is evidently hateful.

In America at least this sentiment is not that of a strug-
gling lower class but of, practically, the whole community.
With reference to so vital a part of our traditional ideal
there are no classes; all the people feel substantially alike;
and there is no public purpose for which wealth is so freely
spent as in the support of institutions whose purpose is to
keep open the path of opportunity from any condition
of life to any other.

There is also, back of this sentiment, a belief that equal
opportunity makes for the general good, since that system
of society will be most efficient, other things equal, in
which each individual is required to prove that he has
more fitness than others for his special function. Every
one can see, at times, the deteriorating effect of familj

234

THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE

influence — as upon business establishments when a less
competent son succeeds his father, or upon military service,
as in the British army at the outbreak of the Boer war.

On the other hand, the results of a confused competi-
tion may be worse than those of order, even if the latter
rests upon an artificial principle.

Thus it is said with some truth — and this is perhaps the
most considerable argument for caste in modern life —
that a class having hereditary wealth and position, like
the English aristocracy, makes a permanent channel foi
high traditions of culture and public service, and that it is
well to preserve such traditions even at the cost of a some-
what exclusive order to contain and cherish them. De
Tocqueville, himself imbued with the best traditions of
the old French aristocracy, held this view, and ascribed
the lack of intellectual distinction in the America of his
day largely to the fact that there was no class " in which
the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with
hereditary fortune and leisure, and by which the labors
of the intellect are held in honor."*

The answer, of course, is that there are other means
than caste for securing the continuity of special traditions,
and, more particularly, that voluntary associations are
capable of supplanting inherited wealth as channels of
culture. In the various branches of science, for example,
we have vigorous and continuing groups, with plenty of
esprit de corps, by which the labors of the intellect are held
in honor. If libraries, associations and educational insti-
tutions can do this for one phase of culture, why not for
others?

* Democracy in America, vol. i, chap. 3.

235

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

It would be unfair, however, not to acknowledge that
great services are constantly rendered to society by persons
whom inherited wealth enables to devote themselves
earlier and more independently to high aims than would
otherwise be possible. There is certainly something
favorable to originality in an inherited competence, with-
out which one is more apt to be coerced into seeking a kind
of success already in vogue, and so having a market value.
And the movement to foster originality by endowments
depending upon merit rather than birth will be most diffi-
cult to make effectual, since such endowments almost
inevitably fall into the control of an institutional sort of
men who cannot be expected to subsidize heresy. Funds
for this purpose will probably aid only those sorts of
originality already recognized, and in a manner es-
tablished; not the radical innovations from which
important movements usually start It is hard to see
how they can do much outside of experimental science,
in which there is a sort of conventional test of origi-
nality.

On the whole, whatever is good in the principle of de-
scent may be appropriated by a democratic society with-
out going back to formal rank or exclusive opportunity.
Freedom offers no bar to continuity of function in the
family, so long as efficiency is maintained, but merely
requires this, like everything else, to meet the test of
service. There is no adequate reason why a hereditary
group, transmitting special culture and fitness, should not
continue their functions under a democratic system — as
is actually the case to a certain extent with the political
families of England. They will do their work all the

236

THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE

better for not being too sure of their position. I see noth-
ing but good in the fact that a military career has become
traditional in a number of American families who have
rendered distinguished service of this sort. The more
special family ambitions we have, of a noble kind, the better
for the country.

No sober observer will imagine that the opposing forces j
are to abolish the power of inheritance; they merely set
reasonable limits to its scope. When the way of ambi-
tion is opened to the most energetic individuals, the sharp-
est teeth of discontent are drawn, and the mass of men
very willingly avoid trouble to themselves and to society
by keeping on in the paternal road. The family is after
all too natural and too convenient a channel of social con-
tinuity not to play a great part in every phase of organiza-
tion, and there seems little reason to depart from the
opinion of Comte that it must ordinarily be the main in-
fluence in determining occupation.

I am inclined to expect that, owing to somewhat more
settled conditions of life, inheritance of function will be
rather more common, and the tendency to see the individual
as one of a stock rather greater, in the future than in the
immediate past. On the other hand it is nearly certain
that educational opportunities will become more open and
varied, making it easier than now for special aptitude to
find its place. These things are not inconsistent, and both
will make for order and contentment.

Also much more endeavor will be directed to the welfare
of the less privileged classes as classes — that is, of those
who are content to remain in the ancestral status instead

237

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of trying to get into one more favored. Heretofore we
have given too much thought, relatively, to the one man
who aims at distinction, and too little to the ninety and
nine who do not

CHAPTER XXI

OPEN CLASSES

The Nature of Open Classes — Whether Class-Consciousness
is Desirable — Fellowship and Cooperation Deficient
in Our Society — Class Organization in Relation to
Freedom.

With the growth of freedom classes come to be more
open, that is, more based on individual traits and less upon
descent Competition comes actively into play and more
or less efficiently fulfils its function* of assigning to each
one an appropriate place in the whole. The theory of
a free order is that every one is born to serve mankind in
a certain way, that he finds out through a wise system of
education and experiment what that way is, and is trained
to enter upon it. In following it he does the best possible
both for the service of society and his own happiness.
So far as classes exist they are merely groups for the further-
ance of efficiency through cooperation, and their member-
ship is determined entirely by natural fitness.

This ideal condition is never attained on a large scale.
In practice the men who find work exactly suited to them
and at the same time acceptable to society are at the best
somewhat exceptional — though habit reconciles most of
us — and classes are never wholly open or wholly devoted
to the general good.

The problem of finding where men belong, of adapting

personal gifts to a complex system, is indeed one of ex-

* I make frequent use of this word to mean an activity which
furthers some general interest of the social group. It differs from
"purpose" in not necessarily implying intention.

239

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

treme difficulty, and is in no way solved by facile schemes
of any sort. There are, fundamentally, only two principles
javailable to meet it, that of inheritance or caste and that of
competition. While the former is a low principle, the
latter is also, in many of its phases, objectionable, involv-
ing waste of energy and apt to degenerate into anarchy.
There are always difficulties on either hand, and the actual
organization of life is ever a compromise between the aspi-
ration toward freedom and the convenience of status.

We may assume, then, that in contemporary life we have
to do with a society in which the constitution of classes,
so far as we have them, is partly determined by inheritance
and partly by a more or less open competition, which is,
again, more or less effective in placing men where they
rightly belong.

If classes are open and men make their way from one
into another, it is plain that they cannot be separate men-
tal wholes as may be the case with castes. The general
state of things becomes one of facile intercourse, and those
who change class will not forget the ideas and associations
of youth. Non-hereditary classes may have plenty of
solidarity and class spirit — consider, for instance, the
mediaeval clergy — and their activity may also be of a
special and remote sort, like that of an astronomical
society, but after all there will be something democratic
about them; they will share the general spirit of the whole
in which they are rooted. They mean only specialization
in consciousness, where caste means separation.

The question whether there is or ought to be "class-
consciousness" in a democratic society is a matter of defi-

240

OPEN CLASSES

nitions. If we mean a division of feeling that goes deeper
than the sense of national unity and separates the people
into alien sections, then there is no such thing in the United
States on any important scale (leaving aside the race ques-
tion), and we may hope there never will be. But if we
mean that along with an underlying unity of sentiment and
ideals there are currents of thought and feeling somewhat
distinct and often antagonistic, the answer is that class-
consciousness in this sense exists and is more likely to in-
on** fl»„ to diminish. A c«^ of newspapJ! popu-
lar education and manhood suffrage has passed the stage
in which sentiments or interests can flow in separate chan-
nels; but there is nothing to prevent the people forming
self-assertive groups in reference to economic and social
questions, as they do in politics.

Class-consciousness along these lines will probably in-
crease with growing interest in the underlying contro-
versies, but I do not anticipate that this increase will prove
the dreadful thing which some imagine. A "class-war"
would indeed be a calamity, but why expect it ? I see no
reason unless it be a guilty conscience or an unbelief in
moral forces. A certain sort of agitators expect and desire
a violent struggle, because they see privilege defiant and
violence seems to them the shortest way to get at it; and
on the other hand, there are many in the enjoyment of
privilege who feel in their hearts that they deserve nothing
better than to have it taken away from them: but these
are naive views that ignore the solidity of the present order,
which ensures that any change must be gradual and make
its way by reason. Orderly struggle is the time-honored
method of adjusting controversies among a free people,

241

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

and why should we assume that it will degenerate into
anarchy and violence at just this point ? Will not feeling
be rather better than worse when a vague seme of injustice
has had a chance to try itself out in a definite and positive
self-assertion ?

It is to be remembered, moreover, that in a society
where groups interlace as much as they do with us a
conflict of class interests is, in great degree, not a conflict
of persons but rather one of ideas in a common social
medium — since many persons belong to more than one
class. Only under conditions of caste would a class war
of the sort predicted by some theorists be likely to come
to pass. I am not sure that it would be more fantastic to
expect a literal war between Democrats and Republicans
than between the parties — hardly less united by common
social and economic interests — of Labor and Capital.

It seems equally mistaken to say, on the one hand, that
all class-consciousness is bad, or, on the other, that we
ought above all things to gird ourselves for the class-
struggle. The just view apparently is that we should
have in this matter, as elsewhere, difference on a basis of
unity. Class loyalty in the pursuit of right ends is good;
but like all such sentiments it should be subordinate to a
broad justice and kindness. If there is no class-conscious-
ness men become isolated, degraded and ineffective; if
there is too much, or the wrong kind, the group becomes
separate and forgets the whole. Let there be "diversities
of gifts but the same spirit."

The present state of things as regards fellowship and
cooperation in special groups is, on the whole, one of de«

242

OPEN CLASSES

ficiency rather than excess. The confusion or "individu-
alism" that we see in literature, art, religion and industry
means a want of the right kind of class unity and spirit.
There is a lack of mutual aid and support not only among
hand-workers, where it is much needed, but also among
scholars, artists, professional men, writers and men of
affairs. The ordinary business or professional man
hardly feels himself a member of any brotherhood larger
than the family; with his wife and children about him he
stands in the midst of a somewhat cold and jostling world,
keeping his feet as best he can and seeking a mechanical
security in bank-account and life insurance — being less
fortunate in this regard, perhaps, than the trades-unionist,
who has been forced by necessity to stand shoulder-to-
shoulder with his fellows and give and take sacrifice for
the common good. And much the same is true of scholars
and artists: they are likely not to draw close enough to-
gether to keep one another warm and foster the class ideals
which lead the individual on to a particular kind of effi-
ciency: there is a lack of those snug nests of special tra-
dition and association in which more settled civilizations are
rich.

Organization, of certain kinds, is no doubt more ex-
tensive and elaborate than ever before, and organization,
it may be said, involves the interdependence, the unity,
of parts. But will this be a conscious and moral unity ?
In a high kind of organization it will; but rapid growth
may give us a system that is mechanical rather than, in
the higher sense, social. When organization quickly ex-
tends there is a tendency to lower its type, as a rubber
band becomes thinner the more you stretch it; the rela-

243

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

tions grow less human, and so may degrade instead of
elevating the individual's relation to his whole. In a
measure this has taken place in our life. The vast struct-
ure of industry and commerce remains, for the most part,
unhumanized, and whether it proves a real good or not
depends upon our success or failure in making it vital,
conscious, moral. There is union on a low plane and
isolation on a higher. The progress of communication
has supplied the mechanical basis for a spiritual organiza-
tion far beyond anything in the past; but this remains un-
achieved. On the whole, in the words of Miss Jane
Addams, with whom this is a cherished idea, " The situation
demands the consciousness of participation and well-
being which comes to the individual when he is able to
see himself ' in connection and cooperation with the whole ' ;
it needs the solace of collective art inherent in collective
labor."*

•

It is indeed probable that the growth of class fellowship
will help to foster that spirit of art in work which we so
notably lack, and the repose and content which this brings.
There is truth in the view that a confused and standard-
less competition destroys art, which requires not only a
group ideal but a certain deliberation, a chance to brood
over things and work perfection into them. When the
workman is more sure of his position, when he feels his
fellows at his shoulder and knows that the quality of his
work will be appreciated, he will have more courage and
patience to be an artist. We all draw our impulse toward
perfection not from vulgar opinion or from our pay, but
fr#m the approval of fellow craftsmen. The truth, little

* Democracy and Social Ethics, 219.

244

OPEN CLASSES

seen in our day, is that all work should be done in the
spirit of art, and that no society is humanly organized in
which this is not chiefly the case.

It is also true that closer fellowship — dominated by
good ideals — should bring the sympathetic and moral
motives to diligence and efficiency into more general action,
and relegate the 'work or starve* motive more to the back-
ground. Some of us love our work and are eager to do it
well; others have to be driven. Is this because the former
are naturally a superior sort of people, because the work
itself is essentially more inviting, or because the social
conditions are such that sympathy &nd fellowship are more
enlisted with it ? Allowing something for the first two,
I suspect the third is the principal reason. What work
is there that would not be pleasant in moderate quantities,
in good fellowship, and in the feeling of service? No
great proportion, I imagine, of our task. Washing dishes
Hot thought d^irablTand yet men do it joyfully when
they go camping together.

Class organization is not, as some people assert, neces-
sarily hostile to freedom. All organization is, properly,
a means through which freedom is sought. As conditions
change, men are compelled to find new forms of union
through which to express themselves, and the rise of in-
dustrial classes is of this nature.

In fact, the question of freedom, as applied to class con-
ditions, has two somewhat distinct aspects. These are:

1. Freedom to rise from one class into another, freedom
of individual opportunity, or carriere ouverte aux talents.
This is chiefly for the man of exceptional capacity and am-

245

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

bition. It is important, but not more so than the other,
namely:

2. Freedom of classes, or, what is the same thing, of
those individuals who have not the wish or power to de-
part from the sphere of life in which circumstance has
placed them. It means justice, opportunity, humane
living, for the less privileged groups as groups; not oppor-
tunity to get out of them but to be something in them; a
chance for the teamster to have comfort, culture and good
surroundings for himself and his family without ceasing
to be a teamster.

The first of these has been much better understood in
America than the second. That it is wrong to keep a man
down who might rise is quite familiar, but that those who
cannot rise, or do not care to, have also just claims is al-
most a novel idea, though they are evidently that majority
for whom our institutions are supposed to exist. Owing
to a too exclusive preoccupation with ideals of enterprise
and ambition, a certain neglect, and even reproach, have
rested upon those who do quietly the plain work of life.

Ours, if you think of it, is rather too much success on
the tontine plan, where one puts all he has into a pool in
the hope of being one of a few survivors to get what the
rest lose; it would be better to take to heart that idea of
Emerson's that each may succeed in his own way, without
putting others down. It is a great thing that every Ameri-
can boy may aspire to be president of the United States,
or of the Standard Oil Company, but it is equally im-
portant that he should have a chance for full and whole-
some life in the more probable condition of clerk or mill
hand. While we must admire the heroes of Samuel Smiles.

246

OPEN CLASSES

we may remember that they do and should constitute only
a small minority of the human race.

And the main guaranty for freedom of this latter sort
is some kind of class organization which shall resist the
encroachment and neglect of which the weaker parties in
society are in constant danger. Those who have wealth,
position, knowledge, leisure, may perhaps dispense with
formal organization (though in fact it is those who are
strong already who most readily extend their strength in
this way), but the multitudes who have nothing but their
human nature to go upon must evidently stand together or
go to the wall.

CHAPTER XXII

HOW PAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES

Impersonal Character of Open Classes — Various Classifi-
cations — Classes, as Commonly Understood, Based on
Obvious Distinctions — Wealth as Generalized Power —
Economic Betterment as an Ideal of the Ill-Paid Classes
— Conclusion.

Where classes do not mean separate currents of thought,
as in the case of caste, but are merely differentiations in a
common mental whole, there are likely to be several kinds
of classes overlapping one another, so that men who fall
in the same class from one point of view are separated in
another. The groups are like circles which, instead of
standing apart, interlace with one another so that several
of them may pass through the same individual. Classes
become numerous and, so to speak, impersonal; that is,
each one absorbs only a part of the life of the individual
and does not sufficiently dominate him to mould him to
a special type. This is one of the things that distinguish
our American order from that, say, of Germany, where
caste is still so dominant as to carry many other dif-
ferences with it and create unmistakable types of men.
As a newspaper writer puts it, "The one thing we may be
sure of every day is that not a man whom we shall meet
in it will belong to his type. The purse-proud aristocrat
turns out to be a humble-minded young fellow anxiously
envious of our knowledge of golf; the comic actor in
private life is dull and shy, and reddens to the tips of his

HOW PAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES

ears when he speaks; the murderer taken out of the dock
in a quiet hob-and-nob turns out to be a likable young
chap who reminds you of your cousin Bob."

And this independence of particular classes should give\
one the more opportunity to achieve a truly personal indi- J
viduality by combining a variety of class affiliations, each /
one suited to a particular phase of his character. /

It is, then, easy to see why different classifiers discover
different class divisions in our society, according to their
points of view; namely, because there are in fact an in-
definite number of possible collocations. This would not
have been the case anywhere in the Middle Ages, nor is it
nearly as much the case in England at the present time
as in the United States.

We might, to take three of the most conspicuous lines
of division, classify the people about us according to trade
or profession, according to income, and according to cul-
ture. The first gives us lawyers, grocers, plumbers,
bankers and the like, and also, more generally, the hand-
laboring class, skilled and unskilled, the mercantile class,
the professional class and the farming class. The di-
vision by income is, of course, related to this, though by
no means identical. We might reckon paupers, the poor,
the comfortable, the well-to-do and the rich. Culture and
refinement have with us no very close or essential connec-
tion with occupation or wealth, and a classification based
upon the former would show a very general rearrangement.
There are many scholars and philosophers among us who,
like Thoreau, follow humble trades and live upon the in-
come of day labor.

249

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

And virtue, the most important distinction of all, is in-
dependent alike of wealth, calling and culture. The real
upper class, that which is doing the most for the onward
movement of human life, is not to be discerned by any visi-
ble sign. The more inward or spiritual a trait is, the less
it is dependent upon what are ordinarily understood as
class distinctions.

It is, however, upon the grosser and more obvious
differences of wealth and rank, and not upon intellectual
or moral traits, that classes, in the ordinary meaning of
the word, are based. The reasons for this are, first, that
something obvious and unquestionable is requisite as a
symbol and unfailing mark of class, and, second, that the
tangible distinctions alone are usual matters of controversy.
Culture and character have more intrinsic importance, but
are too uncertain to mark a class, and even if they were
stamped upon the forehead they are not matter to quarrel
over like wealth or titles; since those who have them not
cannot hope to get them by depriving those who have.

Income, for instance, classifies people through creating
different standards of living, those who fall into the same
class in this respect being likely to adopt about the same
external mode of life. It usually decides whether men
live in one quarter of the city or another, what sort of
houses or apartments they inhabit, how they dress,
whether the wife "does all her own work" or employs
household help (and, if the latter, how much and of what
sort), whether they keep a carriage, whether they go into
the country for the summer, whether they travel abroad,
whether they send their sons to college, and so on. And

250

HOW FAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES

such likeness leads to likeness of ideas, especially in that
commonplace sort of people — the most numerous of course
— who have not sufficient definiteness or energy of char-
acter to associate on any other basis. Note how difficult
it is for two people, congenial in other respects, to con-
verse freelv when one has an income of $5,000, the other
of $500. Few topics can be touched upon without accentu-
ating the superficial but troublesome discrepancy. Amuse-
ments, household and the like are hardly possible; the
weather may supply a remark or two, perhaps also poli-
tics, though here the economic point of view is likely to ap-
pear. Religion or philosophy, if the parties could soar so
high, would be best of all. Of course, serious discussion
should be all the more practicable and fruitful because of
difference of viewpoint. What I mean, however, is light, off-
hand, sociable talk that does not stir any depths. As between
their wives the situation would be harder still, and only
an unusual tact and magnanimity would make it tolerable.
The result is that we ordinarily find it most comfortable
to associate on a basis of income, combined with and
modified by the influence of occupation, culture and special
tastes. And yet to do this is perhaps a confession of
failure, a confession that we do not know how to cast off
the adventitious and meet as men. The most superficial
differences, being the most apparent, impose themselves
upon our commonly indolent and sensuous states of mind.

In proportion to their energy men will always seek power.
It is, perhaps, the deepest of instincts, resting directly
on the primary need for self-expression. But the kind of
power sought will take many forms.

251

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

Wealth stands, in modern society, for nearly all the
grosser and more tangible forms; for power over material
goods, primarily, and secondarily over the more purchas-
able kinds of human activity — hand labor, professional
services, newspaper commendation, political assiduity
and so on. The class that has it is, in all such matters,
the strong class, and naturally our coarser thought con-
cludes that this is the kind of power most worth consid-
eration. In all the obvious details of life, in that seeking
for petty advantages and immunities in which most of
our time is passed, at the store or the railway station, we
are measured by money and are apt to measure others so.
The ascendency of wealth is too natural to disappear.
Children prize possessions before they can talk, and read-
ily learn that money is possession generalized. Indeed,
only the taste for finer possessions can or should drive
out that for lower.

And yet all clear minds, or rather all minds in their
clearer moments, may see that wealth is not the chief good
that the commonplace and superficial estimate makes it.
It is simply a low form of power, important in measure to
the group and to the individual, but easily preoccupying
the mind beyond its just claim. If society gets material
prosperity too fast, its spiritual life suffers, as is somewhat
the case in our day: and the individual is in peril of moral
isolation and decay as soon as he seeks to get richer than
his fellows.

The finest and, in the long run, the most influential
minds, have for the most part not cared for riches, or not
cared enough to go out of their way to seek them, preferring
to live on bare necessities if they must rather than spend

252

HOW PAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OP OPEN CLASSES

their lives in an uncongenial scramble. And the distinc-
tively spiritual leaders have always regarded them as incon-
sistent with their aims. "Provide neither gold, nor sil-
ver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey,
neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves." Not
that Christianity is opposed to industrial prosperity-
the contrary is the case — but that Christian leadership
required the explicit renunciation of prosperity's besetting
sin. In our day the life of Thoreau, among others, illus-
trates how a man may have the finer products of wealth
— the culture of all times — while preferring to remain
individually poor. He held that for an unmarried student,
wishing first of all to. preserve the independence of his
mind, occasional day labor, which one can do and have
done with, is the best way of getting a living. "A man is
rich in proportion to the number of things which he can
afford to let alone." "It makes but little difference
whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail."*
The thoroughgoing way in which this doctrine is developed
in his Walden and other books makes them a vade mecum
for the impecunious idealist.

Professor William James asserts that the prevalent fear
of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral
disease from which civilization suffers, paralyzing their
ideal force. "Think of the strength which personal in-
difference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to
unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues
or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket
Our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish,
our salaries stop, our club doors close in our faces; yet,

♦Walden, 89, 91.

253

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

while we lived, we would imperturbably bear witness to
the spirit, and our example would help to set free our
generation."*

If these considerations do not keep us from greed, it is
because most of us have only flashes of the higher am-
bition. We may believe that we could reconcile ourselves
to poverty if we had to — even that it might be good for
us — but we do our best to avoid it

For the ill-paid classes, certainly, the desire for money
does not mean "materialism" in any reproachful sense,
but is chiefly the means by which they hope to realize,
first, health and decency, and then a better chance at the
higher life — books, leisure, education and refinement.
They are necessarily materialized in a certain sense by the
fact that their most strenuous thought must be fixed upon
work and product in relation to material needs. It is in
those who are already well-to-do that the preoccupation
'with money is most degrading — as not justified by primary
wants. "Meat is sweetest when it is nearest the bone,"
and it is good to long and strive for money when you have
an urgent human need for it; but to do this for accumula-
tion, luxury, or a remote security is not wholesome; This
cold-blooded storing up in banks and tin boxes is perilous
to the soul, often becoming a kind of secret vice, a disease of
narrow minds, feeble imaginations and contracted living.f

In modern life, then, and in a country without formal
privilege, the question of classes is practically one of
wealth, and of occupation considered in relation to wealth;

♦The Varieties of Religious Experience, 368.
1 1 will not here discuss the question just how far it serves a use-
ful purpose in the economic system.

254

HOW FAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES

the reason being not that this distinction really dominates
life, but that it is the focus of the more definite and urgent
class controversies. Other aims are pursued in peace;
wealth, because it is material and appropriable, involves
conflict. We may then accept the economic standpoint for
this purpose without at all agreeing with those who re-
gard it as more fundamental than others *

* If the reader cares to know my opinion of that doctrine — some*
times called the economic interpretation of history — which teaches
that economic conditions are in a peculiar sense the primary and
determining factor in society, he will find it in the following passages:

"The organic view of history [which I hold] denies that any factor
or factors are more ultimate than others. Indeed it denies that
the so-called factors — such as the mind, the various institutions,
the physical environment and so on — have any real existence apart
from a total life in which all share in the same way that the mem-
bers of the body share in the life of the animal organism. It looks
upon mind and matter, soil, climate, flora, fauna, thought, language
and institutions as aspects of a single rounded whole, one total
growth. We may concentrate attention upon some one of these
things, but this concentration should never go so far as to overlook
the subordination of each to the whole, or to conceive one as pre-
cedent to others."

" I cannot see that the getting of food, or whatever else the eco-
nomic activities may be defined to be, is any more the logical basis
of existence than the ideal activities. It is true that there could be
no ideas and institutions without a food supply; but no more could
we get food if we did not have ideas and institutions. All work to-
gether, and each of the principal functions is essential to every other."

"History is not like a tangled skein which you may straighten
out by getting hold of the right end and following it with sufficient
persistence. It has no straightness, no merely lineal continuity,
in its nature. It is a living thing, to be known by sharing its life,
very much as you know a person. In the organic world — that is to
say in real life — each function is a centre from which causes radiate
and to which they converge; all is alike cause and effect; there is no
logical primacy, no independent variable, no place where the thread
begins. As in the fable of the belly and the members, each is de-
pendent upon all the others. You must see the whole or you do
not truly see anything." (Publications of the American Eco»
nomic Association, Third Series, vol. v, 426 ff.)

255

CHAPTER XXIII

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

The Capitalist Class — Its Lack of Caste Sentiment — In
What Sense "the Fittest" — Moral Traits — How Fab
Based on Service — Autocratic and Democratic Princi-
ples in the Control of Industry — Reasons for Expect-
ing an Increase of the Democratic Principle: — Social
Power in General — Organizing Capacity — Nature and
Sources of Capitalist Power — Power Over the Press and
Over Public Sentiment — Upper-class Atmosphere.

Since in our age commerce and industry absorb most
of the practical energy of the people, tiJemem that are fore-
most in these activities have a certain ascendency, similar
to that of warriors in a military ageT?

Although this sort of men is not sharply marked off,
it is well enough indicated by the term capitalist or capi-
talist-manager class; the large owner of capital being
usually more or less of a manager also, while the large
salaries and other gains of successful managers soon make
them capitalists.

It is not quite accurate to speak of the group in question
as the rich, because, at a given time, a large part of its
most vigorous membership is as yet without wealth-
though in a way to get it — and, on the other hand, many
of the actual possessors of wealth are personally idle or
ineffective. The essential thing is a social tendency or
system of ideas generated in the accumulation of wealth
and having for its nucleus the more active and successful
Readers of commerce and industry.

256

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

C/rh&t these are a very small class in proportion to their
power is apparent, but not, perhaps, in itself, so fatal a
defect in the system that permits it as many imaginer In
so far as Concentration of control means that wealth is
in the hands of those who understand how to use it for
the common good/and do in fact so use it, much may be
said in its favor. We are all eager to entrust our property
to those who will make it profitable to us; and society,
under any system that could be devised, must probably
do the same. But we may well ask whether there is not
some more adequate means than we now have of getting
this trust faithfully executed.

IJPoT better or for worse, concentration is probably in-
evitable in any society that has a vast, mobile wealth sub-
ject to competition^ and the actual inequality is perhaps
not much greater than that of political power, which is
supposed to be equally distributed by general suffrage.
TheTtruth is that equality of power or influence, in ai
sphere of life, is inconsistent with the free working of
human forces, which is ever creating differences, some
which are useful to society and some harmful^ A true
freedom, a reasonable equality, aims to conserve the for-
mer and abolish or limit the latter.

The(sentiment of the class is notJiristocratic in the or-
dinary sense. Although its members endeavor to secure
their possessions to their children, there is little of the
spirit oCTtereditary caste] which, indeed, is uncongenial
to commerce. Freedom of opportunity is the ideal in this
as in other parts of American society, and educational or
other opportunities designed to maintain or increase it are

257

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

sincerely approved and supported. There is, in fact, an
almost inevitable dualism which makes it natural that a
man should strive to aggrandize himself, his family and
his class even though he truly wishes for greater equality
; of privilege. He floats on two currents, and as a man and
a a brother may be glad of restraints upon his own class
which are in the interest of justice.

Thfideal of freedom prevalent in the managing class is,
howeverJ somewhat narrow and jhardly hospitable to the
group self-assertion of the less privileged classes) The
labor movement has made its way by its energy and reason-
ableness in the face of a rather general mistrust and oppo-
sition — sometimes justified by its aberrations — on the
part of the masters of industry. Yet even in this regard,
as it comes to be seen that organization is an element of
fair play, and as experience shows that union may become
an instrument of stability, a broader sentiment makes
headway.

Like everything else that has power in human life, the
money-strong represent, in some sense, the^survival of
N the fittesj^-not necessarily of the best. That is, their suc-
cess, certainly (no guaranty of righteousness, (fees prove
a certain adaptation to conditions, those who get rich
being in general the ablesty for this purpose, of the many
who devote their energies to it with about the same op-
portunities. They are not necessarily the ablest in other
regards, since only certain kinds of ability count in mak-
ing money; other kinds, and those often the highest, such
as devotion to intellectual or moral ideals, being even a
hindrance. Men of genius will seldom shine in this way, }

268

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

because, as a rule, only a somewhat commonplace mind] s
will give itself whole-heartedly to the commercial ideal. *
There is much likeness in the persons and methods by
which, in all ages, the cruder sort of power is acquired.
When the military system is ascendent over the industrial
it is acquired in one way, when property is secure from
force in another, but this makes less difference than might
be supposed. In either case it is not mere personal
prowess, with the sword or with the tool, that gains large
success, but power in organization. Aggressiveness,
single-minded devotion to the end and, above all, organ-
izing faculty — these were the methods of Clovis and Pepin
and William of Normandy, as they are of our rulers of
finance. And now, as formerly, much of the power that
is alive in such men falls by inheritance into weaker hands.

As to righteousness, in the sense of good intention, they
probably do not, on the whole, differ much from the aver-
age. Some may be found of the highest character, some
of gross unscrupulousness. The majority are doubtless
without moral distinction and take the color of their asso-
ciates. The view sometimes set forth on behalf of men
of wealth that riches go with virtue, and the view, more
popular among non-possessors, that it comes by wicked-
ness, are equally untrustworthy. The great mass of
wealth is accumulated by solid qualities — energy, tenacity,
shrewdness and the like — which may coexist with great
moral refinement or with the opposite.

As a group, however, they are liable to moral deficiencies
analogous to those of the conquerors and organizers of
states just referred to. There is, especially, a certain

259

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

moral irresponsibility which is natural to those who have
broken away from customary limitations and restraints
and are coursing almost at will over an unfenced territory.
I mean that business enterprise, like military enterprise,
deals largely with relations as to which there are no settled
rules of morality, no constraining law or public opinion.
Such conditions breed in the ordinary actor a Macchia-
vellian opportunism. Since it is hard to say what is just
^and honest in the vast and abstract operations of finance,
human nature is apt to cease looking for a standard and
to seize booty wherever and however it safely can. Hence
the truly piratical character of many of our great trans-
actions. And in smaller matters also, as in escaping tax-
ation, it is often fatally easy for the rich to steal.

It must beallowed that such ascendency as the capitalist

class has rests, in part at least, upon serviced That is to

say, its members have/had an important function to per-

form, and in performing that function have found them-

j$b -yjjftves in a position to grasp wealth^ The great work of

*'"" "* a*-^^ the time has been, or has seemed to be, the extension and

, f " .^^reconstruction of industry. In this work leadership and

-\ V organization have been needed on a great scale, and our

captains of industry have nobly met this demand. That
their somewhat autocratic control of production was called
for by the situation seems to be shown by the rather gen-
eral failure of cooperative enterprises intended to dispense
with it Why is it that America abounds in opportunity,
and that every sort of industrial capacity is eagerly sought
out and rewarded ? Of course natural advantages play a
great part, but much must also be ascribed to the energy

260

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

and imaginative daring of our entrepreneurs, many of
whom have spent great faculty and tireless zeal upon busi-
ness, in a spirit of adventure and achievement rather than
of gain. Where the general is aggressive the soldier will
be kept busy.

I have no sympathy with the general abuse of com-
mercialism, but hold with Montesquieu that "The spirit
of commerce is naturally attended with that of frugality,
economy, moderation, labor, prudence, tranquillity, order
and rule. So long as this spirit subsists the riches it pro-
duces have no ill effect. The mischief is when excessive
wealth destroys the spirit of commerce; then it is that
the inconveniences of inequality begin to be felt."*

The conception of keen adaptation of means to ends,
of exact social workmanship, inculcated by "business"
is of untold value to our civilization and capable of very
general application. It is a very proper demand that gov-
ernment, education and philanthropy should, in this sense,
be conducted on business principles.

At the same time it is plain that a large part of the accu-
mulation of wealth-hard unfortunately to distinguish
from other parts — is accomplished not by social service
but, as just intimated, by something akin to piracy. This
is not so much the peculiar wickedness of a predatory
class as a tendency in all of us to abuse power when not
under definite legal or moral control. The vast trans-
actions associated with modern industry have come very
little under such control, and offer a field for freebooting
such as the world has never seen.

Nor need we affirm that even the gains of the great

* The Spirit of Laws, book v, chap. 6.

261

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

organizers are in the highest sense right, only that they are
natural and do not necessarily involve conscious wrong-
doing.

The question of the rather arbitrary control of industry
by the capitalist-manager, which now prevails, and of the
possibility of this control being diminished or modified
in the future, calls for some analysis of underlying forces.
Evidently there is a conflict of principles here — the demo-
cratic or popular and the autocratic. The latter, now
ascendant, has the /advantages of concentration, secrecy
and promptness^tne same which give it superiority in
war. On the olEer hand, the democratic principle should
have the same merit in industry and commerce that it has
in politics; namely that of (jAftlrag ' tn<? pride and am-
bition of the individual and so getting him to put himself
into his workl Other things being equal, a free system is a
more vital add energetic organism than one in which the
initiative and choice come from a central authority.

And it is apparent that the working of the autocratic
system in our economic life shows just the strength and
weakness that would naturally be expected. The prompt
undertaking and execution of vast schemes at a favorable
moment, and the equally prompt recession when condi-
tions alter; the investment of great resources in enter-
prises which yield no immediate return; the decision and
secrecy important in overcoming competitors; the un-
hesitating sacrifice of workmen and their families when
the market calls for a shut-down of production — such
traits as these are of the utmost importance to commercial
success, and belong to arbitrary control rather than to

262

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

anything of a more popular sort. On the other hand,
it would be easy to show at any length desired that such
control is accompanied by a wide-spread disaffection of
spirit on the part of the working classes, which, expressed
in unwilling labor, strikes and agitation, is a commercial
disadvantage, and a social problem so urgent as to unsettle
the whole economic system.

The autocratic system has evidently a special advantage
in a time of rapid and confused development, when con-
ditions are little understood or regulated, and the state
of things is one of somewhat blind and ruthless warfare;
but it is quite possible that as the new industries become
established and comparatively stable, there will be a com-
mercial as well as a social demand for a system that shall
invite and utilize more of the good-will and self-activity
of the workman. "The system which comes nearest to
calling out all the self-interests and using all the faculties
and sharing all the benefits will outcompete any system
that strikes a lower level of motive faculty and profit."*
And the penetrating thinker who wrote this sentence be-
lieved that the function of the autocratic "captain of in-
dustry" was essentially that of an explorer and con-
queror of new domains destined to come later under the
rule of a commonwealth. Indeed the rise, on purely com-
mercial grounds, of a more humane and individualizing
tendency, aiming in one way or another to propitiate the
self-feeling of the workman and get him to identify him-
self with his work, is well ascertained. Among the fa-
miliar phases of this are the notable growth of cooperative
* Henry D. Lloyd, Man the Social Creator, 255.

263

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

production and exchange in Belgium, Russia and other
European countries, the increasing respect for labor unions
and the development by large concerns of devices for in-
surance, for pensions, for profit-sharing and for the mate-
rial and social comfort of their employees. "As a better
government has come up from the people than came down
. from the kings, so a better industry appears to be coining
up from the people than came down from the capitalists/' *
In some form or other the democratic principle is sure
to make its way into the economic system. Cooperation,
labor unions, public regulation, public ownership and the
informal control of opinion will no doubt all have a part;
the general outcome being that the citizen becomes a more
vital agent in the life of the whole.

Before discussing further the power of the capitalist-
manager class, we ought to think out clearly just what we
mean by [social powerJ since nowhere are we more likely
to go astray than inTagueness regarding such notions.

Evidently the essence of it iicontrol over the human
spirit, and the most direct phases^ power are immediately
spiritual, such as one mind exercises over another by
virtue of what it is, without any means but the ordinary
Symbols of communication^ This is live, human power,
and those who have it in great degree are the prime
movers of society, whether they gain any more formal
or conventional sort or not. Such, for instance, are the
poets, prophets, philosophers, inventors and men of science
of all ages, the great political, military and religious organ-

* Idem, 246. Lloyd was rather a prophet than a man of science,
but there is a shrewd sense of fact back of his visions.

364

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

izers, and even the real captains of industry and com-
merce.^All power involves in its origin mental or spiritual
force otsbme sort fj and so far as it attaches to passive
attributes, like hereditary social position, offices, bank-
accounts, and the like, it does so through the aid of conven-
tions and habits which regard these things as repositories
of spiritual force and allow them to exercise its function.

In its immediate spiritual phase power is at a maximum
of vitality and a minimum of establishment. Only a few
can recognize it. Its possessors, then, strive to establish
and organize it, to give it social expression and efficacy,
to gain position, reputation or wealth. Since power is
not apparent to the common mind until it takes on these
forms, they are, to superficial observation and in all the
conventional business of life, the only valid evidence of it.
And yet by the time these symbols appear, the spiritual
basis has often passed away. Primary power goes for the
most part unseen, much of it taking on no palpable form
until late in life, much yielding only posthumous reputa-
tion, and much, and that perhaps the finest sort, having
never any vulgar recognition whatever.

Regarding money-value we may say, in general, that
it is one expression of the conventional or institutional
phase of society, and exhibits all that mixture of grandeur
and confusion with which nature usually presents herself
to our understanding. I mean that its appraisal of men
and things is partly expressive of great principles, and
partly, so far as we can see, unjust, trivial or accidental.
Some gains are vital or organic, springing from the very
nature of life and justified as we come to understand that
life; some are fanciful, springing from the tastes or whims

265

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of the rich, like the value of diamonds or first editions, and
some parasitical, like those of the legally-protected
swindler. In general the values of the market are those
of the habitual world in all its grossness; spiritual values,
except those that have become conventional, being little
felt in it. These appeal to the future. The detailed
working of market value has no ascertainable connection
with moral worth, and we must not expect it to have. If
a man's work is moral, in the higher sense, it is in its
nature an attack upon the habitual world which the latter
is more likely to resent than reward. One can only take
up that useful work that seems best suited to him, trying to
be content if its value is small, and, if large, to feel that
the power over money it gives him is rightly his only in so
far as he uses it for the general good.

Theunore tangible kind of social pow^rJ-so far as it is
intrinsic to the man and not adventitious like inherited
wealth-£3epends chiefly upon organizing capacity,
v which may be described as the ability to build and operate
human machinery .7 It has its roots in tact and skill in
dealing with men, in tenacity, and in a certain instinct
for construction. One who possesses it sees a new person
as social material, and is likely to know what can be made
of him better than he knows himself.*

♦Such a one

" Lasst jeden ganz das bleiben was er ist;
Er waoht nur druber das er's immer sei
Am rechten Ort; so weiss er aller Menschen
Vermbgen zu dem seinigen zu machen."

"He lets every one remain just what he is, but takes care that h«
shall always be it in the right place: thus he knows how to make
all men's power his own." Schiller, Wallenstein's Lager, I, 4.

266

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

Of all kinds of leadership this has the readiest recogni-
tion and the highest market value; and naturally so, since
it is essential to every sort of cooperative achievement.
Its possessors understand the immediate control of the
world, which they will exercise no matter what the ap-
parent forms of organization may be. In all ages they
have gained and held the grosser forms of power, when-
ever these were at all open to competition. Thus, during
the early Middle Age, men of energy and management,
more or less favored by situation, built up for themselves
local authority and estate, or perhaps exploited the op-
portunities for still wider organization, like the founders
of Burgundy and Brittany and the early kings of France;
very much in the same manner as men of our own day
build up commercial and industrial systems and become
senators and railway presidents.

Indeed, this type of ability was never in such demand as
it now is, for the conduct of the vast and diverse social struct-
ures rising about us— industrial enterprises, political parties,
labor unions, newspapers, universities and philanthropies.

It has its high money value partly because of its rarity
and partly because there is a regular market for it; the
need being so urgent and obvious as to create a steady
and intelligent demand. In this latter respect it contrasts
with services, like moral leadership, which people need
but will seldom pay for. A third reason is that its pos-
sessors are almost always clever enough to know their
own value and secure its recognition.

/_Jn discussing the power of the capitalist class there is
no questioriTof the finer and higher forms of power. We

267

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

JjmM

shall rarely find among the rich any pregnant spiritual

leadership theirs being a pedestrian kind of authority
which has a great deal to do with the eveiy-day comfort
of their contemporaries but does not attempt to sway the
profounder destinies of the race. Nor does the world
often accord them enduring fame: lacking spiritual sig-
nificance their names are writ in water. Even in industry
the creative thought, the inventions which are the germs
of a new era, seldom come from money-winners, since they
require a different kind of insight.

The capitalistlrepresents power over those social values
/ that are tangible and obvious enough to have a definite
/ standing in the market."^) His money and prestige will com-
mand food, houses, clothes, tools and all conventional and
standard sorts of personal service, from lawn-mowing to
the administration of a railroad, not genius or love or
anything of that nature. That wealth means social power
of this coarser sort is apparent in a general way, and yet
merits a somewhat closer examination.

We have, first, it£7mmediate power over goods and
servicesj the master of riches goes attended by an in-
visible army of potential servitors, ready to do for him
anything that the law allows, and often more. He is in
this way, as in so many others, the successor of the noble-
man of mediaeval and early modern history, who went
about with a band of visible retainers eager to work his
will upon all opposers. He is the ruler of a social system
wherever he may be.

The political power of wealth is due only in part to direct
corruption, vast as that is, but is even more anyndirect
and perfectly legal pressure in the shape of inducements]

268 ^

ON THE ASCENDENCY OP A CAPITALIST CLASS

which its adroit use can always bring to bear — trade to
the business man, practice to the lawyer and employment
to the handworker: every one when he thinks of his in-
come wishes to conciliate the rich. Influence of this sort
makes almost every rich man a political power, even with-
out his especially wishing to be. But when wealth is
united to a shrewd and unscrupulous political ambition,
when it sets out to control legislation or the administra-
tion of the laws, it becomes truly perilous. We cannot
fail to see that a large part of our high offices are held by
men who have no marked qualification but wealth, and
would be insignificant without it; also that our legislation
— municipal, state and national — and most of our ad-
ministrative machinery, feel constantly the grasp of
pecuniary power. Probably it is not too much to say that
except when public opinion is unusually aroused wealth
can generally have its way in our politics if it makes an
effort to do so.

As to the influence of the rich over the professional
classes — lawyers, doctors, clergymen, teachers, civil and
mechanical engineers and the like — we may say in gen-
eral that it is potent but somewhat indirect, implying not
conscious subservient but a moral ascendencyUhrough
habit and suggestion./ The abler men of this sort are
generally educated and self-respecting, have a good deal
of professional spirit and are not wholly dependent upon
any one employer. At the same time, they get their living
largely through the rich, from whom the most lucrative
employment comes, and who have many indirect ways of
making and marring careers. The ablest men in the legal
profession are in close relations with the rich and commonly

269

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

become capitalists themselves; physicians are more in-
dependent, because their art is not directly concerned with
property, yet look to wealthy patients for their most profit-
able practice; clergymen are under pressure to satisfy
wealthy parishioners, and teachers must win the good will
of the opulent citizens who control educational boards.
Now there is nothing in social psychology surer than
that if there is a man by whose good will we desire to
< profit, we are likely to adapt our way of thinking to his. Im-
pelled to imagine frequently his state of mind, and to desire
that it should be favorable to our aims, we are unconsciously
swayed by his thought, the more so if he treats us with a cour-
tesy which does not alarm our self-respect. It is in this
way that wealth imposes upon intellect. Who can deny it T

Newspapers are generally owned by men of wealth,
which has no doubt an important influence upon the
sentiments expressed in them; but a weightier considera-
tion is the fact that they depend for profit chiefly upon
advertisements, the most lucrative of which come from
rich merchants who naturally resent doctrines that
threaten their interest. Of course the papers must reach
the people, in order to have a value for advertising or
any other purpose, and this requires adaptation to public
opinion; but the public of what are known as the better
class of papers are chiefly the comparatively well-to-do.
And even that portion of the press which aims to please
the hand-working class is usually more willing to carry
on a loud but vague agitation, not intended to accomplish
anything but increase circulation, than to push real and
definite reform.

270

ON THE ASCENDENCY OP A CAPITALIST CLASS

All phases of opinion, including the most earnest and
honest inquiry into social questions, finds some voice in
print, but — leaving aside times when public opinion is
greatly aroused — those phases that are backed by wealthy
interests have a great advantage in the urgency, per-
sistence and cleverness with which they are presented.
At least, this has been the case in the past. It is a general
feeling of thoughtful men among the hand-working class
that it is hard to get a really fair statement of their view
of industrial questions from that portion of the newspaper
and magazine press that is read by well-to-do people.
The reason seems to be mainly that the writers live un-
consciously in an atmosphere of upper-class ideas from
which they do not free themselves by thorough inquiry.
Besides this, there is a sense of what their readers expect,
and also, perhaps, a vague feeling that the sentiments of
the hand-working class may threaten public order.

Since the public has supplanted the patron, a man of
letters has least of all to hope or fear from the rich — if
he accepts the opinion of Mr. Howells that the latter
can do nothing toward making or marring a new book.

The power of wealth over public sentiment is exercised
partly through sway over the educated classes and the
press, but also by the more direct channel of prestige.
Minds of no great insight, that is to say the majority,
mould their ideals from the spectacle of visible and tangi-
ble success. In a commercial epoch this pertains to the
rich; who consequently add to the other sources of their
influence power over the imagination. Millions accept the
money-making ideal who are unsuited to attain it, and
run themselves out of breath and courage in a race they

27 1

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

should never have entered; it is as if the thin-legged and
flat-chested people of the land should seek glory in foot-
ball. The money-game is mere foolishness and morti-
fication for most of us, and there is a madness of the crowd
in the way we enter into it. Even those who most abuse
the rich commonly show mental subservience in that they
assume that the rich have, in fact, gotten what is best
worth having.

As hinted above/ihere is such a thing as an upper-class
atmosphere, in the sense of a state of mind regarding social
questions, initiated by the more successful money-winners
and consciously or unconsciously imposed upon business
and professional people at large. "?Most of us exist in this
atmosphere and are so pervadea by it that it is not easy
for us to understand or fairly judge the sentiment of the
hand-working classes. The spokesmen of radical doc-
trines are, in this regard, doing good service to the public
mind by setting in motion counterbalancing, if not more
trustworthy, currents of opinion.

If any one of business or professional antecedents doubts
that he breathes a class atmosphere, let him live for a time
at a social settlement in the industrial part of one of our
cities — not a real escape but as near it as most of us have
the resolution to achieve — reading working-class literature
,(he will be surprised to find how well worth reading it is),
talking with hand-working people, attending meetings,
and in general opening his mind as wide as possible to the
influences about him. He will presendy become aware of
being in a new medium of thought and feeling; which may
or may not be congenial but cannot fail to be instructive

272

CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS—

Continued

The Influence op Ambitious Young Men — Security op the
Dominant Class in an Open System — Is there Danger op
Anarchy and Spoliation? — Whether the Sway op Riches
is Greater now than Formerly — Whether Greater in
America than in England.

In any society where there is some freedom of oppor-
tunity ambitious young men are an element of extreme
importance. Their numbers are formidable and their
intelligence and aggressiveness much more so: in short,
they want an opening and are bound to get it.

As the members of this class are mainly impecunious,
it might be supposed that they would be a notable offset
to the power of wealth; and in a sense they are. It is
their interest to keep open the opportunity to rise, and
they are accordingly inimical to caste and everything
which tends toward it. But it by no means follows that
they are opposed to the ascendency of an upper class based
on wealth and position. This becomes evident when one
remembers that their aim is not to raise the lower class, but
to get out of U. The rising young man does not identify
himself with the lowly stratum of society in which he is
born, but, dissatisfied with his antecedents, he strikes out
for wealth, power or fame. In doing so he fixes his eyes
on those who have these things, and from whose example

273

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

he may learn how to gain them; thus tending to accept the
ideals and standards of the actual upper class. He gives
a great deal of attention to the points of view of A, a rail-
road president, B, a senator, and even of C, head of a labor
organization, but to a mere farmer or laborer, whose hand
is on no levers, he is indifferent.

The students of our universities are subject to a con-
flict between the healthy idealism of youth, which prevails
with the more generous, and the influences just indicated,
which become stronger as education draws closer to prac-
tical affairs. On the whole, possessed of one great priv-
ilege and eager to gain others, they are not so close in
spirit to the unprivileged classes as might be imagined.
, A (^ ^ Thus th^force of ambitious youth goes largely to sup-

<^ port the ascendency of the money-getting class; directly,

in that it accepts the ideals of this class and looks forward
to sharing its power flindirectly, in that it is withdrawn
from the resources or the humbler class. How long will
the rising lawyer retain his college enthusiasm for social
reform if the powers that be welcome him and pay him
salaries ?

Wegiave their the fact, rathoi* pflinduvfcal wf fiut aight,
that the dominant class in a competitive society, although
unstable as to its individual membership, may well be
more secure as a whole than the corresponding class
under any other system— precisely because it continually
* draws into itself most of the natural ability from the other
classes. ^Throughout English history, we are told, the
salvation of the aristocracy has been its comparative open-
ness, the fact that ability could percolate into it, instead

374

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

of rising up behind it like water behind a dam, as was the
case in pre-revolutionary France. And the same principle
is working even more effectually in our own economic
order. A great weakness of the trades-union movement,
as of all attempts at self-assertion on the part of the less
privileged classes, is that it is constantly losing able lead-
ers. As soon as a man shows that marked capacity
which would fit him to do something for his fellows, it
is ten to one that he accepts a remunerative position, and so
passes into the upper class. It is increasingly the practice
— perhaps in some degree the deliberate policy — of organ-
ized wealth to win over in this way the more promising
leaders from the side of labor; and this is one respect in
which a greater class-consciousness and loyalty on the
part of the latter would add to its strength.
^Thus tHs possible to have freedom to rise and yet have
at the same time a miserable and perhaps degraded lower
class — degraded because the social system is administered
with little regard to its just needsr^This is more the case
with our own industrial system, and with modern society
in general, than our self-satisfaction commonly perceives.
Our one-sided ideal of freedom, excellent so far as it goes,
has somewhat blinded us to the encroachments of slavery
on an unguarded flank. I mean such things as bad hous-
ing, insecurity, excessive and deadening work, child labor
and the lack of any education suited to the industrial
masses — the last likely to be remedied now that it is seen to
threaten industrial prosperity.

It is hard to say how much of the timidity noticeable in
the discussion of questions of this sort by the comfortable

275

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

classes is due to a vague dread of anarchy and spoliation
by an organized and self-conscious lower class; but prob-
ably a good deal. If power, under democracy, goes with
numbers, and the many are poor, it would seem at first
glance that they would despoil the few.

To conservative thinkers a hundred, or even fifty, years
ago this seemed almost an axiom, but a less superficial
philosophy has combined with experience to show that
anarchy, in Mr. Bryce's words, "is of all dangers or bug^
bears the one which the modern world has least cause to
fear."*

The most apparent reason for this is the one already
discussed, namely, thaf jtfwer does not go with mere num-
bers'! under a democracy more than under any other form JjM ^v
ofgovernment; a democratic aristocracy, that is, one whose j/(jjtf-& f
\ members maintain their position in an open struggle, be- ^UtA^^
\\ ^ ing without doubt the strongest that can exist. We shall Y
X^ > never have a revolution until we have caste; which, as I Jt^

have tried to show, is but a remote possibility. Andas an
y y /ally °f established power we have to reckon with thi inertia

*Lpf social structure, something so massive and profound
that the loudest agitation is no more than a breeze ruf-
fling the surface of deep waters^ Dominated by the habits
which it has generated, we all of us, even the agitators, up- v
hold the existing order without knowing it. There may,
of course, be sudden changes due to the fall of what has
long been rotten, but I see little cause to suppose that the
timbers of our system are in this condition: they are rough
apd unlovely, but far from weak. r ^

Sy Another conservative condition is that economic solid*
* The American Commonwealth, Chapter 94.

276

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

arity whwkmakqfuthe welfare of all classes hang together,
so that any general disturbance causes suffering to all,
and more to the weak than to the strong^ A sudden
change, however reasonable its direction, must in this way
discredit its authors and bring about reaction. The hand-
working classes may get much less of the economic product
than they ought to; but they are not so badly off that they
cannot be worse, and, unless they lose their heads, will
always unite with other classes to preserve that state of
order which is the guaranty of what they have. Anarchy .
would benefit no one, unless criminals, and anything re-
sembling a general strike I take to be a childish expedient
not likely to be countenanced by the more sober and hard-
headed leaders of the labor movement. All solid better-
ment of the workers must be based on and get its nourish-
ment from the existing system of production, which must
only gradually be changed, however defective it may
be. The success of strikes, and of all similar tactics,
depends, in the nature of things, on their being partial,
and drawing support from the undisturbed remainder
of the process. It is the same principle of mingling
stability with improvement which governs progress ^
everywhere. r~ q>

And, finally ineffective organization on the part of the
less privileged classes goes along with intelligence, with
training in orderly methods of self-assertion, and with edu-
cation in the necessity of patience and compromise. yBbfr*^
more real power they get, the more conservatively, as a
rule, they use itj Where free speech exists there will al-
ways be a noisy party advocating precipitate change (and
a timid party who are afraid of them), but the more the

277

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

people are trained in real democracy the less will be the
influence of this element.

Whatever divisions there may be in our society, it is
quite enough an organic whole to unite in casting out
tendencies that are clearly anarchic. And it is also evident
that such tendencies are to be looked for at least as much
among the rich as among the poor. If we have at one
extreme anarchists who would like to despoil other people,
we have, at the other, monopolists and financiers who
actually do so.

It is a common opinion that the sway of riches over the
human mind is greater in our time than previously, and
greater in America than elsewhere. How far is this really
the case?

To understand this matter we must not forget that the
ardor of the chase — as in a fox hunt — may have little to
do with the value of the quarry. The former, certainly,
was never so great in the pursuit of wealth as here and
now; chiefly because the commercial trend of the times,
due tQ a variety of causes, supplies unequalled opportu-
nities and incitements to engage in the money-game. In
this, therefore, the competitive zeal of an energetic people
finds its main expression. But to say that wealth stands
for more in the inner thought of men, that to have or not
to have it makes a greater intrinsic difference, is another
and a questionable proposition, which I am inclined to
think opposite to the truth. Such spiritual value as
personal wealth has comes from its power over the means
of spiritual development. It is, therefore, diminished by
everything which tends to make those means common

278

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

property: and the new order has this tendency. When
money was the only way to education, to choice of occu-
pation, to books, leisure and variety of intercourse, it was
essential to the intellectual life; there was no belonging
to the cultured class without it. But with free schools
and libraries, the diffusion of magazines and newspapers
cheap travel, less stupefying labor and shorter hours,
culture opportunity is more and more extended, and the
best goods of life are opened, if not to all, yet to an ever-
growing proportion. Men of the humblest occupations
can and do become gentlemen and scholars. Indeed,
people are coming more and more to think that exclusive
advantages are uncongenial to real culture, since the deep-
est insight into humanity can belong only to those who
share and reflect upon the common life.

The effect is that wealth is shorn of much of that pres-
tige of knowledge, breeding and opportunity which al-
ways meant more than its material power. The intel-
lectual and spiritual centre of gravity, like the political,
sinks down into the masses of the people. Though our
rich are rich beyond the dreams of avarice, they mean less
to the inner life of the time, exercise less spiritual authority,
perhaps, than the corresponding class in any older society.
They are the objects of popular curiosity, resentment, ad-
miration or envy, rather than the moral deference given 1 *'
to a real aristocracy. They are not taken too seriously.
* Indeed, there could be no better proof that the rich are
no overwhelming power with us than the amount of
good-natured ridicule expended upon them. Were they
really a dominant order, the ridicule, if ventured at all,
would not be good-natured. Their ascendency is great

279

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

when compared with a theory of equality — and in this
sense the remarks in the last chapter should be understood
— but small compared with that of the ruling classes of
the Old World.

Over a class of frenzied gold-seekers, rich or poor,
chiefly in the towns, the money-idea is no doubt ascendant;
but if you approach the ordinary farmer, mechanic or
sober tradesman you are likely to find that he sets no high
rate on wealth beyond what is necessary for the frugal
support of a family, and that he neither admires nor
envies the rich, but looks at the millionaire and thinks:
"After all, it isn't life. What does he get out of it more
than the rest of us?" Th'e typical American is an ideal-
ist, and the people he looks up to are those who stand in
some way for the ideal life — or whom he supposes to do
so — most commonly statesmen, but often writers, scientists
or teachers. Education and culture, as Mr. Bryce and
others have noticed, is cherished by plain people all over
the land, often to a degree that puts to shame its professed
representatives.

We find, then, that agitators who strive to incite the
people against the rich encounter with disgust an ideal-
ism which refuses to believe that their advantages are ex-
travagantly great; and one of the main grievances of such
men is what they look upon as the folly or lack of spirit of
the poor in this regard.

Never before, probably, was there so large a class of
people who, having riches, feel that they are a doubtful bless-
ing, especially in relation to the nurture of children. Many
a successful man is at his wits' end to give his children those
advantages of enforced industry, frugality and self-con-

280

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

trol which he himself enjoyed. One of the richest men
of the day holds that accumulations are generally bad for
the children, as well as for society, and favors almost un-
limited graduated taxation of inheritances.* According
to the philosophy which he supports by practice as well as
theory, the man who finds himself rich is to live modestly
and use his surplus as a trust fund for the benefit of the
public.

What would a man wish for his own son, if he could
choose? First, no doubt, some high and engrossing
purpose, which should fill his life with the sense of worthy
striving and aspiration. After this he would wish for
health, friends, peace of mind, the enjoyment of books,
a happy family life and material comfort. But the last,
beyond that degree which even unskilled labor should
bring, he would regard as of secondary importance. Not
a straitened house and table but a straitened soul is the
real evil, and the two are more separable now than for-
merly. The more a real democracy prevails, the less is
the spiritual ascendency of riches.

There is, for instance, no such settled and institutional
deference to wealth in the United States as there seems to
be in England; the reason being, in part, that where there
are inherited classes there are also class standards of
living, costly in the upper class, to which those who would
live in good company are under pressure to conform. In
England there is actually a ruling order, however ill
defined, which is generally looked up to and membership
in which is apparently the ambition of a large majority

* Andrew Carnegie.
281

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of all aspiring men who do not belong to it by birth. Its
habits and standards are such that only the comparatively
rich can be at home in it. There is nothing correspond-
ing to this with us. We have richer men and the pursuit
of riches is an even livelier game, but there is no such as-
cendency in wealth, no such feeling that one must be rich to
be respectable. With us, if people have money they enjoy
it; if not, they manage with what they have, neither regard-
ing themselves nor regarded by others as essentially inferior.

It is also a general feeling here that wealth should not
be a controlling factor in marriage, and it is not common
for American parents to object seriously to a proposed
son-in-law (much less a daughter-in-law) on the mere
ground of lack of means, apart from his capacity to earn
a living. The matter-of-fact mercenariness in this re-
gard which, as we are led to believe by the novelists, pre-
vails in the upper circles of England, is as yet somewhat
shocking to the American mind.

Hereditary titles, sometimes imagined to be a counter-
poise to the ascendency of wealth, are really, in our time
at least, a support and sanction to it, giving it an official
standing and permanence it cannot have in democracy.
We understand that in England wealth — with tact,
patience and maybe political services — will procure a
title, which, unlike anything one can get for money in
America, is indestructible by vice and folly, and can be
used over and over to buy wealth in marriage. "Nothing
works better in America than the promptness with which
the degenerate scions of honored parents drop out of
sight."* Rank is not an offset but a reward and bribe to

* T. W. Higginson, Book and Heart, 145.

282

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

wealth; perhaps the only merit that can be claimed for
it in this connection being that the desire and deference
for it imposes a certain discipline on the arrogance of
newly acquired riches.

The English idea that those in high offices should have
a magnificent style of living, "becoming to their station/'
is also one that goes with caste feeling. It makes it hardly
decent for the poor to hold such offices, and is almost ab-
sent here, where, if riches are important to political suc-
cess, the condition is one of which the people do not ap-
prove and would gladly dispense with.

I doubt whether the whole conception which imputes
merit to wealth and seeks at least the appearance of the
latter in modes of dress, attendance and the like, is not
stronger everywhere in Europe than in the United States.

6 ". •>

CHAPTER XXV

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES

The Need of Class Organization — Uses and Dangers of Unions
— General Disposition of the Hand-Working Classes.

It is not the purpose of this book to add anything to
the merely controversial literature of the time; and in
treating the present topic I intend no more than to state
a few simple and perhaps obvious principles designed to
connect it with our general line of thought

It i^quite apparent that an organized and intelligent
class-c&msciousness in the hand-working people is one of
the primary needs of a democratic society. In so far as
this part of the people is lacking in a knowledge of its
situation and in the practice of orderly SQlf-assertion, a real
freedom will also be lacking, and we shall have some kind
of subjection in its place; freedom being impossible with-
out group organization^ That industrial classes exist-in
the sense already explained* — cannot well be denied, and
existing they ought to be conscious and self-directing.

The (most obvious need of class-consciousness is for
self-assertion against the pressure of other classes J and
this is both most necessary and most difficult with those
who lack wealth and the command over organized forces
which it implies. In a free society, especially, the Lord
helps those who help themselves; ancTthose who are weak

* See chanter 21,

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES

in money must be strong in unionyand must also exert
themselves to make good any deficiency in leadership that
comes from ability deserting to more favored classes.

That the dominant power of wealth has an oppressive
action, for the most part involuntary, upon the people
below, will hardly be denied by any competent student.
The industrial progress of our time is accompanied by
sufferings that are involved with the progress. These
sufferings — at least in their more tangible forms — fall al-
most wholly upon the poorer classes, while the richer get
a larger share of the increased product which the progress
brings. By sufferings I mean not only the physical hard-
ship and liability to disease, early decay, and mutilation
or death by accident, which fall to the hand-worker; but
also the debasement of children by premature and stunting
labor, the comparative lack of intellectual and social op-
portunities, the ugly and discouraging surroundings, and
the insecurity of employment, to which he and his are sub-
ject. There is no purpose to inflict these things; but they
are inflicted, and the only remedy is a public conscious-
ness, especially in the classes who suffer from them, of
their causes and the means by which they can be done
away with.

The principal expressions of class-consciousness in the
hand-working classes in our day are labor unions and that
wider, vaguer, more philosophical or religious movement,
too various for definition, which is known as socialism.
Regarding the latter I will only say at present that it in-
cludes much of what is most vital in the contemporary
working of the democratic spirit; the large problems with

285

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

which its doctrines deal I prefer to discuss in my own
way.

/ Labor unions aio a oimplu lUlUUir. The y have arisen
out of the urgent need of self-defence, not so much against
y deliberate aggression as against brutal confusion and
neglect. /The industrial population has been tossed about
.on the swirl of economic change like so much sawdust on
<a river, sometimes prosperous, sometimes miserable, never
secure, and living largely under degrading, inhuman con-
ditions. Against this state of things the higher class of
artisans — as measured by skill, wages and general in-
telligence — have made a partly successful struggle through
cooperation in associations, which, however, include much
less than half of those who might be expected to take ad-
vantage of them.* That they are an effective means of
class self-assertion is evident from the antagonism they
have aroused. ^

Besides their primarjL function of group-bargainingj
which has come to be generally recognized as essential,
unions are performing a variety of services hardly less
important to their members, and serviceable to society at
large. In the way ofQnfluencing legislation) they have
probably done more than all other agencies together to
combat child-labor, excessive hours, and other inhuman
and degrading kinds of work; also to provide for safe-
guards against accident, for proper sanitation of factories,
and the like. In this field their work is as much defensive
as aggressive, since employing interests, on the other side,

* Professor John R. Commons (Publications of the American
Sociological Society, vol. ii, p. 141) estimates 2,000,000 members of
unions out of 6,000,000 wage-earners "available for class conflict.' 1

286

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES

are constantly influencing legislation and administration
to their own advantage.

Their function a^spheres of fellowship and self-devei- y
opment 3 equally vital and less understood. To have a
we-feehng, to live shoulder to shoulder with one's fellows,
is the only human life; we all need it to keep us from
selfishness, sensuality and despair, and the hand-worker
needs it even more than the rest of us. Usually without
pecuniary resource and insecure of his job and his home,
he is, in isolation, miserably weak and in a way to be cowed
and unmanned by misfortune or mere apprehension.
Drifting about in a confused society, unimportant, ap-
parently, to the rest of the world, it is no wonder if he

feels

"I am no link of Thy great chain," *

and loses faith in himself, in life and in God. The union
makes him feel that he is part of a whole, one of a fellow-
ship, that there are those who will stand by him in trouble,
that he counts for something in the great life. He gets
from it that thrill of broader sentiment, the same in kind
that men get in fighting for their country; his self is en-
larged and enriched and his imagination fed with objects,
comparatively, "immense and eternal."

Moreover, the life of labor unions and other class asso-
ciations, through theTtraining TrH" 1, it giv^y in democratic
organization and discipline's perhaps the chief guaranty
of the healthy political development of the hand-working
class — especially those imported from non-democratic
civilizations — and the surest barrier against recklessness
and disorder. That their members get this training will

* George Herbert.
287

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

be evident to anyone who studies their working, and it is
not apparent that they would get it in any other way. Men
learn most in acting for purposes which they understand
and are interested in, and this is more certain to be the
case with economic aims than with any other.

Thus, if unions should never raise wages or shorten
hours, they would yet be invaluable to the manhood of
their members. At worst, they ensure the joy of an open
fight and of companionship in defeat. Self-assertion
, through voluntary organization is of the essence of democ-
) racy, and if any part of the people proves incapable of it
it is a bad sign for the country. On this ground alone it
would seem that patriots should desire to see organiza-
tion of this sort extend throughout the industrial popula-
tion.

The danger of these associations is that which besets
human nature everywhere — the selfish use of power. It
is feared with reason that if they have too much their own
way they will monopolize opportunity by restricting ap-
prenticeship and limiting the number of their mem-
bers; that they will seek their ends through intimidation
and violence; that they will be made the instruments of
corrupt leaders. These and similar wrongs have from
time to time been brought home to them, and, unless their
members are superior to the common run of men, they
are such as must be expected. But it would be a mistake
to regard these or any other kinds of injustice as a part of
the essential policy of unions. They are feeling their way
in a human, fallible manner, and their eventual policy
will be determined by what, in the way of class advance-
ment, they find by experience to be practicable. In so

288

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILLrPAID CLASSES

far as they attempt things that are unjust we may expect
them, in the long run, to fail, through the resistance of
others and through the awakening of their own con-
sciences. It is the part of other people to check their ex-
cesses and cherish their benefits.

In general no sort of persons mean better than hand-
laboring men. They are simple, honest people, as a rule,
with that bent toward integrity which is fostered by work-
ing in wood and iron and often lost in the subtleties
of business. Moreover, their experience is such as to
develop a sense of the brotherhood of man and a desire
to realize it in institutions. Not having enjoyed the
artificial support of accumulated property, they have
the more reason to know the dependence of each on his
fellows. Nor have they any great hopes of personal, ag-
grandizement to isolate them and pamper their self-con-
sciousness.

To these we may add that offences from this quarter^
are likely to be more shocking and less dangerous than
those of a more sophisticated sort of people. Occasional
outbreaks of violence alarm us and call for prompt enforce-
ment of law, but are not a serious menace to society, be-
cause general sentiment and all established interests are
against them; while the subtle, respectable, systematic
corruption by the rich and powerful threatens the very ,
being of democracy.

The most deplorable fact about labor unions is that
they embrace so small a proportion of those that need their
benefits. How far into the shifting masses of unskilled
labor effective organization can extend only time will show.

289

CHAPTER XXVI
POVERTY

Feb Meaning of Poverty — Personal and General Causi
Poverty in a Prosperous Society Due Chiefly to Mal-
adjustment — Are the Poor the " Unfit "? — Who is to
Blame for Poverty? — Attitude of Society Toward the
Poor — Fundamental Remedies.

The most practical definition of poverty is that now
widely adopted which relates it to function, and calls those
the poor whose income is not sufficient to keep up their
^ealth and working efficiency. This may be vague but is
not too much so to be useful, and is capable of becom-
ing quite definite through exact inquiry. At least it in-
dicates roughly a considerable portion of the people who
are poor in an obvious and momentous sense of the
word.

Being undernourished, the poor lack energy, physical,
intellectual and moral. Whatever the original cause of
their poverty, they cannot, being poor, work so hard, think
so clearly, plan so hopefully, or resist temptation with so
much steadfastness as those who have the primary means
of keeping themselves in sound condition.

Moreover, the lack of adequate food, clothing and hous-
ing commonly implies other lacks, among which are poor
early training and education, the absence of contact with
elevating and inspiring personalities, a narrow outlook
upon the world, and, in short, a general lack of social op-
portunity.

290

POVERTY

The poor are not a class in the sense of having a dis-
tinct psychical organization. Absorbed in a discouraging
material struggle, or perhaps in the sensuality and apathy
to which a discouraging outlook is apt to lead, they have
no spirit or surplus energy adequate to effectual cooper-
ative endeavor on their own initiative, or even to grasp-
ing the benefits of existing organization. As a rule they
get far less from the law and its administration, from the
church, the schools, the public libraries and the like, than
the classes more capable of self-assertion, and this is par-
ticularly true in a laissez-faire democracy, such as ours\
which gives rights pretty much in proportion to the vigor)
with which they are demanded. It is this lack of common
consciousness and purpose that explains the ease with
which, in all ages, the poor have been governed, not to
say exploited, from above. And if they are getting some
consciousness and purpose at the present time, it is largely
for the very reason that they are less inveterately and hope-
lessly poor now than in the past.

The familiar question whether poverty is due to personal
or social causes is in itself somewhat fallacious, as smack-
ing of a philosophy that does not see that the personal
and social are inseparable. Everything in personality has
roots in social conditions, past or present. So personal
poverty is part of an organic whole, the effect in one way
or another, by heredity or influence, of the general life.
The question has significance, however, when we under-
stand it as asking whether or not the cause is so fixed in
personality that it cannot be counteracted by social in-
fluences. We find that in a community generally prosper-

291

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ous a part of the people — say ten per cent — are poor in the
urgent sense indicated above. The practical question
is, Are these people poor from causes so established in
their characters (however originating) that the rest of
the community can do nothing effectual for them, or are
they plastic to forces which might raise them to a normal
standard of living?

As to this — leaving out the various extreme opinions
which attend all such questions — there is a fair measure
of agreement among competent observers somewhat to
the following effect: There is a considerable number of
/individuals and families having intrinsic defects of char-
acter which must always keep them poor so long as they
are left in the ordinary degree of self-dependence. The
great majority of the poor, however, have no ineradicable
personal weakness but are capable of responding to in-
fluences which might raise them to a normal standard of
living. In other words, the nine-tenths of the community
which is not poor might conceivably bring influences to
bear which would — in a healthy manner and without de-
moralizing alms-giving — remove all but a small part of the
poverty of the other tenth. It is only a question of putting
into the matter sufficient knowledge and good will. As to
the view, still not uncommon, that the laziness, shiftless-
ness and vice of the poor are the source of their difficulties,
it may be said that these traits, so far as they exist, are
now generally regarded by competent students as quite
as much the effect as the cause of poverty. If a man is
undervi tali zed he will either appear lazy or will exhaust
himself in efforts which are beyond his strength — the latter
being common with those of a nervous temperament

292

POVERTY

Shiftlessness, also, is the natural outcome of a confused
and discouraging experience, especially if added to poor,
nutrition. And as to drink and other sensual vices, it is
well understood that they are the logical resource of those
whose life does not meet the needs of human nature in the
way of variety, pleasantness and hope. There are other
causes of vice besides poverty, as appears from its preva-
lence among the unresourceful rich, but there can be no
doubt that good nurture, moderate work, wholesome
amusement and a hopeful outlook would do away with
a great, probably the greater, part of it. There are, no
doubt, among the poor, as among the well-to-do, many
cases of incurable viciousness and incompetence, but it
would be no less unjust and foolish to assume that any
individual is of this sort than to give up a scarlet fever
patient because some will die of that disease in spite of
the best treatment.

I find that the ablest and most experienced workers
have generally the most confidence as to what may be done
even with the apparently lazy, shiftless or vicious by bring-
ing fresh suggestions, encouragements and opportunities
to bear upon them. And it is only a small portion of the
poor that are even apparently lazy, shiftless or vicious;
the majority comparing not unfavorably with the well-
to-do classes in these respects.

Leaving aside general conditions which may depress
whole nations or races, the main cause of poverty in a
prosperous country like the United States is without
doubt some sort of maladjustment between the individual,
or the family or neighborhood group, and the wider com-

293

(

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

munity, by reason of which potential capacity does not
yield its proper fruit in efficiency and comfort This is
evidently the case, for example, with the sort of poverty
most familiar in our American cities; that due to the trans-
planting of vast numbers of Europeans to a society, not
too good for them as we carelessly assume, but out of
connection with their habits and traditions. The Ital-
ians, Slavs and Russian Jews who just now throng our
cities are by no means deficient, on the whole, either in
intelligence, industry or thrift; and those who know them
best find them prolific in some qualities, such as artistic
sensibility of various kinds, in which America is otherwise
rather deficient. But the process of adaptation to our in-
dustrial conditions is trying and leaves many in poverty
and demoralization.

Among the native population also, poverty and the moral
degradation which is often found with it is due largely,
perhaps chiefly, to various kinds of maladjustment be-
tween the working classes and the industrial system — to
loss of employment from periodical depressions or from
the introduction of new methods, to the lack of provision
for industrial education, to the perils attending migration
from country to city, and so on.

What shall we say of the doctrine very widely, though
perhaps not very clearly, held that the poor are the " unfit"
in course of elimination, and are suffering the painful but
necessary consequences of an inferiority that society must
get rid of at any cost ? A notion of this kind may be dis-
covered in the minds of many men of fair intelligence,
and is due to remote, obscure and for the most part

294

POVERTY

mistaken impressions of the teaching of Malthus and
Darwin.

The unfit, in the sense of Darwin and of biology in
general, are those whose hereditary type is so unsuited
to the conditions of life that it tends to die out, or at least
suffer relative diminution in numbers, under the action
of these conditions — as white families tend to die out in the
tropics. In other words, they have an inferiority due to
heredity, and this inferiority is of such a character that
they do not leave as many children to continue their race
as do those of a superior or fitter type.

It is very questionable whether any great part of the
poor answer the description in either of these respects.
As to the first, it is the prevailing opinion with those most
familiar with the matter that their inferiority, except possi-
bly where a distinct race is in question, as with the Negroes,
is due chiefly to deficient nurture, training and oppor-
tunity, and not to heredity. This view is supported by
the fact that under the conditions which a country of op-
portunity, like the United States, affords, great masses of
people rise from poverty to comfort, and many of them to
opulence, showing that the stock was as capable as any.
Something of this sort has taken place with German and
Irish immigrants, and is likely to take place with Jews,
Slavs and Italians.

As to elimination, it is well known that only poverty of
the most extreme and destructive kinds avails to restrict
propagation, and that the moderately poor have a higher
rate of increase than the educated and well-to-do classes.
It is, in fact, far more the latter that are the " unfit " in a
biological sense than the former.

295

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The truth is that poverty is unfitness, but in a social
and not a biological sense. That is to say, it means that
(feeding, housing, family life, education and opportunity
are below the standards that the social type calls for, and
that their existence endangers the latter in a manner anal-
ogous to that in which the presence of inferior cattle in a
herd endangers the biological type. They threaten, and
to a greater or less degree actually bring about, a general
degradation of the community, through ignorance, in-
efficiency, disease, vice, bad government, class hatred
(or, still worse, class servility and arrogance) and so on.

But since the unfitness is social rather than biological,
the method of elimination must also be social, namely, the
reform of housing and neighborhood conditions, improve-
ment of the schools, public teaching of trades, abolition
of child-labor and the humanizing of industry.

That there are strains of biological unfitness among the
poor — hereditary idiocy, or nervous instability tending
toward vice and crime, for example — is not to be denied,
and certainly these should be eliminated, but poverty, far
from effecting elimination, is perhaps their main cause.
This will, no doubt, be duly considered by students of the
new science of eugenics, for which those of us who approach
social problems from another point of view may yet have
the highest regard and expectation. Only a shallow sort
of mind will suppose there is any necessary conflict be-
tween biological and psychological sociology.

As to the question, who is to blame for poverty, let us
remember that the whole question of praise or blame is
one of point of view and expediency. Blame the poor if it

296

POVERTY

will do them any good, and sometimes, perhaps, it will, but
not so often probably as the well-to-do are apt to imagine.
It used to be thought that people must always be held re-
sponsible for their condition, and that the main if not the
only source of improvement was to prod their sense of
this responsibility; but more thoughtful observation
shows that it is not always a good thing to urge the will.
"Worry," says an expeLce^^* "is one of the
direct and all-pervading causes of economic dependence,"
and he asserts that "Take no thought for the morrow"
is often the most practical advice. Many indications,
among them the spread of "mind-cure" doctrines and
practices, point to a widely felt need to escape from the
waste and unrest of an over-stimulated sense of responsi-
bility.

The main blame for poverty must rest upon the pros-
perous, because they have, on the whole, far more power
in the premises. However, poverty being due chiefly to /
conditions of which society is only just beginning to be- '
come conscious, we may say that in the past nobody has
been to blame. It is an unintended result of the eco-
nomic struggle, and is "done with the elbows rather than
the fists." But consciousness is arising, and with it comes
responsibility. We are becoming aware of what makes
poverty and how it can in great part be done away with,
and if accomplishment does not keep pace with knowledge
we shall be to blame indeed.

All parts of society being interdependent, the evils of

* An editorial writer in Charities and the Commons, presumably
Professor Devine, the author of Principles of Relief, and other
works on rational charity.

297

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

poverty are not confined to one class, but spread through-
out the whole; and the influence of a low standard of liv-
ing is felt in the corruption of politics, the prevalence of
vice and the inefficiency of labor. The cause of the poor
is therefore the cause of all, and from this point of view
those of them who in spite of weakness, discouragement
and neglect keep up the fight for a decent life and shun
dependence and degradation, should be regarded- as heroic
defenders of the general welfare, deserving praise as much
as the soldier at the front. If we do not so regard them, it
is because of our lack of intelligence and social conscious-
ness.

In a truly organic society the struggles and suffering of
a poor class would arouse the same affectionate and help-
ing solicitude as is felt when one member of a family falls
ill. In contrast to this, the indifference or somewhat con-
temptuous pity usually felt toward poverty indicates a low
state of community sentiment, a deficient we-feeling.
Respect and appreciation would seem to be due to those
who sustain the struggle successfully, and sympathetic
help to those who are broken down by it. Especially
brutal, stupid and inexpedient — when we think of it —
is the old way of lumping the poor with the degenerate as
"the lower class," and either leaving them to bear their
discredited existence as best they may, or dealing out to
them a contemptuous and unbrotherly alms. The con-
fusion with the degraded of those who are keeping up the
social standard in the face of exceptional difficulties is as
mean and deadly a wrong as could well be.

In so far as there is an effective, self-conscious Christian

298

POVERTY

spirit in the world, thought, feeling and effort must con-
centrate wherever there is injustice or avoidable suffering.
That this takes place so slowly and imperfectly in the
matter of poverty is largely owing to a lack of clear percep-
tion of what ought to be done. I suppose there is no
doubt that if mere gifts could wipe out poverty it would be
wiped out at once. But people are now, for the most part,
just sufficiently informed to see the futility of ordinary
alms, without being instructed in the possibilities of rational
philanthropy. Rational philanthropy is coming, however,
along with an excellent literature and a body of expert
persons who unite humane enthusiasm with a scientific
spirit*

The fundamental remedy for poverty is, of course,
rational organization having for its aim the control of
those conditions, near and remote, which lead people into
it and prevent their getting out. The most radical meas-
ures are those which are educational and protective in a
very broad and searching sense of the words — the human-
ization of the primary school system, industrial education,
facilities for play, physical training and healthy amuse-
ment, good housing, the restriction by law of child labor and
of all vicious and unwholesome conditions, and, finally,
the biological precaution of stopping the propagation of
really degenerate types of men.

* "Our children's children may learn with amazement how we
thought it a natural social phenomenon that men should die in their
prime, leaving wives and children in terror of want; that acci-
dents should make an army of maimed dependents; that there
should not be enough houses for workers; and that epidemics should
sweep away multitudes as autumn frost sweeps away summer in-
sects. 11 Simon N. Patten, The New Basis of Civilization, 197

299

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

If we can give the children of the poor the right start in
Kfe, they will themselves, in most cases, develop the in-
telligence, initiative, self-control and power of organiza-
tion which will enable them to look out for their own in-
terests when they are mature. The more one thinks of
these questions the more he will feel that they can only
be solved by helping the weaker classes to a position where
they can help themselves.

CHAPTER XXVn

HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES

Conditions Producing Class Animosity — The Spirit of
Service Allays Bitterness — Possible Decrease of the
Prestige of Wealth — Probability of a More Communal
Spirit in the Use of Wealth — Influence of Settled
Rules for Social Opposition — Importance of Face-to-
Face Discussion.

Class animosity by no means increases in proportion
to the separation of classes. On the contrary, where there
is a definite und recognized class system which no one thinks
of breaking down, a main cause of arrogance and jealousy
is absent. Every one takes his position for granted and
is not concerned to assert or improve it. In Spain, it is
said, "you may give the inch to any peasant; he is sure to
be a gentleman, and he never thinks of taking the ell."
So in an English tale, written about 1875, 1 find the follow-
ing: "The peasantry and little people in country places
like to feel the gentry far above them. They do not care
to be caught up into the empyrean of an equal humanity,
but enjoy the poetry of their self-abasement in the belief
that their superiors are indeed their betters." So at the
South there was a kind of fellowship between the races
under slavery which present conditions make more difficult.
A settled inequality is the next best thing, for intercourse,!
to equality.

But where the ideal of equality has entered, even slight
differences may be resented, and class feeling is most
bitter, probably, where this ideal is strong but has no regu-

301

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

lar and hopeful methods of asserting itself. In that case
aspiration turns sour and generates hateful passions.
Caste countries are safe from this by lacking the ideal of
equality, democracies by partly realizing it. But in Ger-
many, for instance, where there is a fierce democratic
propaganda on the one hand, and a stone wall of military
and aristocratic institutions on the other, one may feel a
class bitterness that we hardly know in America. And in
England also, at the present time, when classes are still
recognized but very ill-defined, there seems to be much
of an uneasy preoccupation about rank, and of the el-
bowing, snubbing and suspicion that go with it. People
appear to be more concerned with trying to get into a set
above them, or repressing others who are pushing up from
below, than with us. In America social position exists,
but, having no such definite symbols as in England, is for
the most part too intangible to give rise to snobbery, which
is based on titles and other externalities which men may
covet or gloat over in a way hardly possible when the line
is merely one of opinion, congeniality and character.

/ The feeling between classes will not be very bitter so
long as the ideal of service is present in all and mutually
recognized. And it is the tendency of the democratic
spirit — very imperfectly worked out as yet — to raise this
ideal above all others and make it a common standard of
conduct. Thus Montesquieu, describing an ideal de-
mocracy, says that ambition is limited " to the sole desire,
to the sole happiness, of doing greater services to our coun-
try than the rest of our fellow citizens. They cannot all
render her equal services, but they all ought to serve her

302

HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES

with equal alacrity." He thinks also that the love of fru-
gality by which he means compunction in material self-
indulgence, "limits the desire of having to the study of
procuring necessities to our family and superfluities to
our country."* If it were indeed so in our own world,
there would be no danger of a class conflict.

Possibly all states of opinion by which any service is
despised are survivals from a caste society, and reminiscent /
of the domination of one order over another — just as ;
slavery has left a feeling in the South that hand labor is de-
grading. So soon as all kinds of workers share freely in
the social and political order, all work must be respected.
The social prestige of idleness, of "conspicuous leisure,"
that still exists in the Old World, is evidently a survival of
this sort, and it can hardly happen in the democratic
future that "people will let their nails grow that all may
see they do not work." "I do not call one greater and
one smaller," says Whitman, "that which fills its period
and place is equal to any."f I think, however, that there
will always be especial esteem for some sorts of achieve-
ment, but the grounds for this will, more and more, be
distinction in the common service.

The excessive prestige of wealth, along with much of
the ill feeling which it involves, is also, in my opinion,
rather a legacy from caste society than a trait congenial
to democracy. I have tried to show that the ascendency
of riches is really greater in the older and less democratic
societies; and it survives in democracy as much as it

* The Spirit of Laws, book v, chap. 3.
t Leaves of Grass, 71.

303

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

does partly because of the tradition that associates wealth
with an upper caste, and partly because other ideals are
as yet crude and unorganized. A real democracy of
sentiment and action, a renewed Christianity and a re-
newed art might make life beautiful and hopeful for those
who have little money without diminishing the whole-
some operation of the desire for gain. At present the
common man is impoverished not merely by an absolute
want of money but by a current way of thinking which
makes pecuniary success the standard of merit, and so
makes him feel that failure to get money is failure of life.
As we no longer feel much admiration for mere physical
prowess, apart from the use that is made of it, so it seems
natural that the same should come true of mere pecuniary
strength. The mind of a child, or of any naive person,
bases consideration chiefly on function, on what a man
can do in the common life, and it is in the line of demo-
cratic development that we should return toward this
simple and human view.

It is in accord with this movement that children of all
classes are more and more taught the use of tools, cooking
and other primary arts of life. This not only makes for
economy and independence, but educates the "instinct
of workmanship," leading us to feel an interest in all good
work and a respect for those who do it.

The main need of men is life, self-expression, not lux-
ury, and if self-expression can be made general material
inequalities alone will excite but little resentment.

As to the use of wealth we may expect a growing sense
of social responsibility, of which there are already cheerful

301

HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES

indications. Since it is no longer respectable to be idle,
why may we not hope that it will presently cease to be re-
spectable to indulge one's lower self in other ways — in
pecuniary greed, in luxurious eating, in display, rich
clothes and other costly and exclusive pleasures ?

We must not, however, be so optimistic as to overlook
the ease with which narrow or selfish interests may form
special groups of their own, encouraging one another in
greed or luxury to the neglect of the common life. Such
associations cannot altogether shut out general sentiment,
but they can and do so far deaden its influence that the
more hardened or frivolous are practically unconscious
of it. While there are some cheerful givers on a large scale
among us, and many on a small one, I am not sure that
there was ever, on the whole, a commercial society that
contributed a smaller part of its gains to general causes.
We have done much in this way; but then we are enor-
mously rich; and the most that has been done has been
by taxation, which falls most heavily upon small property-
owners. Hie more communal use of wealth is rather a
matter of general probability, and of faith in democratic
sentiment, than of demonstrable fact.

Much might be said of the various ways in which more
community sentiment might be shown and class resent-
ment alleviated. In the matter of dress, for example;
shall one express his community consciousness in it or
his class consciousness, assuming that each is natural and
creditable? It would seem that when he goes abroad
among men the good democrat should prefer to appear a
plain citizen, with nothing about him to interrupt inter-
course with any class. And in fact, it is a wholesome

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

feature of American life, in notable contrast with, say,
Germany, that high as well as low are averse to wearing
military or other distinctive costume in public — except at
times of festival or display, when class consciousness is in
special function. We feel that if a man wants to distinguish
himself in general intercourse he should do so in courtesy
or wisdom, not in medals or clothes.

And why should not the same principle, of deference to
the community in non-essentials, apply to one's house and
to one's way of living in general? If he has anything
worthy to express in these things, let him express it, but
not pride or luxury.

Let us not, however, formulize upon the question what
one may rightly spend money for, or imagine that formu-
lism is practicable. The principle that wealth is a trust
held for the general good is not to be disputed; but lati-
tude must be left to individual conceptions of what the
general good is. These are matters not for formulas or
sumptuary laws, but for conscience. To set up any other
standard would be to suppress individuality and do more
harm than good.

Some of us would be glad to see almost any amount of
wealth spent upon beautiful architecture, though we might
prefer that the buildings be devoted to some public use.
Let us have beauty, even luxury, but let it be public and
communicable. It certainly seems at first sight that vast
expenditure upon private yachts, private cars, costly balls,
display of jewelry, sumptuous eating and the like, indicates
a low state of culture; but perhaps this is a mistake; no
doubt there is some beneficence in these things not generally
understood.

306

HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES

We do not want uniformity in earning and spending,
more than elsewhere, only unity of spirit. Some writers
praise the emulation that is determined to have as fine
things as others have, but while this has its uses it is a
social impulse of no high kind and keeps the mass of men
feeling poor and inferior. Our dignity and happiness
would profit more if each of us were to work out life in a
way of his own without invidious comparisons. We shall
never be content except as we develop and enjoy our in-
dividuality and are willing to forego what does not belong
to it. I know that I was not born to get or to use riches,
but I am willing to believe that others are.

An essential condition of better feeling in the inevitable
struggles of life is that there should be just and accepted
"rules of the game" to give moral unity to the whole.
Much must be suffered, but men will suffer without bitter-/
ness if they believe that they do so under just and necessary
principles.

A solid foundation has been laid for this, in free coun-
tries, by the establishment of institutions under which all
class conflicts are referred, in the last resort, to human
nature itself. Through free speech a general will may be
organized on any matter urgent enough to attract general
attention, and through democratic government this may
be tested, recorded and carried out. Thus is provided a
tribunal free from class bias before which controversies
may be tried and settled in an orderly manner.

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance to social
peace of this recognition of the ultimate authority of pub-
lic opinion, acting slowly but surely through constitutional

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

methods. It means a moral whole which prescribes rules,
directs sane agitation into healthy and moderate chan-
nels, and takes away all rational ground for violenc3 or
revolution. If men, for instance, believe that a particular
kind of socialistic state is the cure for the evils of society,
let them speak, print and form their party. Perhaps they
are right; at least, they get much wholesome self-expression
and a kind of happiness out of their aspiration and labors.
And if they are partly wrong, yet they may both learn and
impart much to the general advantage.

But we have made only a beginning in this. Our ethics
is only a vague outline, not a matured system, and in the
details of social contact — as between employer and work-
man, rich and poor, Negro and white, and so on — there
is such a lack of accepted standards that men have little
to go by but their crude impulses. All this must be worked
out, in as much patience and good will as possible, before
we can expect to have peace.

Where there is no very radical conflict of essential prin-
ciples, ill feeling may commonly be alleviated by face-to-
face discussion, since the more we come to understand one
another the more we get below superficial unlikeness and
find essential community. Between fairly reasonable and
honest men it is always wholesome to "have it out/' and
many careful studies of labor troubles agree regarding the
large part played by misunderstandings and suspicion that
have no cause except lack of opportunity for explanation.
"The rioting would not have taken place," says a student
of certain mining disorders, "had not the ignorance and
suspicion of the Hungarians been supplemented by the

308

HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES

ignorance and suspicion of the employers; and the perse-
verance of this mutual attitude may yet create another
riot." * There is a strong temptation for those in authority,
especially if they are overworked, or conscious of being
a little weak or unready in conference, to fence themselves

•

with formality and the type-written letter. But a man
of real fitness in any administrative capacity must have
stomach for open and face-to-face dealing with men.

And a democratic system sooner or later brings to pass
face-to-face discussion of all vital questions, because the
people will be satisfied with no other. An appearance of
shirking it will arouse even more distrust and hostility than
the open avowal of selfish motives; and accordingly it is
more and more the practice of aggressive interests to seek
to justify themselves by at least the appearance of frank
appeal to popular judgment.

* Spahr, America's Working People, 128.

909

PART V
INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER XXVin
INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

The Nature op Institutions — Hereditary and Social Factors'
— The Child and the World — Society and Personality
— Personality versus the Institution — The Institution
as a Basis of . Personality — The Moral Aspect — Choice
versus Mechanism — Personality the Life of Institutions
— Institutions Becoming Freer in Structure.

ANinstitution is simply a definite and established phase
of the public mind, not different in its ultimate nature from
public opinion, though often seeming, on account of its
permanence and the visible customs and symbols in which
it is clothed, to have a somewhat distinct and independent
existence.^/ Thus the political state and the church, with
their venerable associations, their vast and ancient power,
their literature, buildings and offices, hardly appear even
to a democratic people as the mere products of human in-
vention which, of course, they are.

Th^great institutions are the outcome of fat organ-
ization which human thought naturally takes on when it is
directed for age after age upon a particular subject, and
<«a£radually crystallizes in definite forms — enduring senti-
ments, beliefs, customs and symbolsij And this is the
case when there is some deep and abiding interest to hold
the attention of men. ^Language, government, the church,
laws and customs of property and of the family, systems

313

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of industry and education, are institutions because they
are the working out of permanent needs of human nature,'
These/various institutions are not separable entities,
butjrather phases of a common and at least partly homo-
geneous body of thought, just as are the various tendencies
and convictions of an individual: they are thef^ipper-
ceptive systems" or organized attitudes of the public mind,
and it is only by abstraction that we can regard them as
things by themselvesl? We are to remember that the

J social system is above all a whole, no matter how the con-
venience of study may lead us to divide it)
/Lin the individual the institution exists as a habit of mind
and of action, largely unconscious because largely com-

/ mon to all the groupp it is only the differential aspect of
ourselves of which we are commonly aware. But it is in
men and nowhere else that the institution is to be found.
The real existence of the Constitution of the United States,
for example, is in the traditional ideas of the people and
the activities of judges, legislators and administrators; the
written instrument being only a means of communication,
an Ark of the Covenant, ensuring the integrity of the tra-
dition.

, Thqjndividual is always cause as well as effect of the
{institution: he receives the impress of the state whose tra-

vditions have enveloped him from childhood, but at the
same time impresses his own character/ formed by other
forces as well as this, upon the state, which thus in him
and others like him undergoes change.

If we think carefully about this matter, however, we
shall see that there arf^everaI>omewhat different&uestion£>
which might b^Tincluded in a study of the relation between

314

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

the individual and institutions^ and these we ought to dis-
tinguish.
/""*Onejtf them is that of the babe to the world, or of the

/^hereditary factor of life, existing in us at birth, to the
factor of communication and influence^

Another and quite different one is that of society and
personality, or o f tho relation between the mature indi-
vidual and the whole of which he is a member^
A third is the question — again a distinct one — of the

£ relation, n*t btlwuuu the person and society at large, but
between him and particular institution^) This last is
the one with which we are more properly concerned, but
it may not be amiss to offer some observations on the
others.

The child at birth, when, we may suppose for con-
venience, society has had no direct influence upon him,
represents the race stock or hereditary factor in life in
antithesis to the factor of tradition, communication and
social organization. He also represents an undeveloped
or merely biological individuality in contrast to the de-
veloped social whole into which he comes.

We think of the social world as the mature, organized,
institutional factor in the problem; and yet we may well
jay that the child also embodies an institution (using the
word largely) and one more ancient and stable than church
or state, namely the biological type, little changed, prob- /
ably, since the dawn of history. It cannot be shown in
any way that I know of that the children born to-day of
English or American parents — leaving aside any question
of race mixture — are greatly different in natural outfit from

315

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

the Saxon boys and girls, their ancestors, who played upon
the banks of the Elbe fifteen hundred years ago. The
rooted instincts and temperament of races appear to be
* very much what they were, and the changes of history —
the development of political institutions, the economic
revolutions, the settlement of new countries, the Reforma-
' tion, the rise of science and the like — are changes mainly
in the social factor of life, which thus appears compara-
tively a shifting thing.

In the development of the child, then, we have to do
with the interaction of two types, both of which are ancient
and stable, though one more so than the other. And the
stir and generation of human life is precisely in the mingling
of these types and in the many variations of each one. The
hereditary outfit of a child consists of vague tendencies or
aptitudes which get definiteness and meaning only through
the communicative influences which enable them to develop.
Thus babbling is instinctive, while speech comes by this
instinct being defined and instructed in society; curiosity
comes by nature, knowledge by life; fear, in a vague,
instinctive form, is supposed to be felt even by the foetus,
but the fears of later life are chiefly social fears; there is
an instinctive sensibility which develops into sympathy
and love; and so on.

Nothing is more futile than general discussions of the
relative importance of heredity and environment. It is
much like the case of matter versus mind; both are in-
dispensable to every phase of life, and neither can exist
apart from the other: they are coordinate in importance
and incommensurable in nature. One might as well ask
whether the soil or the seed predominates in the formation

316

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

of a tree, as whether nature does more for us than nurture.
The fact that most writers have a predilection for one of
these factors at the expense of the other (Mr. Galton and
the biological school, for example, seeing heredity every-
where, and not much else, while psychologists and sociol-
ogists put the stress on influence) means only that some
are trained to attend to one class of facts and some to
another. One may be more relevant for a given practical
purpose than the other, but to make a general opposition
is unintelligent

To the eye of sentiment a new-born child offers a mov-
ing contrast to the ancient and grimy world into which it
so innocently enters; the one formed, apparently, for all
that is pure and good, "trailing clouds of glory" as some
think, from a more spiritual world than ours, pathetically
unconscious of anything but joy; the other gray and
saturnine, sure to prove in many ways a prison-house,
perhaps a foul one.

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight/' *

No doubt, however, the pathos of this contrast arises in
part .from somewhat faUarious preconceptions. The imag-
ination idealizes the child, reading its own visions into
his innocence as it does into the innocence of the sea and
the mountains, and contrasting his future career not with
what he is, but with an ideal of what he might become. In
truth the child already feels, in his own way, the painful
side of life; he has the seeds of darkness in him as well
as those of light, and cannot in strictness be said to be any
* Wordsworth, Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, etc.

317

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

better than the world. The good of life transcends his
imagination as much as does the evil, and he could not
become anything at all except in a social world. The pity
of the matter, which may well move every one who thinks
of it to work for better homes, schools and playgrounds,
is simply that we are about to make so poor a use of a
Aplastic material, that he might be so much better and
happier if we would prepare a better place for him.

It is true, in a sense, as Bacon says, that youth has more
of divinity, but perhaps we might also say that it has more
of deviltry; the younger life is, the more unbound it is,
not yet in harness, with more divine insight and more reck-

as well as of poetry.

There is a natural affinity between childhood and de-
mocracy; the latter implying, indeed, that we are to be-
come more as little children, more simple, frank and
human. And it is a very proper part of the democratic
movement that more and more prestige is attaching to
childhood, that it is more studied, cherished and respected.
Probably nothing else gives such cogency to the idea of
reform as to think of what it means to children. We
wish to know that all the children of the land are happily
unfolding their minds and hearts at home, school and play;
and that there is a gradual induction into useful work,
/which also proceeds regularly and happily. This calls for
better homes and neighborhoods, and the overcoming
of conditions that degrade them; it implies better schools,
the suppression of child-labor, regular industrial educa-
tion, wholesome and fairly paid work and reasonable se-
curity of position. While the child is not exactly better

318

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

than the world, his possibilities make us feel that the
world ought to be better for his sake.

As fast as a child becomes a person, he also becomes a
member of the existing social order. This is simply a case
of a whole and one of its differentiated parts; having so
often insisted that society and the individual are aspects
of the same thing, I need not enlarge upon it here. Even
the degenerate, so far as they have faculty enough to be
human, live in the social order and are as much one with
it as the rest of mankind. We simply cannot separate
the individual from society at large; to get a contrast we
must pass on to consider him in relation to particular in-
stitutions, or to institutions in general as distinguished
from more plastic phases of life.

An institution is a mature, specialized and compara-
tively rigid part of the social structure. It is made up of
persons, but not of whole persons; each one enters into
it with a trained and specialized part of himself. Con-
sider, for instance, the legal part of a lawyer, the ecclesi-
astical part of a church member or the business part of
a merchant. In antithesis to the institution, therefore,
the person represents the wholeness and humanness of
life; he is, as Professor Alfred Lloyd says,* "a corrector
of partiality, and a translator and distributor of special
development/ 9 A man is no man at all if he is merely
a piece of an institution; he must stand also for human
nature, for the instinctive, the plastic and the ideal.

* In a paper on The Personal and the Factional in the Life of
Society. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific
Methods, 1905, p. 337.

319

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The saying that corporations have no soul expressed
well enough this defect of all definite social structures,
which gives rise to an irrepressible conflict between them
and the freer and larger impulses of human nature. Just
in proportion as they achieve an effective special mechanism
for a narrow purpose, they lose humanness, breadth and
adaptability. As we have to be specially on our guard
against commercial corporations, because of their union
of power and impersonality, so we should be against all
institutions.

The institution represents might, and also, perhaps,
right, but right organized, mature, perhaps gone to seed,
v never fresh and unrecognized. New right, or moral
progress, always begins in a revolt against institutions.

I have in mind a painting which may be said to set forth
to the eye this relation between the living soul and the
institution. It represents St. James before the Roman
Emperor.* The former is poorly clad, beautiful, with
rapt, uplifted face; the latter majestic, dominant, assured,
seated high on his ivory chair and surrounded by
soldiers.

Of course the institutional element is equally essential
with the personal. ThjTmechanical working of tradition
and convention pours into the mind the tried wisdom of
the race, a system of thought every part of which has sur-
vived because it was, in some sense, the fittest, because it
approved itself to the human spirit. In this way the indi-
vidual gets language, sentiments, moral standards and all
kinds of knowledge^ gets them with an exertion of the

Mantegna.
320

sdgej gets
-V *By

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

will trifling compared with what these things originally
cost. They have become a social atmosphere which per-
vades the mind mostly without its active participation.
Once the focus of attention and effort, they have now re-
ceded into the dimness of the matter-of-course, leaving
energy free for new conquests. On this involuntary
foundation we build, and it needs no argument to show
that we could accomplish nothing without it.

/^Thus all innovation is based on conformity, all heter-v
odoxy on orthodoxy, all individuality on solidarity. With-
out the orthodox tradition in biology, for instance, under
the guidance of which a store of ordered knowledge had
been collected, the heterodoxy of Darwin, based on a
reinterpretation of this knowledge, would have been
impossible. And so in art, the institution supplies a
basis to the very individual who rebels against it. Mr. J
Brownell, in his work on French Art, points out, in dis- 1
cussing the relation of Rodin the innovating sculptor to
the French Institute, that he owes his development ,and
the interest his non-conformity excites largely to "the
very system that has been powerful enough to popularize
indefinitely the subject both of subscription and revolt." *
In America it is not hostile criticism but no criticism at
all — sheer ignorance and indifference — that discourages
the artist and man of letters and makes it difficult to
form a high ideal. Where there is an organized tradi-
tion there may be intolerance but there will also be intel-
ligence.

<^JThus choice, which represents the relatively free action
of human nature in building up life, is like the coral insect,

* Page 30. See also the last chapter,

321

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

always working on a mountain made up of the crystallized
remains of dead predecessors^

It is a mistake to suppose that the person is, in general,
better than the institution. Morally, as in other respects,
there are advantages on each side. The person has love
and aspiration and all sorts of warm, fresh, plastic im-
pulses, to which the institution is seldom hospitable,
but the latter has a sober and tried goodness of the ages,
the deposit, little by little, of what has been found practi-
cable in the wayward and transient outreachings of human
idealism. The law, the state, the traditional code ot
right and wrong, these are related to personality as a gray-
haired father to a child. However world-worn and hard-
ened by conflict, they are yet strong and wise and kind,
and we do well in most matters to obey them.

A similar line of reasoning applies to the popular fal-
lacy that a nation is of necessity less moral in its dealings
with other nations than an individual with other indi-
viduals. International morality is on a low plane because
it is recent and undeveloped, not from any inevitable de-
fect in its nature. It is slow to grow, like anything else of
an institutional character, but there is no reason why it
should not eventually express the utmost justice and gen-
erosity of which we are capable. All depends upon the
energy and persistence with which people try to effectuate
their ideals in this sphere. The slowness of an institu-
tion is compensated by its capacity for age-long cumulative
growth, and in this way it may outstrip, even morally, the
ordinary achievement of individuals — as the Christian
Church, for example, stands for ideals beyond the attain-

322

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

ment of most of its members. If we set our hearts on
having a righteous state we can have one more righteous
than any individual.

The treatment of Cuba by the United States and the
suppression of the slave-trade by the British are examples
of nations acting upon generous principles which we may
reasonably expect to extend as time goes on. As the need
of international justice and peace becomes keenly felt, its
growth becomes as natural as the analogous process in
an individual.

Whenever the question is raised between choice and
mechanism,* the advocates of the latter may justly claim
that it saves energy, and may demand whether, in a given
case, the results of choice justify its cost.

Thus choice, working on a large scale, is competition,
and the only alternative is some mechanical principle,
either the inherited status of history or some new rule of
stability to be worked out, perhaps, by socialism. Yet the
present competitive order is not unjustly censured as
wasteful, harassing, unjust and hostile to the artistic
spirit. Choice is working somewhat riotously, without
an adequate basis of established principles and standards,
and so far as socialism is seeking these it is doing well.

Carlyle and others have urged with much reason that the
mediaeval workman, hemmed in as he was by mechanical
and to us unreasonable restrictions, was in some respects
better off than his modern successor. There was less
freedom of opportunity, but also less strain, ugliness and

* I mean by mechanism anything in the way of habit, authority
or formula that tends to dispense with choice.

323

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

despair; and the standards of the day were perhaps better
maintained than ours are now.

We need a better discipline, a more adequate organiza-
tion; the competent student can hardly fail to see this;
but these things do not exist ready-made, and our present
task seems to be to work them out, at the expense, doubt-
less, of other objects toward which, in quieter times,
choice might be directed.
y Thus it ufrom the interaction of personality and insti-
/tutions thatprogress comes. The person represents more
i <fi directly that human nature which it is the end of all insti-
„,* tutions to serve, but the institution represents the net re*

Y } r r J suit of a development far transcending any single personal
. ^\ consciousness. The person will criticise, and be mostly
f y in the wrong, but not altogether. He will attack, and

mostly fail, but from many attacks change will ensue!

It is also true that although institutions stand, in a gen-
eral way, for the more mechanical phase of life, they yet
require, within themselves, an element of personal freedom.
Individuality, provided it be in harness, is the life of insti-
tutions, all vigor and adaptability depending upon it

An army is the type of a mechanical institution; and
yet, even in an army, individual choice, confined of course
within special channels, is vital to the machine. In the
German army, according to a competent observer, there
is a systematic culture of self-reliance, a "development of
the individual powers by according liberty to the utmost
extent possible with the maintenance of the necessary
system and discipline." "To the commandant of the
company is left the entire responsibility for the instruction

324

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

of his men, in what mode and at what hour he may see fit,"
and "a like freedom is accorded to every officer charged
with every branch whatsoever of instruction/' while "the
intelligence and self-reliance of the soldier is constantly
appealed to." * In American armies the self-reliant spirit
of the soldier and the common-sense and adaptability
developed by our rough-and-ready civilization have always
been of the utmost value. Nor are they unfavorable to
discipline, that " true discipline of the soldiers of freedom,
a discipline which must arise from individual conviction
of duty and is very different from the compulsory discipline
of the soldier of despotism."! Thus, in the battle of
Gettysburg, when Pickett's charge broke the Federal
line, and when for the moment, owing to the death of
many officers, the succession of command was lost, it is
said that the men without orders took up a position which
enabled them to crush the invading column.

As the general character of organization becomes freer
and more human, both the mechanical and the choosing"
elements of the institution rise to a higher plane. The j
former ceases to be an arbitrary and intolerant law, upheld l
by fear, by supernatural sanctions and the suppression of
free speech; and tends to become simply a settled habit v
of thought, settled not because discussion is stifled but
because it is superfluous, because the habit of thought has
.so proved its fitness to existing conditions that there is no
prospect of shaking it.

Thus in a free modern state, the political system, funda-

* Baring-Gould, Germany, i, 350 ff.
t Garibaldi's Autobiography, i, 105.

325

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

mental property rights and the like are settled, so far as
they are settled, not because they are sacred or authori-
tative, but because the public mind is convinced of their
soundness. Though we may not reason about them they
are, so to speak, potentially rational, inasmuch as they
are believed to rest upon reason and may at any time be
tested by it.

The advantages and disadvantages of this sort of insti-
tutions are well understood. They do not afford quite
the sharp and definite discipline of a more arbitrary sys-
tem, but they are more flexible, more closely expressive
of the public mind, and so, if they can be made to work at
all, more stable.

The free element in institutions also tends to become
better informed, better trained, better organized, more
truly rational. We have so many occasions to note this
that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it here.

CHAPTER XXIX

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL- Continued.

Innovation as a Personal Tendency — Innovation and Con-
servatism as Public Habit — Solidarity — French and
Anglo-Saxon Solidarity — Tradition and Convention —
Not so Opposite as They Appear — Real Difference, In
this Regard, Between Modern and Medlbval Society
— Traditionalism and Conventionalism in Modern Life.

The time-worn question of conservatism as against
change has evidently much uipommon with that of person-
ality as against institutions/. Innovation, IbRfctB; is bound
up with the assertion of fresh personality against mechan-
ism^ and the arguments for and against it are the same
asl have already suggested. Wherever there is vigor and
constructive power in the individual there is likely to be
discontent with the establishment. The young notoriously
tend to innovation, and so do those of a bold and restless
temperament at any age; the old, on the contrary, the
quiet, the timid, are conservative. And so with whole
peoples; in so far as they are enfeebled by climate or
other causes they become inert and incapable of construc-
tive change.

What may not be quite so obvious, at least to those who
have not read M. Tarde's work on the Laws of Imitation,*

* Gabriel Tarde, Lea lois de limitation; English translation
The Laws of Imitation.

327

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

is that) innovation or the opposite may be a public habit,
independently of differences in age or vigor. The atti-
tude toward change is subject to the same sort of altera-
tion as public opinion, or any other phase of the public
mind." That a nation has moved for centuries in the
deepest ruts of conservatism, like China or India, is no
proof of a lack of natural vigor, but may mean only that
the social type has matured and hardened in isolation,
not encountering any influence pungent enough to pierce
its shell and start a cycle of change^ Thus it is now ap-
parent that lack of incitement, not lack of capacity, was

sthe cause of the backwardness of Japan, and there is
little doubt that the same is true of China.

Energy and suggestion are equally indispensable to all
human achievement. In the absence of the latter the
mind easily spends itself in minor activities, and there is no
reason why this should not be true of a whole people and
continue for centuries. Then, again, a spark may set it
on fire and produce in a few years pregnant changes in
the structure of society. The physical law of the persist-
ence of energy in uniform quantity is a most illusive one

• to apply to human life. There is always a great deal more
mental energy than is utilized, and the amount that is
really productive depends chiefly on the urgency of sug-
gestion. Indeed, the higher activities of the human mind
are, in general, more like a series of somewhat fortuitous
explosions than like the work of a uniform force.
£ There may also be a habit of change that is mere rest-
lessness and has no constructive significance/") In the
early history of America a conspicuous character on the
frontier was the man who had the habit of moving on.

328

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

He would settle for two or three years in one locality and
then, getting restless, sell out and go on to another. So
at present, those whom ambition and circumstance, in early
manhood, have driven rapidly from one thing to another,
often continue into old age the habit so acquired, making
their families and friends most uncomfortable. I have
noticed that there are over-strenuous people who have
come to have an ideal of themselves as making an effort,
and are most uneasy when this is not the case. To " being
latent feel themselves no less" is quite impossible to
them.

In our commercial and industrial life the somewhat
feverish progress has generated a habit, a whole system
of habits, based on the expectation of change. Enter-
prise and adaptability are cultivated at the expense of
whatever conflicts with them; each one, feeling that the
procession is moving on and that he must keep up with it,
hurries along at the expense, perhaps, of health, culture
and sanity.

This unrest is due rather to transition than to de-
mocracy; the ancient view that the latter is in its nature
unstable being, as I have said, quite discredited. Even
£T)e Tocqueville^lbout 1835, saw that the/political unrest
of America was in minor affairs? and that a democratic
polity might conceivably "render society more stationary
than it has ever been in our western part of the world."*
Tarde has expounded the matter at length and to much
the same effect. A policy is stable when it is suited to
prevailing conditions; and every year makes it more ap-
parent that for peoples of European stock, at least; a

* Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iii, chap. 21.

329

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

polity essentially democratic is the only one that can per-
manently meet this test.

(social group in which there is a fundamental harmony
of forces resulting in effective cooperation may be said,
, J wpp c a e, to be solidaire) to adopt a French word much
used in this connection. Thus France with its compara-
tively homogeneous people has no doubt more solidarity
—notwithstanding its dissensions— than Austria; Eng-
land more than Russia, and Japan more than China.

But if one thinks closely about the question he will find
it no easy matter to say in j n^t. whfr j [solidarity _consists.
■Not in mere l ikeness, eeitaiiilj ', jingfi Jthe«jdifi§rence of
individuals and parts is n o t only ■ conoiotew ^ with bu t es-
sential to "a Tiarmonious. wh ole^r -as the harmony of music
is produced by differing but correlated sounds. We want
what Burke described as "that action and counteraction,
which in the natural and in the political world, from the
reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the
harmony of the universe."*

So far asjikeness is-necessary4t is anpaceatly a likeness

. of essential ideflff and, fftill more, ftf sent.imfmt47ftppropTia.te

to the activity in question. Thus a Japanese writer ex-
plains the patriotic unity of his countrymen by their com-
mon devotion to the Mikado and the imperial family.

"When a Japanese says 'I love my country/ a great or even the
greater part of his idea of his 'country' is taken up by the emperor
and the imperial family ... his forefathers and descendants are
also taken into account." "In joy and in sorrow he believes that
they (his own ancestors) are with him. He serves them as if they
were living. And these ancestors whom he loves and reveres were

* The Works of Edmund Burke (Boston, 1884), vol. iii, p. 277.

3^0

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

all loyal to their emperors in their days; so he feels he must be loyal
to his emperor.

" Nothing is so real to him as what he feels; and he feels that with
him are united the past, the present and the future generations of
his countrymen." "Thus fully conscious of the intense sympathy
of his compatriots, both dead and living, and swelled with lofty
anticipations of his glorious destiny, no danger can appall and no
toil can tire the real Japanese soldier."*

In America unity of spirit is intense, and yet singularly
headless and formless. There is no capital city, no guid-
ing upper class, no monarch, no creed, scarcely even a
dominating tradition. It seems to be a matter of com-
mon allegiance to vague sentiments of freedom, kindliness
and hope. And this very circumstance, that the American
spirit is so little specialized and so much at one with the
general spirit of human nature, does more than anything
else to make it influential, and potent in the assimilation
of strange elements.

The^only adequate proof of a lack of solidarity is in-
efficiency in total actionfj There may be intense strife of
parties and classes which has nothing really disintegrating
in it; but when we see, as was apparently the case in
Russia not long ago, that the hour of conflict with an ex-
ternal enemy does not unite internal forces but increases
their divergence, it is clear that something is wrong.

It is sometimes said that France has more solidarity
than Great Britain or the United States, the ground being
that we have a less fluent unity of the social mind, a more
vigorous self-assertion of the individual. But this is as

* Amenomori in the Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1904.

331

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

dubious as to say that the contention of athletes amcag
themselves will prevent their uniting to form a strong
team. Yet there does seem to be an interesting difference
in kind between the sort of unity, of common discipline
and sentiment, which exists among the French and that of
English or Americans — these latter, however different,
being far more like each other in this respect than either
to the French. The contrast seems to me so illuminat-
ing, as a study of social types, that I will spend a few
pages in attempting to expound it.

French thought— as to this I follow largely Mr. Brown-
ell's penetrating study *— seems to be not only more central-
ized in place, that is, more dominated by the capital, but
also, leaving aside certain notorious divisions, more uni-
form, more authoritative, more intolerant, more obviously
solidaire. There is less initiative, less aggressive non-con-
formity. French sentiment emphasizes equality much
more than individual freedom and is somewhat intolerant
of any marked departure from the dominant types of
thought. There is more jealousy of personal power,
especially in politics, and less of that eager yet self-poised
sympathy with triumphant personality which we find in
England or America. There is, in fact, more need to be
jealous of a personal ascendency, because, when it once
gains sway, there is less to check it. And with all this
goes the French system of public education, whose well-
known uniformity, strictness of discipline and classical
conservatism is both cause and effect of the trend toward
formal solidarity.

* French Traits. P. G. Hamerton's works, especially his French
and English, are also full of suggestion.

332

INSTITUTIONS AND THtf INDIVIDUAL

There is also an intolerance of the un-French and an
inability to understand it even greater, perhaps, than the
corresponding phenomenon in other nations. The French
are self-absorbed and care little for the history of other
peoples. Nor are they sympathetic with contemporaries.
"In Paris, certainly/' says Mr. Brownell, "the foreigner,
hospitably as he is invariably treated, is invariably treated
as the foreigner that he is."*

TVifi-relfttiYfr weakness of ind ividuality in FrancfLfo due,
of course, nnf to any lark o f nHf f ilin g, but to the fact
that the FrenchmaniHenHfips himsHf j^ore with the social
whole, and , merged in that, doe s not take his mi6re~partic-
titeF"self soseriously. It is rather awe-feeling than an

-feelhjg, and differentiates France more sharply from
other nations than it does the individual Frenchman from
his compatriots. "He does not admire France because
she is his country. His complacence with himself pro-
ceeds from the circumstance that he is a Frenchman; which
is distinctly what he is first, being a man afterward." f
"One never hears the Frenchman boast of the character
and quality of his compatriots as Englishmen and our-
selves do. He is thinking about France, about her
different gloires, about her position at the head of civ-
ilization." £

'' As there is less individuality in general, so there is a
happy lack of whimsical and offensive oddity, of sharp
corners and bad taste. Mr. Brownell finds nothing more
significant than the absence in France of prigs. "One
infers at once in such a society a free and effortless play
of the faculties, a large, humorous and tolerant view of
* French Traits, page 284. t Page 295. J Page 295.

333

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

oneself and others, leisure, calm, healthful and rational
vivacity, a tranquil confidence in one's own perceptions
and in the intelligence of one's neighbors/'*

With this partial irresponsibility, this tendency not to
take one's private self too seriously, goes a lack of moral
extremes of all kinds. Their goodness is not so good,
their vice not so vicious as ours. Both are more derived
from immediate intercourse. " What would be vice among
us remains in France social irregularity induced by senti-
ment, f"

These traits have an obvious connection with that more
eager and facile communicativeness that strikes us so in
^ the French: they have as a rule less introspection, live
more immediately and congenially in a social stream from
which, accordingly, they are less disposed to differentiate
themselves.

France is, no doubt, as truly democratic in its way as
the United States; indeed, in no other country, perhaps,
is the prevalent sentiment of the people in a given group
so erotic, so immediately authoritative. Such formalism
as prevails there is of a sort with which the people them-
selves are in intelligent sympathy, not one imposed from
above like that of Russia, or even that of Germany. But
\ it is a democracy of a type quite other than ours, less
i differentiated individually and more so, perhaps, by groups,
\ more consolidated and institutional. The source of this
divergence lies partly in the course of history and partly,
no doubt, in race psychology. Rooted dissensions, like
that between the Republic and the Church, and the need
of keeping the people in readiness for sudden war, are
* Idem, page 304. t Page &*•

334

INSTITUTIONS AND THfc INDIVIDUAL

among the influences which make formal unity more
necessary and tolerable in France than in England.

The French kind of solidarity has both advantages
and disadvantages as compared with the Anglo-Saxon.
It certainly facilitates the formation of well-knit social
groups; such, for instance, as the artistic "schools"
whose vigor has done so much toward giving France its
lead in aesthetic production. On the other hand, where
the Anglo-Saxon type of structure succeeds in combining
greater vigor of individuality with an equally effective
unity of sentiment, it would seem to be, in so far, superior
to a type whose solidarity is secured at more expense of
variation. It is the self-dependence, the so-called indi-
vidualism, of the Teutonic peoples which has given them
so decided a lead in the industrial and political struggles
of recent times^

Perhaps thc^most searching test of solidarity is that f
loyalty of the individual to the whole which ensures that, j
however isolated, as a soldier, a pioneer, a mechanic, a <
student, he will cherish that whole in his heart and do his ;
duty to it in contempt of terror or bribesTJ And it is pre- ;
cisely in this that the Anglo-Saxon peoples are strong. \
The Englishman, though alone in the wilds of Africa, is I
seldom other than an Englishman, setting his conscience
by English standards and making them good in action.
This moral whole, possessing the individual and making
every one a hero after his own private fashion, is the solid- 1 '
arity we want.

Tradition comes down from the past, while convention)
arrives, sidewise as it were, from our contemporaries; the(

336

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

fireside tales and maxims of our grandparents illustrate
the one, the fashions of the day the other. Both indicate
continuity of mind, but tradition has a long extension in
time and very little, perhaps, in place, while convention
extends in place but may endure only for a day.

This seems a clear distinction, and a great deal has been
made of it by some writers, who regard " custom imitation "
and "fashion imitation,"* to use the terms of Tarde, the
brilliant French sociologist, as among the primary traits
that differentiate societies.

Thus mediaeval society, it is said, was traditional: people
lived in somewhat isolated groups and were dominated
by the ideas of their ancestors, these being more accessible
than those of their contemporaries. On the other hand,
modern society, with its telegraphs, newspapers and migra-
tions, is conventional. Thought is transmitted over vast
areas and countless multitudes; ancestral continuity is
broken up; people get the habit of looking sidewise rather
than backward, and there comes to be an instinctive prefer-
ence of fashion over custom. In the time of Dante, if you
travelled over Europe you would find that each town,
each district, had its individual dress, dialect and local
custom, handed down from the fathers. There was much
change with place, little with time. If you did the same
to-day, you would find the people everywhere dressed
very much alike, dialects passing out of use and men eager
to identify themselves with the common stii of contempo-
rary life. And you would also find that the dress, behavior
and objects of current interest, though much the same
for whole nations and having a great deal in common the

* Imitationrcoutume and imitation-mode,

33*

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

world over, were somewhat transient in character, chang-
ing much with time, little with place.

There is, truly, ^momentous difference in Lilly liquid
between modern and mediaeval life, but to c all & a cfiange
from tradition to conventionjdoes not, I think, indicate

its real character. Indeed /tradition and convention
by no means tbfeseparate and opposite thi ngs j hey may
appear to be when we look at them in their most contrasted
phases. It would be strange if there were any real sepa-
ration between ideas coming from the past and those com-
ing from contemporaries, since they exist in the same pub-
he mind. A traditional usage is also a convention within
the group where it prevails. One learns it from other
people and conforms to it by imitation and the desire not
to be singular, just as he does to any other convention.
The quaint local costume that still prevails in out-of-the-
way corners of Europe is worn for the same reasons, no
doubt, that the equally peculiar dress-suit and silk hat are
worn by sophisticated people the world over; one con-
vention is simply more extended than the other. In old
times the conforming group, owing to the difficulty of
intercourse, was small. People were eager to be in the
fashion, as they are now, but they knew nothing of fashions
beyond their own locality. Modern traditions are con-
ventional on a larger scale. The Monroe Doctrine, to
take a dignified example, is a tradition, regarded histori-
cally, but a convention as to the manner in which it enters
into contemporary opinion.

In a similar manner we may see that conventions must
also be traditions. The new fashions are adaptations of

337

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

old ones, and there are no really new ideas of any sort,

only a gradual transformation of those that have come

down from the past. _.

| In a large view, then, tradition and convention are merely

L aspects of the transmission of thought and of the unity of

V] social groups that results from itT) If our mind is fixed

upon the historical phase of the matter we see tradition,

if upon the contemporary phase we see convention. But

th5process is really one, and the opposition only particular

ancrapparent. All influences are contemporary in their

immediate origin, all are rooted in the past.*"}

What is it, then, that makes th/difference between an
apparently traditional society, sucn as that of mediaeval
Europe, and an apparently conventional society, like that
of our time^^flpy that the conditions are such as to
make one of these phases more obvious than the othen
In a comparatively small and stable group, continuous in
the same locality and having little intercourse with the
world outside, the fact that ideas come from tradition is
evident; they pass down from parents to children as
visibly as physical traits. Convention, however, or the
action of contemporary intercourse, is on so small a scale
as to be less apparent; the length and not the breadth of
the movement attracts the eye.

On the other hand, in the case of a wide-reaching group
bound into conscious unity by facile communication,
people no longer look chiefly to their fathers for ideas; the
paternal influence has to compete with many others, and
is further weakened by the breaking up of family associa-
tions which goes' with ease of movement. Yet men are

338

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

not less dependent upon the past than before; it is only
that tradition is so intricate and so spread out over the
face of things that its character as tradition is hardly to
be discovered. The obvious thing now is the lateral
movement; influences seem to come in sidewise and fash-
ion rules over custom. The difference is something like
that between a multitude of disconnected streamlets and
a single wide river, in which the general downward
movement is obscured by numerous cross-currents and
eddies.

In truth, facile communication extends the scope of
tradition as much as it does that of fashion. All the known
past becomes accessible anywhere, and instead of the cult
of immediate ancestors we have a long-armed, selective
appropriation of whatever traditional ideas suit our tastes.
For painting the whole world goes to Renaissance Italy,
for sculpture to ancient Greece, and so on. Convention
has not gained as against tradition, but both have been
transformed.

In much the same way we may distinguish between
traditionalism and conventionalism; the one meaning a
dominant type of thought evidently handed down from
the past, the other a type formed by contemporary influ-
ence — but we should not expect the distinction to be any
more fundamental than before.

/Traditionalism may be looked for wherever there are
long-established groups somewhat shut out from lateral!
influence, either by external conditions or by the character
of their own system of ideasy-in isolated rural communities,
for example, in old and close-knit organizations like the

339

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

church, or in introverted nations such as China used to
be. Conventionalism applies to well-knit types not evi-
dently traditional, and describes a great part of modern
life.

The fact that some phases of society are more domi-
nated by settled types, whether traditional or conventional,
than others, indicates, of course, a certain equilibrium
of influences in them, and a comparative absence of com-
peting ideas. This, in turn, is favored by a variety of
causes. One is a lack of individuality and self-assertive-
ness on the part of the people — as the French are said to
conform to types more readily than the English or Ameri-
cans. Another requisite is the lapse of sufficient time
for the type to establish itself and mould men's actions
into conformity; even fashion cannot be made in a min-
ute. A third is that there should be enough interest in
the matter that non-conformity may be noticed and dis-
approved; and yet not enough interest to foster origi-
nality. We are most imitative when we notice but do not
greatly care. Still another favoring condition is the habit
of deference to some authority, which may impose the
type by example.

Thus the educated classes of England are, perhaps,
more conventional in dress and manner than the corre-
sponding classes in the United States. If so, the expla-
nation is probably not in any intrinsic difference of indi-
viduality, but in conditions more or less favorable to the
ripening of types; such as the comparative newness and
confusion of American civilization, the absence of an ac-
knowledged upper class to set an authoritative example,
and a certain lack of interest in the externals of life which

340

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

our restlessness seems to foster.* On the other hand, it
must be said that the insecurity of position and more im-
mediate dependence upon the opinion of one's fellows,
which exist in America, have a tendency toward conven-
tionalism, because they make the individual more eager to
appear well in the eyes of others. It is a curious fact,
which may illustrate this principle, that the House of
Commons, the more democratic branch of the British
legislature, is described as more conventional than the
House of Lords. Probably if standards were sufficiently
developed in America there would be no more difficulty
in enforcing them than in England.

Perhaps we should hit nearest the truth if we said that
American life had conventions of its own, vaguer than the
British and putting less weight on forms and more on
fellow-feeling, but not necessarily less cogent.

♦Americans should notice that what they are apt to call the
snobbishness of the English middle class — their anxiety to imitate
those whom they regard as social superiors — has its good result in
producing a discipline in which many of us are somewhat grossly
lacking. It may be better, in manners for instance, that people
should adopt a standard from questionable motives than that they
should have no standard at all. The trouble with us is the preva-
lence of a sprawling, gossiping self-content that does not know or
care whether such things as manners, art and literature exist or not.

341

CHAPTER XXX

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

The Nature of Formalism — Its Effect upon Personality—
Formalism in Modern Life — Disorganization, "Individ-
ualism 11 — How rr Affects the Individual — Relation to
Formalism — " Individualism " Implies Defective Sympathy
— Contemporary " Individualism " — Restlessness under
Discomfort — The Better Aspect of Disorganization.

/ Too much mechanism in societ yg ives us something for
which there are many names, slightly different in meaning,
as institutionalismyTormalismfT^ traditionalism, conven-
tionalism, ritualism/TmreaucfScy and the like. It is by
no means easy, however, to determine whether mechan-
ism is in excess or not. It becomes an evil, no doubt,
when it interferes with growth and adaptation, when it
suppresses individuality and stupefies or misdirects the
energies of human nature. But just when this is the case
is likely not to be clear until the occasion is long past and
we can see the matter in the perspective of history.

Thus, in religion, it is well that men should adhere to
the creeds and ritual worked out in the past for spiritual
edification, so long as these do, on the whole, fulfil their
function; and it is hard to fix the time — not the same for
different churches, classes or individuals — when they cease
to do this. But it is certain that they die, in time, like
all tissue, and if not cleared away presently rot.

It has been well said that formalism is "an excess of

"the organ of language."* The aim of all organization is

* The Poet. Emerson.

342

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

to express human nature, and it does this through a system
of symbols, which are the embodiment and vehicle of the
IdeTso long . spin, od symbol . rtrifr u-ited
and the idea is really conveyed, all is well, but so fast
as they are separated the symbol becomes an empty
shell, to. which, however, custom, pride or interest may
still cling. It then supplants rather than conveys the
reality.

/Underlying all formalism, indtud, is tb* fact that it is
psychically cheap; it substitutes the outer for the inner
as more tangible^ more capable of being held before the
mind without fresh expense of thought and feeling, more
easily extended, therefore, and impressed upon the multi-
tude. Thus in our own architecture or literature we have
innumerable cheap, unfelt repetitions of forms that were
significant and beautiful in their time and place.

Thejeffect of formalism upon personality is to starve
its higher life and leave it the prey of apatW self-com-
placency, sensuality and the lower nature in general.
A formalized religion and a formalized freedom are,
notoriously, the congenial dwelling-place of depravity
and oppression.

When a system of this sort is thoroughly established,
as in the case of the later Roman Empire, it confines the
individual mind as in a narrow cage by supplying it with
only one sort of suggestions. The variation of ideas and
the supplanting of old types by new can begin only by
individuals getting hold of suggestions that conflict with
those of the ruling system; and in the absence of this an
old type may go on reproducing itself indefinitely, indi*

343

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

viduals seeming no more to it than the leaves of a tree,
which drop in the autumn and in the spring are replaced
by others indistinguishable from them. It " breeds true"
on the same principle that wild pigeons, long kept to a
fixed type by natural limitations, are less variable than
domestic species, in whose recent past there have been
elements of change.

Among the Hindoos, for instance, a child is brought up
from infancy in subjection to ceremonies and rites which
stamp upon him the impression of a fixed and immemorial
system. They control the most minute details of his life,
and leave little room for choice either on his part or that
of his parents. There is no attempt to justify tradition
by reason: custom as such is obligatory.

Intolerance goes very naturally with formalism, since
to a mind in the unresisted grasp of a fixed system of
thought anything that departs from that system must
appear irrational and absurd. The lowest Chinaman un-
affectedly despises the foreigner, of whatever rank, as
a vulgar barbarian, just as Christians used to despise the
Jews, and the Jews, in their time, the Samaritans.
Tolerance comes in along with peaceful discussion, when
there is a competition of various ways of thinking, no one
of which is strong enough to suppress the others.

In America and western Europe at the present day
there is a great deal of formalism, but it is, on the whole,
of a partial and secondary character, existing rather from
the inadequacy of vital force than as a ruling principle.
The general state of thought favors adaptation, because
we are used to it and have found it on the whole beneficial.

344

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

We expect, for example, that a more vital and flexible
form of organization will supplant the rigid systems of
Russia and the Orient, and whatever in our own world
is analogous to these.

/SBut dead mechanism is too natural a product of human
conditions not to exist at all timespand we may easily find
it to-day in the church, in politics, in education, industry
and philanthropy; wherever there is a lack of vital
thought and sentiment to keep the machinery pliant to
its work.

Thus our schools, high and low, exhibit a great deal of
it. Routine methods, here as everywhere, are a device
for turning out cheap work in large quantities, and the
temptation to use them, in the case of a teacher who has
too much to do, or is required to do that which he does not
understand or believe in, is almost irresistible. Indeed,
they are too frequently inculcated by principals and train-
ing schools, in contempt of the fact that the one essential
thing in real teaching is a personal expression between
teacher and pupil. Drill is easy for one who has got the
knack of it, just because it requires nothing vital or per-
sonal, but is a convenient appliance for getting the busi-
ness done with an appearance of success and little trouble
to any one.

Even universities have much of this sort of cant. In
literature, for instance, whether ancient or modern, Eng-
lish or foreign, little that is vital is commonly imparted.
Compelled by his position to teach something to large
and diverse classes, the teacher is led to fix upon certain
matters — such as grammar, metres, or the biographies
of the authors — whose definiteness suits them for the didac-

345

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

tic purpose, and drill them into the student; while the
real thing, the sentiments that are the soul of literature,
are not communicated. If the teacher himself feels them,
which is often the case, the fact that they cannot be re-
duced to formulas and tested by examinations discourages
him from dwelling upon them.

In like manner our whole system of commerce and in*
dustry is formal in the sense that it is a vast machine
grinding on and on in a blind way which is often de-
structive of the human nature for whose service it exists.
Mammon— as in the painting by Watts— is not a fiend,
wilfully crushing the woman's form that lies under his
hand, but only a somewhat hardened man of the world,
looking in another -direction and preoccupied with the
conduct of business upon business principles.

A curious instance of the same sort of thing is the stereo-
typing of language by the cheap press and the habit of
hasty reading. The newspapers are called upon to give
a maximum of commonplace information for a minimum
of attention, and in doing this are led to adopt a small
standard vocabulary and a uniform arrangement of
words and sentences. All that requires fresh thought,
either from reader or writer, is avoided to the greater
comfort of both. The telegraph plays a considerable
part in this, and an observer familiar with its technique
points out how it puts a premium on long but unmistak-
able words, on conventional phrases (for which the oper-
ators have brief signs) and on a sentence structure so
obvious that it cannot be upset by mistakes in punctuation.*

* See the article by R. L. O'Brien in the Atlantic Monthly, Oct.,
1904.

346

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

In this way our newspapers, and the magazines and books
that partake of their character, are the seat of a conven-
tionalism perhaps as destructive of the spirit of literature
as ecclesiasticism is of the spirit of Christianity.

Th^ apparent opposite of formalism, but in reality
closely akin to it, is disorganization or disintegration,
often, though inaccurately, called "individualism."* I
One is mechanism supreme, the other mechanism going
to pieces; and both are in contrast to that harmony be- 1 ^
tween human nature and its instruments which is desirable^J

In this state of things general order and discipline are
lacking. Though there may be praiseworthy persons
and activities, society as a whole wants unity and ration-
ality, like a picture which is good in details but does not
make a pleasing composition. Individuals and special
groups appear to be working too much at cross purposes;
there is a "reciprocal struggle of discordant powers" but
the "harmony of the universe" does not emerge. As
good actors do not always make a good troupe nor brave
soldiers a good army, so a nation or a historical epoch —
say Italy in the Renaissance — may be prolific in distin-
guished persons and scattered achievements but somewhat
futile and chaotic as a system.

l_ Disorganization appears in the individual as a mind
without cogent and abiding allegiance to a whole/ and
without the larger principles of conduct that flow fromV^
such allegiance. The better aspect of this is that the lack

* Inaccurately, because the full development of the individual
requires organization

347

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of support may stimulate a man to greater activity and
independence, the worse that the absence of social stand-
ards is likely to lower his plane of achievement and throw
him back upon sensuality and other primitive impulses:
also that, if he is of a sensitive fibre, he is apt to be over-
strained by the contest with untoward conditions. How
soothing and elevating it is to breathe the atmosphere of
some large and quiet discipline. I remember feeling this
in reading Lord Roberts' Forty-one Years in India, a
book pervaded with one great and simple thought, the
Anglo-Indian service, which dominates all narrow con-
siderations and gives people a worthy ideal to live by.
How rarely, in our day, is a book or a man dominated by
restful and unquestioned faith in anything!

The fact that great personalities often appear in dis-
ordered times may seem to be a contradiction of the prin-
ciple that the healthy development of individuals is one
with that of institutions. Thus the Italian Renaissance,
which was a time of political disorder and religious decay,
produced the greatest painters and sculptors of modern
times, and many great personalities in literature and states-
manship. But the genius which may appear in such a
period is always, in one point of view, the fruitage of a fore-
going and traditional development, never a merely personal
phenomenon. That this was true of Renaissance art
needs no exposition; like every great achievement it was
founded upon organization.

It is no doubt the case, however, that there is a spur in
the struggles of a confused time which may excite a few
individuals to heroic efforts and accomplishment, just as
a fire or a railroad disaster may be the occasion of heroism;

348

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

and so the disorder of the Renaissance was perhaps one
cause of the men of genius, as well as of the demoraliza-
tion which they did not escape.

It looks at first sight as if formalism and disorganiza-/
tion were as far apart as possible, but in fact they arej
closely connected, the latter being only the next step aftei
the former in a logical sequence — the decay of a body al-
ready dead. Formalism goes very naturally with sen-
suality, avarice, selfish ambition, and other traits of dis-
organization, because the merely formal institution does
not enlist and discipline the soul of the individual, but
takes hold of him by the outside, his personality being left
to torpor or to irreverent and riotous activity. So in the
later centuries of the Roman Empire, when its system
was most rigid, the people became unpatriotic, disorderly
and sensual.

In the same way a school whose discipline is merely
formal, not engaging the interest and good-will of the
scholar, is pretty certain to turn out unruly boys and girls,
because whatever is most personal and vital in them be-
comes accustomed to assert itself in opposition to the sys-
tem. And so in a church where external observance
has been developed at the expense of personal judgment,
the individual conforms to the rite and then feels free for
all kinds of self-indulgence. In general the lower "indi-
vidualism" of our time, the ruthless self-assertion which is
so conspicuous, for example, in business, is not something
apart from our institutions but expresses the fact that they
are largely formal and unhuman, not containing and en-
larging the soul of the individual.

349

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The real opposite of both formalism and disorder is that
'wholesome relation between individuality and the insti-
tution in which each supports the other, the latter con-
I tributing a stable basis for the vitality and variation of
the former, j

From one point of view disorganization is a lack of

^communication and social consciousness, a defect in the

I Morgan of language, as formalism is an excess. There is

ilways, I suppose, a larger whole; the question is whether

he individual thinks and feels it vividly through some

sort of sympathetic contact; if he does he will act as a

Member of it.

In the writings of one of the most searching and yet
hopeful critics of our times* we find that "individualism"
is identified primarily with an isolation of sentiment, like
that of the scholar in his study, the business man in his
office or the mechanic who does not feel the broader mean-
ing of his work. The opposite of it is the life of shoulder-
to-shoulder sympathy and cooperation, in which the de-
sire for separate power or distinction is lost in the overrul-
ing sense of common humanity. And the logical remedy
for "individualism" is sought in that broadening of the
spirit by immediate contact with the larger currents of
life, which is the aim of the social settlement and similar
movements.

This is, indeed, an inspiring and timely ideal, but let us
hold it without forgetting that specialized and lonesome
endeavor, indeed even individual pride and self-seeking,
have also their uses. If we dwell too exclusively upon the

* Jane Addams.

350

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

we-feeling and the loss of the one in the many, we may
lapse into a structureless emotionalism. Eye-to-eye fellow-
ship and the pride of solitary achievement are both essen-
tial, each in its own way, to human growth, and either is
capable of over-indulgence. We need the most erect in-
dividual with the widest base of sympathy.

In so far as it is true of our time that the larger inter-
ests of society are not impressed upon the individual, so
that his private impulses cooperate with the public good,
it is a time of moral disintegration. A well-ordered com-
munity is like a ship in which each officer and seaman
has confidence in his fellows and in the captain, and is
well accust6med to do his duty with no more than ordi-
nary grumbling. All hangs together, and is subject to
reason in the form of long-tried rules of navigation and
discipline. Virtue is a system and men do heroic acts as
part of the day's work and without self-consciousness.
But suppose that the ship goes to pieces — let us say upon
an iceberg — then the orderly whole is broken up and
officers, seamen and passengers find themselves struggling
miscellaneously in the water. Rational control and the
virtue that is habit being gone, each one is thrown back
upon his undisciplined impulses. Survival depends not
upon wisdom or goodness — as it largely does in a social
system — but upon ruthless force, and the best may prob-
ably perish.

Here is " individualism " in the lowest sense, and it is

the analogue of this which is said, not without some reason,

to pervade our own society. Old institutions are passing

away and better ones, we hope, are preparing to take their

351
I

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

place, but in the meantime there is a lack of that higher
discipline which prints the good of the whole upon the
heart of the member. In a traditional order one is ac-
customed from childhood to regard usage, the authority
of elders and the dominant institutions as the rule of life.
"So it must be" fa one's unconscious conviction, and,
like the seaman, he does wise and heroic things without
I knowing it. But in our own time there is for many per-
' sons, if not most, no authoritative canon of life, and for
^ better or worse we are ruled by native impulse and by
\that private reason which may be so weak when detached
(from a rational whole. The higher morality, if it is to be
[attained at all, must be specially thought out; and of the
tew who can do this a large part exhaust their energy in
/thinking and do not practise with any heartiness the
(truths they perceive.

We find, then, that people have to make up their own
minds upon their duties as wives, husbands, mothers and
daughters; upon commercial obligation and citizenship;
upon the universe and the nature and authority of God.
Inevitably many of us make a poor business of it. It is
too much. It is as if each one should sit down to invent
a language for himself: these things should be thought
out gradually, cooperatively each adding little and ac-
cepting much. That great traditions should rapidly go
f to pieces may be a necessary phase of evolution and a
disguised blessing, but the present effect is largely dis-
traction and demoralization.

In particular, we notice that few who have burdens to
bear are much under the control of submissive tradition,

352

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

but every one asks "Why must I bear this ?" and the pain
of trying to see why is often worse than the evil itself.
There is commonly no obvious reason, and the answer
is often a sense of rebellion and a bitterness out of which
comes, perhaps, recklessness, divorce, or suicide.

Why am I poor while others are rich ? Why do I have
to do work I do not like ? Why should I be honest when
others are unscrupulous ? Why should I wear myself out
bearing and rearing children ? Why should I be faithful
to my husband or wife when we are not happy together,
and another would please me better? Why should I
believe in a good God when all I know is a bad world ?
Why should I live when I wish to die ? Never, probably,
were so many asking such questions as this and finding
no clear answer. There have been other times of anal-
ogous confusion, but it could never have penetrated so
deeply into the masses as it does in these days of universal
stir and communication.

How contemptible these calculations seem in compari-
son with the attitude of the soldier, who knows that he
must suffer privation and not improbably death, and yet
faces the prospect quite cheerfully, with a certain pride in
his self-devotion. In this spirit, evidently, all the duties
of life ought to be taken up. But the soldier, the seaman,
the fireman, the brakeman, the doctor and others whose
trade leads them into obvious peril have one great ad-
vantage: they know what their duty is and have no other
thought than to do it; there is no mental distraction to
complicate the situation. And as fast as principles be-
come settled and habits formed, people will be as heroic
in other function as they are in these.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

We may apply to many in our own time the words o\
Burckhardt in describing the disorganization of the Renais-
sance: "The sight of victorious egoism in others drives
him to defend his own right by his own arm. And, while
thinking to restore his inward equilibrium, he falls, through
the vengeance which he executes, into the hands of the
powers of darkness." That is, we think we must be as
selfish as other people, but find that selfishness is misery.
I notice that many men, even of much natural sympathy
and fellow-feeling, have accepted "every man for himself"
as a kind of dogma, making themselves believe that it is
the necessary rule of a competitive society, and practising
it with a kind of fanaticism which goes against their better
natures. Perhaps the sensitive are more apt to do this
than others — because they are more upset by the spectacle
I of "victorious egoism" around them. But the true good
i of the individual is found only in subordinating himself to
v* a rational whole; and in turning against others he destroys
I himself.

/ The embittered and distracted individual must be a
/ bad citizen. There is the same kind of moral difference
/ between those who feel life as a rational whole, and so
have some sort of a belief in Go d, as there is between an
army that believes in its commander and one that does
not. In either case the feeling does much to bring about
its own justification.

The fact that the breaking up of traditions throws men
back upon immediate human nature has, however, its
good as well as its bad side. It may obscure those larger
truths that are the growth of time and may let loose pride,

364

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

sensuality and scepticism; but it also awakens the child
in man and a childlike pliability to the better as well as tht
worse in natural impulse. We may look, among people
who have lost the sense of tradition, for the sort of virtues,
as well as of vices, that we find on the frontier: for plain
dealing, love of character and force, kindness, hope, hos-
pitality and courage. Alongside of an extravagant growth
of sensuality, pride and caprice, we have about us a gen-
eral cult of childhood and womanhood, a vast philan-
thropy, and an interest in everything relating to the wel-
fare of the masses of the people. The large private gifts
to philanthropic and educational purposes, and the fact
that a great deal of personal pride is mingled with these
gifts, are equally characteristic of the time.

And, after all, there is never any general state of ex-
treme disintegration. Such as our time suffers from in
art and social relations is chiefly the penalty of a concen-
tration of thought upon material production and physical
science. In these fields there is no lack of unified and
cumulative endeavor — though unhuman in some aspects
— resulting in total achievement. If we have not Dante
and gothic architecture, we have Darwin and the modern
railway. And as fast as the general mind turns to other
aims we may hope that our chaotic material will take on
order*

355

CHAPTER XXXI

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

Old and New Regimes in the Family — The Declining Birth
Rate — " Spoiled " Children — The Opening op New Careers
to Women — European and American Points of View —
Personal Factors in Divorce — I nstituti onal Factors —
Conclusion.

Thz medial family, like other medieval institutions,
was dominated by comparatively settled traditions which
reflected the needs of the general system of society.
Marriage was thought of chiefly as an alliance of interests,
and was arranged by the ruling members of the families
concerned on grounds of convenance, the personal con-
geniality of the parties being little considered.

We know that this view of marriage has still consider-
able force among the more conservative classes of Euro-
pean society, and that royalty or nobility, on the one hand,
and the peasantry, on the other, adhere to the idea that
it is a family rather than a personal function, which should
be arranged on grounds of rank and wealth. In France
it is hardly respectable to make a romantic marriage,
and Mr. Hamerton tells of a young woman who was in-
dignant at a rumor that she had been wedded for love, in-
sisting that it had been strictly a matter of convenance.
He also mentions a young man who was compelled to ask
his mother which of two sisters he had just met was to be

his wife.*

* French and English, 357.

356

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

Along with this subordination of choice in contracting
marriage generally went an autocratic family discipline.
Legally the wife and children had no separate rights, their
personality being merged in that of the husband and
father, while socially the latter was ratLer their master
than their companion. His rule, however — though it was
no doubt harsh and often brutal, judged by our notions
— was possibly not so arbitrary and whimsical as would
be the exercise of similar authority in our day; since he
was himself subordinate not only to social superiors, but
still more to traditional ideas,* defining his own duties
and those of his household, which he felt bound to carry
out. The whole system was authoritative, admitting little
play of personal choice.

Evidently the drift of modern life is away from this state
of things. The decay of settled traditions, embracing not
only those relating directly to the family but also the re-
ligious and economic ideas by which these were supported,
has thrown us back upon the unschooled impulses of
human nature. In entering upon marriage the personal
tastes of the couple demand gratification, and, right or
wrong, there is no authority strong enough to held them
in check. Nor, if upon experience it turns out that per-
sonal tastes are not gratified, is there commonly any insu-
perable obstacle to a dissolution of the tie. Being married,
they have children so long as they find it, on the whole,
agreeable to their inclinations to do so, but when this point
is reached they proceed to exercise choice by refusing to
bear and rear any more. And as the spirit of choice is in
the air, the children are not slow to inhale it and to exercise
their own wills in accordance with the same law of im«

357

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

pulse their elders seem to follow. "Do as you please so
long as you do not evidently harm others" is the only rule
of ethics that has much life; there is little regard for any
higher discipline, for the slowly built traditions of a deeper
right and wrong which cannot be justified to the feelings
of the moment.

Among the phases of this domestic "individualism' 9 or
relapse to impulse are a declining birth-rate among the
comfortable classes, some lack of discipline and respect
in children, a growing independence of women accom-
panied by alleged neglect of the family, and an increase of
divorce.

The causes of decline in the birth-rate are clearly
psychological, being, in general, that people prefer am-
bition and luxury to the large families that would inter-
fere with them.

Freedom of opportunity diffuses a restless desire to
rise in the world, beneficent from many points of view
but by no means favorable to natural increase. Men de-
mand more of life in the way of personal self-realization
than in the past, and it takes a longer time and more
energy to get it, the consequence being that marriage is
postponed and the birth-rate in marriage deliberately
restricted. The young people of the well-to-do classes,
among whom ambition is most developed, commonly feel
poorer in regard to this matter than the hand-workers, so
that we find in England, for instance, that the professional
men marry at an average age of thirty-one, while miners
marry at twenty-four. Moreover, while the hand-work-
ing classes, both on the farms and in towns, expect to

358

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

make their children more than pay for themselves after
they are fourteen years old, a large family thus becoming
an investment for future profit, the well-to-do, on the con-
trary, see in their children a source of indefinitely con-
tinuous expense. And the trend of things is bringing an
ever larger proportion of the people within the ambitious
classes and subject to this sort of checks.

The spread of luxury, or even comfort, works in the
same direction by creating tastes and habits unfavorable
to the bearing and rearing of many children. Among
those whose life, in general, is hard these things are not
harder than the rest, and a certain callousness of mind
that is apt to result from monotonous physical labor
renders people less subject to anxiety, as a rule, than those
who might appear to have less occasion for it. The joy
of children, the "luxury of the poor/' may also appear
brighter from the dulness and hardship against which it
is relieved. But as people acquire the habit, or at least
the hope, of comfort they become aware that additional
children mean a sacrifice which they often refuse to
make.

These influences go hand-in-hand with that general
tendency to rebel against trouble which is involved in the
spirit of choice. In former days women accepted the
bearing of children and the accompanying cares and pri-
vations as a matter of course; it did not occur to them
that anything else was possible. Now, being accustomed
to choose their life, they demand a reason why they should
undergo hardships; and since the advantages which are
to follow are doubtful and remote, and the suffering near
and obvious, they are not unlikely to refuse. Too com-

359

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

monly they have no inwrought principles and training
that dispose them to submit.

The distraction of choice grievously increases the actual
burden and stress upon women, for it is comparatively
easy to put up with the inevitable. What with moral
strain of this sort and the anxious selection among
conflicting methods of nurture and education it possibly
costs the mother of to-day more psychical energy to
raise four children than it did her grandmother to raise
eight

It would be strange if children were not hospitable to
the modern sentiment that one will is as good as another,
except as the other may be demonstrably wiser in regard
to the matter in hand. Willing submission to authority
as such, or sense of the value of discipline as a condition
of the larger and less obvious well-being of society, is
hardly to be expected from childish reasoning, and must
come, if at all, as the unconscious result of a training
which reflects general sentiment and custom. It is in-
stitutional in its nature, not visibly reasonable.

But the child, in our day, finds no such institution, no
general state of sentiment such as exists in Japan and
existed in our own past, which fills the mind from infancy
with suggestions that parents are to be reverenced and
obeyed; nor do parents ordinarily do much to instil this
by training. Probably, so great is the power of general
opinion even in childhood, they would hardly succeed if
they tried, but as a rule they do not seriously try. Being
themselves accustomed to the view that authority must
appeal to the reason of the subject, they see nothing strange

360

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

in the fact that their children treat them as equals and de-
mand to know "Why?"

The fond attention which parents give to their children
is often of a sort to overstimulate their self-consequence.
This constantly asking them, What would you like ? Shall
we do this or that ? Where do you want to go ? and so on,
though amiable on our part, does the child little good.
The old practice of keeping children at a distance, what-
ever its evils, was more apt to foster reverence.

Among hand-workers, especially in the country, the
work being more obvious and often shared by the whole
family, the pressure of necessary labor makes a kind of
discipline for all, and the children are more likely to see
that there are rules and conditions of life above their im-
mediate pleasure. Social play, as we have seen, may also
do much for this perception. But this visible control of
a higher law has a decreasing part in modern life, espe-
cially with the well-to-do classes, whose labors are seldom
such as children may share, or even understand.

In this, as in so many other respects, we are approach-
ing a higher kind of life at the cost of incidental demoral-
ization. The modern family at its best, with its intimate
sympathy and its discipline of love, is of a higher type
than the family of an older regime. "I never," said
Thackeray, "saw people on better terms with each other,
more frank, affectionate, and cordial, than the parents and
the grown-up young folks in the United States. And
why? Because the children were spoiled, to be sure."*
But where this ideal is not reached, there is apt to be a some-
what disastrous failure which makes one regret the auto*

♦ Philip, chapter 28.
361

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

cratic and traditional order. Not merely is discipline
lacking, but the affection which might be supposed to go
with indulgence is turned to indifference, if not contempt
As a rule we love those we can look up to, those who stand
for the higher ideal. In old days parents shared some-
what in that divinity with which tradition hedged the great
of the earth, and might receive a reverence not dependent
upon their personality; and even to-day they are likely
to be better loved if they exact respect — just as an officer
is better loved who enforces discipline and is not too
familiar with his soldiers. Human nature needs some-
thing to look up to, and it is a pity when parents do not in
part supply this need for their children.

In short, the child, like the woman, helps to bear the
often grievous burden of disorganization; bears it, among
the well-to-do classes, in an ill-regulated life, in lack of
reverence and love, in nervousness and petulance; as
well as in premature and stunting labor among the poor.

The opening of new careers to women and a resulting
economic independence approaching that of men is an-
other phase of "individualism" that has its worse and bet-
ter aspects. In general it has, through the fuller self-expres-
sion of women, most beneficial reactions both upon family
life and society at large, but creates some trouble in the
way of domestic reluctance and discontent.

The disposition to reject marriage altogether may be set
aside as scarcely existent. The marriage rate shows little
decline, though the average age is somewhat advanced.
The wage-earning occupations of women are mostly of a
temporary character, and the great majority of domestic

362

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

servants, shop and factory girls, clerks, typewriters and
teachers marry sooner or later. There is no reason to
doubt that a congenial marriage continues to be the al-
most universal feminine ideal.

A more real problem, perhaps, is found in the excessive
requirements, in the way of comfort and refinement, that
young women are said to cherish. In the United States
their education, so far as general culture is concerned,
outstrips that of men, something like three-fifths of our
high school pupils being girls, while even in the higher
institutions the study of history, foreign languages and
English literature is largely given over to women. A cer-
tain sense of superiority coming from this state of things
probably causes the rejection of some honest clerks or
craftsmen by girls who can hardly look for a better offer;
and it has a tendency toward the cultivation of refinement
at the expense of children where marriage does occur.
It need hardly be said, however, that aggressive idealism
on the part of women is in itself no bad thing, and that it
does harm only where ill-directed. Hardly anything, for
instance, would be more salutary than the general en-
forcement by women of a higher moral standard upon the
men who wish to marry them.

And certainly nothing in modern civilization is more
widely and subtly beneficent than the enlargement of
women in social function. It means that a half of human
nature is newly enfranchised, instructed and enabled to
become a more conscious and effective factor in life.
The ideals of home and the care of children, in spite of
pessimists, are changing for the better, and the work of
women in independent careers is largely in the direction

363

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

of much-needed social service — education and philanthropy
in the largest sense of the words. Any one familiar with
these movements knows that much of the intellectual and
most of the emotional force back of them is that of women.
One may say that the maternal instinct has been set free
and organized on a vast scale, for the activities in which
women most excel are those inspired by sympathy with
children and with the weak or suffering classes.

To the continental European, accustomed to a society
in which the functions and conventions of men and women
are sharply distinguished and defined by tradition, it
seems that Americans break down a natural and salutary
differentiation, making women masculine and men fern-
inine by a too indiscriminate association and competition.
No doubt there is some ground for distinct standards and
education, and in the general crumbling of traditions and
sway of a somewhat doctrinaire idea of equality some
"achieved distinctions " of value may have been lost sight
of. Like other social differentiations, however, this is
one that can no longer be determined by authority, but
must work itself out in a free play of experiment. As
Mr. Ellis says, "The hope of our future civilization lies
in the development, in equal freedom, of both the mascu-
line and feminine elements in life/'*

Perhaps, also, the masculine element, as being on the
whole more rational and stable, should be the main source
of government, keeping in order the emotionality more
commonly dominant in women: and it may appear that
this controlling function is ill-performed in America. It

* Man and Woman. 396.

364

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

should be remembered, however, that with us the emanci*
pation of women comes chiefly from male initiative and
is a voluntary fostering of das ewig Weibliche out of love
and respect for it. And also that most European societies
govern women by coercive laws or conventions and, in the
lower classes, even by blows. Americans have almost
wholly foregone these extrinsic aids, aiming at a higher or
voluntary discipline, and if American women are, after all,
quite as well guided, on the whole, as those of Europe, it
is no mean achievement.

There are in general two sorts of forces, one personal
and one institutional, which hold people together in wed-
lock. By the personal I mean those which spring more
directly from natural impulse, and may be roughly summed
up as affection and common interest in children. The
institutional are those that come more from the larger
organization of society, such as economic interdependence
of husband and wife, or the state of public sentiment, tra-
dition and law.

As regards affection, present conditions should appar-
ently be favorable to the strength of the bond. Since
personal choice is so little interfered with, and the whole
matter conducted with a view to congeniality, it would
seem that a high degree of congeniality must, on the whole,
be secured. And, indeed, this is without much doubt the
case: nowhere probably, is there so large a proportion of
couples living together in love and confidence as in those
countries where marriage is most free. Even if serious
friction arises, the fact that each has chosen the other
without constraint favors a sense of responsibility for the

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

relation, and a determination to make it succeed that might
be lacking in an arranged marriage. We know that if we
do not marry happily it is our own fault, and the more
character and self-respect we have the more we try to make
the best of our venture. There can hardly be a general
feeling that marriage is one thing and love another, such
as may prevail under the rule of convenance.

Yet it is not inconsistent to say that this aim at love in-
creases divorce. The theory being that the contracting
parties are to be made happy, then, if they are not, it
seems to follow that the relation is a failure and should
cease: the brighter the ideal the darker the fact by con-
trast. Where interest and custom rule marriage those
who enter into it may not expect congeniality, or, if they
do, they feel that it is secondary and do not dream of
divorce because it is not achieved. The woman marries
because her parents tell her to, because marriage is her
career, and because she desires a wedding and to be mis-
tress of a household; the man because he wants a house-
hold and children and is not indifferent to the dowry.
These tangible aims, of which one can be fairly secure be-
forehand, give stability where love proves wanting.

And while freedom in well-ordered minds tends toward
responsibility and the endeavor to make the best of a
chosen course, in the ill-ordered it is likely to become
an impulsiveness which is displayed equally in contract-
ing and in breaking off marriage without good cause. The
conditions of our time give an easy rein to undisciplined
wills, and one index of their activity is the divorce rate.
Bad training in childhood is a large factor in this, neglected
or spoiled children making bad husbands or wives, and

366

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

probably furnishing the greater number of the divorced.
Common observation seems to show that the latter are
seldom people of thoroughly wholesome antecedents.

It may not be amiss to add that personal affection is at
the best an inadequate foundation for marriage. To
expect that one person should make another happy or
good is requiring too much of human nature. Both
parties ought to be subject to some higher idea, in rever-
ence for which they may rise above their own imperfec-
tion: there ought to be something in the way of religion
in the case. A remark which Goethe made of poetry
might well he applied to personal love: "It is a very good
companion of life, but in no way competent to guide it";*
and because people have no higher thought to shelter them
in disappointment is frequently the reason that marriage
proves a failure.

As regards institutional bonds there is of course a great
relaxation.

Thus economic interdependence declines with the ad-
vance of specialization. The home industries are mostly
gone, and every year more things are bought that used to be
made in the house. Little is left but cooking, and that,
either as a task of the wife or in the shape of the Domestic
Service Question, is so troublesome that many are eager to
see it follow the rest. At one time marriage was, for
women, about the only way to a respectable maintenance,
while to men a good housewife was equally an economic
necessity. Now this is true only of th J farming population,

♦Die Muse das Leben zwar gern begleitet, aber es keineswegt
zxx ieiten versteht.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

and less true of them than it used to be: in the towns the
economic considerations are mostly opposed to married life.

Besides making husband and wife less necessary to
each other, these changes tend to make married women
restless. Nothing works more for sanity and content-
ment than a reasonable amount of necessary and absorb-
ing labor; disciplining the mind and giving one a sense
of being of use in the world. It seems a paradox to say
that idleness is exhausting, but there is much truth in it,
especially in the case of sensitive and eager spirits. A
regular and necessary task rests the will by giving it as-
surance, while the absence of such a task wearies it by
uncertainty and futile choice. Just as a person who fol-
lows a trail through the woods will go further with less
exertion than one who is finding his way, so we all need
a foundation of routine, and the lack of this among
women of the richer classes is a chief cause of the restless,
exacting, often hysterical, spirit, harassing to its owner
and every one else, which tends toward discontent, in-
discretion and divorce.

The old traditional subordination on the part of the
wife had its uses, like other decaying structures of the
past; and however distasteful to modern ideas of freedom,
was a factor in holding the family together. For, after all,
no social organization can be expected to subsist without
some regular system of government We say that the
modern family is a democracy; and this sounds very well;
but anarchy is sometimes a more correct description.
A well-ordered democracy has a constitution and laws,
prescribing the rights and duties of the various members
of the state, and providing a method of determining coo-

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DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

troversies: the family, except as we recognize within
reasonable limits the authority of the husband and father,
has nothing of the sort. So long as the members are one
in mind and feeling there is an unconscious harmony
which has nothing to do with authority; but with even slight
divergence comes the need of definite control. What
would happen on shipboard if the captain had to govern by
mere personal ascendency, without the backing of mari-
time law and custom ? Evidently there would be muti-
nies, as among pirate crews, which only an uncommonly
strong man could quell; and the family is often in a sim-
ilar condition.*

The relaxation of moral sentiment regarding marriage
by migrations and other sorts of displacement is easily
traced in statistics, which show that divorce is more fre-
quent in new countries, in cities — peopled by migration
— and in the industrial and commercial classes most af-
fected by economic change. To have an effective public
opinion holding people to their duty it is important that
men should live long in one place and in one group, in-
heriting traditional ideas and enforcing them upon one

* That the increase of divorces is due chiefly to the initiative of
the wife is seen in the fact that as they become more numer-
ous an increasing proportion is granted at the instance of the woman.
Under the old regime the divorcing of a husband was almost un-
known, the first case in England occurring in 1801. (See the essay
on Marriage and Divorce in Mr. Bryce's Studies in History and
Jurisprudence.) In the United States a great preponderance are
now granted to wives, and the greater the total rate the greater
this preponderance. In those states where the rate is highest the
proportion is from two-thirds to three-fourths. It is not far wrong
to say that the old idea of divorce was to rid the husband of an un-
faithful wife, the new is to rid the wife of an uncongenial or trouble-
some husband.

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

another. All breaking up of old associations involves
an " individualism " which is nowhere more active than
in family relations.

The same principles go to explain diminished control
by the law and the church. Thus we notice that the
states of the American Union, having made their marriage
laws in comparative independence of the English tradition
and in harmony with a relaxing public sentiment, have
much divorce; while in Canada the restraining hand of
that tradition has kept the law conservative and made
divorce difficult and rare. The surprising contrast in this
regard between the two sides of the Detroit or St. Lawrence
rivers is only partly explained by the different social traits
of the people.

Christian teaching is the chief source of the ideal of
marriage as a sacred and almost indissoluble bond, and
church organization has been the main agent in enforcing
this ideal. The Roman Catholic church has never ad-
mitted the possibility of absolute divorce, and to her au-
thority, chiefly, is due its absence in Spain and Italy;
while in England the Established Church, not much be-
hind Rome in strictness, has been perhaps the chief cause
of conservatism in English law and sentiment. And the
other Protestant churches, though more liberal, are con-
servative in comparison with the drift of popular feeling.
So the fact, needless to discuss in this connection, that
the disciplinary authority of the church has declined,
makes directly for the increase of divorce.

The relaxation of the family is due, then, to changes
progressive on the whole, but involving much incidental

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DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

demoralization; being in general those arising from a some-
what rapid decay of old traditions and disciplines and a
consequent dependence upon human impulse and reason.

The evil involved is largely old evil in a new form; it is
not so much that new troubles have arisen between hus-
band and wife as that a new remedy is sought for old ones.
They quarreled and marriage vows were broken quite as
much in former times as now, as much in England to-
dav as in America: the main difference is in the outcome.

Moreover, the matter has its brighter side; for divorce^
though full of evils, is associated with a beneficent rise in
the standing of women, of which it is to a certain degree
the cause. The fact that law and opinion now permit
women to revolt against the abuse of marital power oper-
ates widely and subtly to increase their self-respect and
the respect of others for them, and like the right of work-
men to strike, does most of its good without overt exercise.

CHAPTER XXXn
DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH

The Psychological View of Religion — The Need of Sociai
Structure — Creeds — Why Symbols Tend to Becoma
Formal — Traits of a Good System of Symbols — Contempo-
rary Need of Religion — Newer Tendencies in the Church.

In religion, too, our day is one of confusion in institu-
tions and falling back upon human nature. The most
notable books of the day in this field are, first of all,
studies in religious psychology. Perceiving that the ques-
tion has come to be one of the very being and function
of religion, they ignore the discussion of particular doc-
trines, polities or sacraments, and seek a foundation in the
nature of the human mind.

I do not wish to follow these researches in detail: their
general outcome is reassuring. They seem to show that
religion is a need of human nature, centring, perhaps,
in the craving to make life seem rational and good. As
thought it is belief regarding the power underlying life and
our relation to it; our conceptions of God and of other
divine agents serving as symbols — changing like other
symbols with the general state of thought — of this hidden
reality. As feeling it is a various body of passion and
sentiment associated with this belief; such as the sense of
sin and of reconciliation; dread, awe, reverence, love and

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DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH

faith. And religious action is such as expresses, in one
way or another, this sort of thought and feeling.

Like all our higher life, religion lives only by communi-
cation and influence. Its sentiments are planted in in-
stinct, but the soil in which they grow is some sort of
fostering community life. Higher thought — call it in-
tellectual, spiritual, or what you will — does not come to
us by any short and easy road, its nature being to require
preparation and outlay, to be the difficult and culminat-
ing product of human growth. And this is quite as much
a growth of the social order as of individuals, for the in-
dividual cut off from that scaffolding of suggestion that
the aspiration of the race has gradually prepared for him
is sure to be lawless and sensual: his spiritual impulse can
hardly be more than a futile unrest, just as the untaught
impulse of speech in a deaf person produces only inarticu-
late cries. Much has been said of natural religion; but if
this means a religion achieved de novo by the individual
mind, there is no such thing, all religion and religious senti-
ment being more or less distinctly traditional.

We find, then, that the religious life always rests upon
a somewhat elaborate social structure — not necessarily
a church, but something which does in fact what the church
aims to do. The higher sentiments now possible to us are
subtly evoked and nourished by language, music, ritual
and other time-wrought symbols. And even more ob-
viously are ideas — of God and of the larger being, of re-
ligious observance, government and duty — matters of
communal and secular growth.

The root problem of the church — as, in a sense, of all

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

organization — is to get the use of the symbol without the
abuse. We cannot hold our minds to the higher life
without a form of thought; and forms of thought come by
traditions and usages which are apt to enchain the spirit
"Woe unto thee thou stream of human custom"; cries
St. Augustine, "Who shall stay thy course? How long
shall it be before thou art dried up ? How long wilt thou
carry down the sons of Eve into that huge and formidable
ocean, which even those who are embarked on the Tree
can scarce pass over?"*

The iconoclastic fervor against formalism that usefully
breaks out from time to time should not make us imagine
that religion can dispense with institutions. There is in
religious thought at present much of a kind of anarchism
which, in the justifiable revolt against the pretensions of
authority, is inclined to overlook the importance of tra-
dition and structure. Perhaps we may cite Emerson as
an anarchist of this sort; he saw the necessity of institu-
tions, but was inclined by temperament and experience to
distrust them, and to dwell almost wholly upon freedom.

Is it not the fact, however, that the progress of religion
has been less in the perception of new truth than in bring-
ing it home to the many by organization? There is
perhaps little in religious thought that was not adequately
expressed by occasional thinkers millenniums ago; the
gain has been in working this thought into the corporate
life. The great religions — Buddhism, Judaism, Christi-
anity, Mohammedanism — are nothing if not systems;
that is to say, although based on primary needs of human
nature, their very being as widespread religions consist?

* Confessions, book i, chap. 16.
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DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH

in a social structure, adapted to the changing state of
society, through which these needs are met and fostered.
Thus the appeal of Christianity to the human mind may
be said to have rested, in all periods, partly on the sym-
bolic power of a personality — so idealized and interpreted
as to be in effect a system as well as a man — and partly
on a changing but always elaborate structure of doctrines,
ritual, polity, preaching and the like. Take away these
symbols and there is nothing distinctive left. And if the
whole is to go on, the system of symbols, again renewed,
must go on, too. No more in religion than in any other
phase of life can we have an inside without an outside,
essence without form.

The existing creeds, formulated in a previous state of
thought, have lost that relative truth they once had and
are now, for most of us, not creeds at all, since they are
incredible; but creeds of some sort we must have. A
creed may, perhaps, be defined as a settled way of think-
ing about matters which are beyond the reach of positive
knowledge, but which the mind must and will think of in
some way — notably, of course, about the larger life and
our relation to it. For the majority, who are not meta-
physicians, it is mere waste and distraction to struggle
unaided with these problems; we need a chart in this sea,
a practicable form of thought to live by. That compe-
tent men should devise such forms of thought, consistent
with the state of knowledge, and that other symbols should
grow up about them, is as natural and useful as any other
kind of invention. We need to believe, and we shall be-
lieve what we can. John Addington Symonds declared

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SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

that "health of soul results from possessing a creed/ 9 and
his own sufferings in trying to make one out of the scat-
tered materials of his time are typical of those of a great
number of sensitive minds, many of whom have been
harassed into despair and degradation.* Without some
regular and common service of the ideal, something in
the way of prayer and worship, pessimism and selfishness
are almost sure to encroach upon us.

Those who teach truth in its mere abstractness can never
take much hold of the general mind, and success awaits a
teaching which is intellectually sound (that is, consistent with
the clearer thought of the day), and at the same time able, by
a wealth of fit symbols, to make itself at home in all sorts
of plain minds. And jt is just this that is apt to be destruc-
tively wanting in a time of intellectual and social change.

Why is it that the symbol encroaches and persists be-
yond its function ? Evidently just because it is external*
capable of imitation and repetition without fresh thought
and life, so that all that is inert and mechanical clings to it.
All dull and sensual persons, all dull and sensual moods
in any person, see the form and not the substance. ; The
spirit, the idea, the sentiment, is plainly enough th^real-
ity when one is awake to see it, but how easily we lose our
hold upon it and come to think that the real is the tangible.
The symbol is always at command: we can always attend
church, go to mass, recite prayers, contribute money,
and the like; but kindness, hope, reverence, humility,
courage, have no string attached to them; they come and
go as the spirit moves; there is no insurance on them.

* See his life by H. F. Brown, passim.

376

DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH

Just as in the schools we teach facts and formulas rather
than meanings, because the former can be received by all
and readily tested, so religion becomes external in seeking
to become universal.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to recall the application
of this to Christianity. Jesus himself had no system: he
felt and taught the human sentiments that underly re*
ligion and the conduct that expresses them. The Sermon
on the Mount appears paradoxical only to sluggish, sen-
sual, formal states of mind and the institutions that em-
body them. In our times of clearer insight it is good sense
and good psychology, expressing that enlargement of
the individual to embrace the life of others which takes
place at such times. This natural Christianity, however,
is insecure in the best people, and most of us have only a
fleeting experience of it; so the teachers who wished to
make a popular system, valid for all sorts of persons and
moods, were led to vulgarize it by grounding it on miracles
and mystic authority and enforcing it by sensual rewards
and punishments.

The perennial truth of what Christ taught comes pre-
cisely from the fact that it was not a system, but an intui-
tion and expression of higher sentiments the need of which
is a central and enduring element in our best experience.
It is this that has made it possible, in every age, to go back
to his life and words and find them still alive and potent,
fit to vitalize renewed systems. The system makers did
well, too, but their work was transient.

A good system of symbols is one which, on the whole,
stands to the group or to the individual for a higher life:

377

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

merit in this matter being relative to the particular state ol
mind that the symbol is to serve. It is quite true that —

"Each age must worship its own thought of God,
More or less earthy, clarifying still
With subsidence continuous of the dregs."*

Crude men must have crude symbols — even "rod or candy
for child-minded men" f — but these should be educational,
leading up from lower forms of thought to higher. A sys-
tem that keeps men in sensualism when they are capable
of rising above it, or in dogmatism when they are ready to
think, is as bad as one that does not reach their minds at
all.

At the present time all finality in religious formulas is
discredited philosophically by the idea of evolution and of
the consequent relativity of all higher truth, while, practi-
cally, free discussion has so accustomed people to conflict-
ing views that the exclusive and intolerant advocacy of
dogma is scarcely possible to the intelligent. It is true, of
course, that philosophical breadth and free discussion
have flourished before, only to be swept under by the forces
making for authority; but they were never so rooted in
general conditions — of communication and personal
freedom — as they are now. It seems fairly certain that
the formulas of religion will henceforward be held with
at least a subconsciousness of their provisional char-
acter.

The creeds of the future are likely, also, to be simple.
In all institutions there is nowadays a tendency to exchange
formulas for principles, as being more flexible and so

* J. R. Lowell, The Cathedral. t &&

378

DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH

more enduring. The nearer you can get to universal
human nature without abandoning concreteness the better.
There is coming to be a clearer distinction of functions
between metaphysics and worship, which may enable each
to be enjoyed to the utmost without being unnecessarily
mixed with the other.

The less intellectual a religious symbol is the better,
because it less confines the mind. Personality is the best
symbol of all; and after that music, art, poetry, festivity
and ceremony are more enduring and less perilous sym-
bols than formulas of belief. Sentiments change like
ideas, but not so much and not so evidently; and the es-
sential exercises of religion for the mass of men are those
which awaken higher sentiment, especially those good
works, in which, chiefly, the founder of Christianity and
his real followers have expressed their religious impulse.
These also are symbols, and the most potent and least
illusive of all.

It is indeed a general truth that sentiment is nearer to
the core of life than definable thought. As the rim of a
wheel whirls about its centre, so ideas and institutions
whirl about the pivotal sentiments of human nature. To
define a thing is to institutionize it, to draw it forth from
the pregnant obscurity of the soul and show just how it
appears in the transient color of our particular way of
thinking. Definitions are, in their nature, short-lived.

We need religion, probably, as much as any age can have
needed it. The prevalent confusion, "the tumult of the
time disconsolate," is felt in every mind not wholly inert
is a greater or less distraction of thought, feeling and will;

37y

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

and we need to be taught how to live with joy and calm
in the presence of inevitable perplexities. A certain nat-
ural phlegm is a great advantage in these days, and better
still, if we could get it, would be religious assurance.
Never was it more urgent or more difficult to justify the
ways of God to men. Our material betterment is a great
thing, and our comparative freedom a greater, but these
rather increase than diminish the need of a higher dis-
cipline in the mind that is to use them profitably: the
more opportunities the more problems. Social better-
ment is like the advance of science in that each achieve-
ment opens up new requirements. There is no prospect
that the world will ever satisfy us, and the structure of
life is forever incomplete without something to satisfy
the need of the spirit for ideas and sentiments that tran-
scend and reconcile all particular aims whatsoever.
Mediaeval religion is too unworldly, no doubt, for our use,
but all real religion has its unworldly side, and Thomas
k Kempis and the rest were right in holding that no sort
of tangible achievement can long assuage the human soul.
Still more evident is the need of religion in the form of
"social salvation," of the moral awakening and leadership
of the public mind. Society is in want of this, and the
agency that supplies the want will have the power that goes
with function — if not the church, then some secular and
perhaps hostile agency, like socialism, which is already
a rival to the church for the allegiance of the religious
spirit.

Perhaps, also, there was never an age in which there
was more vital, hopeful religious aspiration and endeavor

380

DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH

than the present — notwithstanding that so many are astray*
It is, of course, a great advantage of the decline of forms
that what survives is the more likely to be real. The
church fa being M>d J. ft. peLn, of to ,«„ nge ,
and more adaptive members, and the outcome can be noth-
ing else than a gradual readjustment of the tradition to
the real spiritual needs of the time. It is notable that the
severest critics of the institution are reformers within its
own body, and their zeal overlooks nothing in the way of
apathy or decadence.

As a matter of historical comparison the irreligion of
our time is often exaggerated. Any reader of history may
perceive that formalism, materialism and infidelity have
flourished in all epochs, and as regards America we are
assured by Mr. Bryce that Christianity influences con-
duct more here than in any other modern country, and
far more than in the so-called ages of faith.* In fact it
is just because this age is Christian in its aspirations that
we hear so much of the inadequacy of the church. People
are taking religion seriously and demanding true function
iniSumSts.

The church is possibly moving toward a differentiated
unity, in which the common element will be mainly senti-
ment — such sentiments as justice, kindness, liberty and
service. These are sufficient for good-will and coopera-
tion, and leave room for all the differentiation of ideas and
methods that the diversity of life requires.

With whatever faults the church is one of the great
achievements of civilization. Like the body of science
or our system of transportation and manufacture, it is
* The American Commonwealth, chap. 80.

38*

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

the cumulative outcome of human invention and endeavor,
and is probably in no more danger of perishing than these
are. If certain parts of it break up we shall no doubt
find that their sound materials are incorporated into new
structures.

CHAPTER XXXm
DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS

DlSORDBB IN THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM — In EDUCATION — In HlGHEB

Culture In the Fine Arts.

This same idea, of confusion and inefficiency in social
functions arising from the breaking up of old structures,
might find illustration in almost any phase of life which
one might choose to investigate. The economic system,
for example, is in a state somewhat analogous to that of
the family and the church, and indeed the "industrial
revolution" is the chief seat of those phases of decay and
reconstruction which most affect the daily life of the people.

Location itself — to begin with man's attachment to the
soil — has been so widely disturbed that possibly a major-
ity of the people of the civilized world are of recent migra-
tory origin; they themselves or their parents having
moved from one land to another or from country to city.
With this goes a severing of traditions and a mixture of
ideas and races.

Still more subversive, perhaps, is the change in occu-
pations, which is practically universal, so that scarcely
anywhere will you find people doing the things which
their grandparents did. The quiet transmission of handi-
crafts in families and neighborhoods, never much in-
terrupted before, is now cut off, and the young are driven
to look for new trades. Nor is this merely one change, to

3S3

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

which the world may adapt itself once for all, but a series,
a slide, to which there is no apparent term. Seldom is
the skill learned in youth available in age, and thousands
of men have seen one trade after another knocked out of
their hands by the unforeseen movement of invention.
Even the agriculturist, heretofore the symbol for tradi-
tionalism, has had to supple his mind to new devices.

I need not point out in detail how the old legal and ethical
relations — the whole social structure indeed — of industry
have mostly broken down; how the craftsman has lost
control of his tools and is struggling to regain it through
associations; how vast and novel forms of combination
have appeared; how men of all classes are demoralized
by the lack of standards of economic justice; these are
familiar matters which I mention only to show their rela-
tion to the principle under discussion.

In general, modern industry, progressing chiefly in a
mechanical sense, has attained a marvellous organization
in that sense; while the social and moral side of it remains
in confusion. We have a promising plant but have not
yet learned how to make it turn out the desired product of
righteousness and happiness.

Wherever there is power which has outstripped the
growth of moral and legal standards there is sure to be
some kind of anarchy; and so it is with our commerce
( and finance. On these seas piracy flourishes alongside of
honest trade; and, indeed, as in the seventeenth century,
many merchants practise both of these occupations. And
the riches thus gained often go to corrupt the state.

In the inferior strata of the commercial order we find
that human nature has been hustled and trodden under

384

DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS

foot: "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." The
hand-worker, the clerk and the small tradesman, gener-
ally insecure in the tenure of their occupations and homes,
are anxious and restless, while many classes suffer special
and grievous wrongs, such as exhaustion and premature
old age, due to the nervous strain of certain kinds of work,
death and mutilation from machinery, life in squalid
tenements, and the debasement of children by bad sur-
roundings and premature work.

Although the individual, in a merely mechanical sense,
is part of a wider whole than ever before, he has often lost
that conscious membership in the whole upon which his
human breadth depends: unless the larger life is a moral
life, he gains nothing in this regard, and may lose. When
children saw the grain growing in the field, watched the
reaping and threshing and grinding of it, and then helped
their mother to make it into bread, their minds had a vital
membership in the economic process; but now that this
process, by its very enlargement, has become invisible,
most persons have lost the sense of it.* And this is a type
of modern industry at large: the workman, the man of
business, the farmer and the lawyer are contributors to the
whole, but being morally isolated by the very magnitude
of the system, the whole does not commonly live in their
thought.

Is it not a universal experience that we cannot do any-
thing with spirit or satisfaction unless we know what it is
for ? No one who remembers the tasks of childhood will
doubt this; and it is still my observation that so soon as
I lose a sense of the bearing of what I am doing upon gen«
* This illustration is used by Miss JftRe A44*n&

385

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

eral aims and the common life, I get stale and discouraged
and need a fresh view. Yet a great part not only of hand
labor but of professional work and business is of this char-
acter. The world has become so complicated that we
know not what we do, and thus suffer not only in our happi-
ness but in our moral steadfastness and religious faith.
There is no remedy short of making life a moral and spirit-
ual as well as a mechanical whole.

Education is another matter that might be discussed
at much length from this point of view. That radical
changes are taking place in it is hardly more obvious
than that these changes are not altogether beneficent
We may say of this department as of others that there is a
spirit of freedom and vigor abroad, but that its immediate
results are somewhat anarchical.

The underlying reason for the special growth of educa-
tional institutions in our time is the free and conscious
character of our system, which demands a corresponding
individual to work it Thus democracy requires literacy,
that the voter may learn what he is voting about, and this
means schools. Under the plan of free competition the
son need not follow his father's occupation, but may take
the open sea of life and find whatever work suits him;
and this renders obsolete household instruction in trades.
Indeed, our whole life is so specialized and so subject
to change that there is nothing for it but special schools.

We may probably learn also, as time goes on, that the
enlarged sphere of choice and the complexity of the rela-
tions with which it deals call for a social and moral edu-
cation more rational and explicit than we have had in the

3S6

DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS

past. There are urgent problems with which no power
can deal but an instructed and organized public conscience,
for the source of which we must look, in part, to public
education.

In striving to meet new requirements our schools have
too commonly extended their system rather than their
vital energies; they have perhaps grown more rapidly
in the number of students, the variety of subjects taught,
and in other numerable particulars, than in the inner and
spiritual life, the ideals, the traditions and the personnel
of the teaching force. In this as in other expanding insti-
tutions life is spread out rather thin.

In the country the schools are largely inefficient because
of the falling off in attendance, the poor pay and quality of
the teachers, and the persistence of a system of instruction
that lacks vital relation to country life, tending in fact to
discredit it and turn children toward the towns. In cities
the schools are overcrowded — often insufficient even to
contain the children who swarm in the poorer districts —
and the teachers often confused, overworked and stupefied
by routine. Very little, as yet, is done to supply that
rational training for industry which is the urgent need of
most children, and which industry itself no longer fur-
nishes. The discipline, both of pupils by teachers and of
teachers by officials, is commonly of a mechanical sort, and
promising innovations often fail because they are badly
carried out.

Our common schools no doubt compare well enough,
on the whole, with those of the past or of other countries;
but when we think of what they might and should do in
the way of bringing order and reason into our society,

387

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

and of the life that is going to waste because they do not
nourish and guide it, there is no cause for congratulation.

In our higher education there is a somewhat similar
mixture of new materials, imperfectly integrated, with frag-
ments of a decadent system. The old classical discipline is
plainly going, and perhaps it is best that it should go, but
surely nothing satisfactory has arisen to take its place.

Among the many things that might be said in this con-
nection I will touch upon only one consideration, generally
overlooked, namely the value of a common type of culture,
corresponding in this respect to what used to be known
as "the education of a gentleman/ 9 Since the decay of
the classical type set in our higher education, notwithstand-
ing so much that is excellent in it, has had practically no
common content to serve as a medium of communication and
spiritual unity among the educated class. In this connec-
tion as in so many others the question arises whether even an
inadequate type of culture is not better than no type at all.

Not only was the classical tradition the widest and full-
est current of higher thought we had, but it was also a
treasury of symbols and associations tending to build up
a common ideal life. Beginning with Dante all imagina-
tive modern literature appeals to the mind through classi-
cal allusion and reverberation, which, mingling with newer
elements, went to make up a continuing body of higher
feeling and idea, upon which was nourished a continuing
fellowship of those competent to receive and transmit it.
All that was best in production came out of it and was
unconsciously disciplined by its standards.

It would indeed be stupid to imagine that any assort-

388

DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS

ment of specialties can take the place of the culture stream
from which all civilization has been watered: to lose that
would be barbarism. And, in fact, it is a question whether
we are not, in some degree and no doubt temporarily,
actually relapsing into a kind of barbarism through the
sudden decay of a culture type imperfectly suited to our
use but much better than none.

If one has an assembly of university graduates before
him, what, in the way of like-mindedness, can he count
on their having ? Certainly not Latin, much less Greek;
he would be rash indeed to venture a quotation in these
tongues, unless for mystification: nor would allusions to
history or literature be much safer. The truth is that
few of the graduates will have done serious work outside
of their specialty; and the main thing they have in com-
mon is a collective spirit animated by the recollection of
football victories and the like.

I suspect that we may be participating in the rise of a
new type of culture which shall revise rather than abandon
the old traditions, and whose central current will perhaps
be a large study of the principles of human life and of their
expression in history, art, philanthropy and religion. And
the belief that the new discipline of sociology (much clari-
fied and freed from whatever crudeness and pretension
may now impair it) is to have a part in this may not be
entirely a matter of special predilection.

Not very long since a critic, wrote of contemporary
art as follows:

"Every one who is acquainted with technical matters in the fine
arts is aware that the quietly perfect art of oil painting is extinct or

389

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

nearly so, and that in its place we have a great variety of extremely
clever and dexterous substitutes, resulting in skilful partial ex-
pressions of artistic beauty, but not reaching that calm divine har-
mony of aim and method which we find in Titian and Giorgione,
and even in such work as that of Velasquez. The greatest paint-
ing of past times had one quality which no modern one really pos-
sesses — it had tranquillity"*

This touches upon something which — as we have already
had occasion to observe — impairs nearly all in the way of
higher spiritual achievement that our time produces — a
certain breathlessness and lack of assured and quiet power.
And this is connected with that confusion which does not
permit the unquestioned ascendency of any one type, but
keeps the artist choosing and experimenting, in the effort
to make a whole which tradition does not supply ready-
made.

In times of authoritative tradition a type of art grows up
by accretion, rich and pregnant after its kind, which each
artist unconsciously inherits and easily expresses. His
forerunners have done the heavy work, and all that he
needs to do is to add the glamour of personal genius. The
grandeur of great literature — like the Bible, or Homer,
or even, though less obviously, Dante, Shakespeare and
Goethe — is largely that of traditional accumulation and
concentration. The matter is old; it has been worked
over and over and the unessential squeezed out, leaving
a pregnant remainder which the artist enlivens with crea-
tive imagination. And the same is true of painting and
sculpture.

So in architecture: a medieval cathedral was the culmin-
ation of a long social growth, not greatly dependent upon
* Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Thoughts about Art, page 99.

390

DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS

individual genius. "Not only is there built into it/' says
Mr. Ferguson in his History of Modern Architecture,
"the accumulated thought of all the men who had occu-
pied themselves with building during the preceding cen-
turies . • • but you have the dream and aspiration of
the bishop, who designed it, of all his clergy, who took an
interest in it, of the master-mason, who was skilled in con-
struction; of the carver, the painter, the glazier, of the
host of men who, each in his own craft, knew all that had
been done before them, and had spent their lives in strug-
gling to surpass the work of their forefathers. . . . You
may wander in such a building for weeks or for months
together and never know it all. A thought or a motive
peeps out through every joint, and is manifest in every
moulding, and the very stones speak to you with a voice
as clear and as easily understood as the words of the poet
or the teaching of the historian. Hence, in fact, the little
interest we can feel in even the stateliest of modern build-
ings, and the undying, never satisfied interest with which
we study over and over again those which have been pro-
duced under a different and truer system of art."*

In the same way the Greek architect of the time of
Pericles "had before him a fixed and sacred standard of
form. ... He had no choice; his strength was not
wasted among various ideals; that which he had inherited
was a religion to him. . . . Undiverted by side issues as
to the general form of his monument, undisturbed by any
of the complicated conditions of modern life, he was able
to concentrate his clear intellect upon the perfection of his
details; his sensitiveness to harmony of proportion was

* Page 24.
391

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

refined to the last limits: his feeling for purity of line
reached the point of a religion."*

The modern artist may have as much personal ability
as the Greek or the mediaeval, but, having no communal
tradition to share in his work, he has to spread bis person-
ality out very thin to cover the too broad task assigned to
it, and this thinness becomes the general fault of con-
temporary Aesthetic production. If he seeks to avoid it
by determined concentration there is apt to be something
strained and over-conscious in the result

* Van Brunt, Greek Lines, 95 ft.

992

PART VI
PUBLIC WILL

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL

Public and Private Will — The Lack of Public Will — Social
Wrongs Commonly not Willed at All.

What I shall say about Public Will — which is only an-
other phase of the Democratic MindJ-might well have
been introduced under Part III; but I put it here be-
cause in a sense it rounds off our whole inquiry, involving
some general conclusions as to the method and possibility
of social betterment.

By public will we may understand the deliberate self-
direction of any social group. There is, of course, noth-
ing mysterious about it, for it is of the same nature as
/public opinion) and is simply that! so informed and organ-
ized as to be an effective guide to the life of the group.
Nor can we say just when this state is reached — it is a
matter of degree* — but we may assume that when a group
intelligently pursues a steadfast policy some measure, at
least, of public will has been achieved. Many savage
tribes have it in a small way; the Jews developed it under
the leadership of Moses and Joshua; the mediaeval church
and the Venetian aristocracy displayed it. It is capable,
tike individual will, of indefinite improvement in insight,
stability and scope. *

Just as public and private opinion are general and

395

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

particular phases of the same thing, so will is a single
complex activity with individual and collective aspects.
But there is this difference between public and private
will*-just as there is between other individual and collec-
tive phases of mind~-that the activity usually appears less
conscious when looked at in its laiger aspect than when
considered in detail. I mean that we generally know a
great deal better what we are about as individuals than
we do as members of large wholes: when one sits down to
dinner he is conscious of hunger and has a will to appease
it; but if his action has any bearing upon the community,
as no doubt it has, he is unaware of the fact In the
same way the activities of business have much conscious-
ness and purpose when looked at in detail, but little when
taken collectively. A thousand men buy and sell in the
market, each with a very definite intention regarding his
own transaction, but the market price which results from
their bargaining is an almost mechanical outcome, not a
matter of conscious intention at all. On the other hand,
there are conscious wholes in which the general result
may be as clearly purposed as the particular; as when an
intelligent crew is working a vessel, each attending to his
own work but understanding perfectly what the general
purpose is and how he is contributing to it

So if we restrict the word will to that which shows reflect-
ive consciousness and purpose there is a sense in which a
certain choice (as of the purchaser in the market) may
express individual will but not public will: there is a pub-
lic side to it, of course, but of an involuntary sort

We must remember, also, that although large wholes
are, as a rule, much inferior to individuals in explicit con*

396

THE JUNCTION OP PUBLIC WILL

sciousness and purpose, they are capable of rational
structure and action of a somewhat mechanical sort far
transcending that of the individual mind. This is because
of the vast scope and indefinite duration they may have,
which enables them to store up and systematize the work
of innumerable persons, as a nation does, or even an in-
dustrial corporation. A lsgrge whole may and usually does '
display in its activity a kind of rationality or adaptation
of means to ends which, as a whole, was never planned or
purposed by anybody, but is the involuntary result of in-
numerable special endeavors. Thus the British colonial
empire, which looks like the result of deliberate and far-
sighted policy, is conceded to have been, for the most
part, the unforeseen outcome of personal enterprise. An
institution, as we have seen in previous chapters, is not H "^
fully human, but may, nevertheless, be superhuman, in the
sense that it may express a wisdom beyond the grasp of
any one man. And even in a moral aspect it is by no '
means safe to assume that the personal is superior to the
collective. This may or may not be the case, depending, <»
among other things, upon whether there has been a past
growth of collective moral judgment upon the point in
question. The civil law, for example, which is the result
of such a growth, is for the most part a much safer guide
regarding property rights than the untrained judgment of
any individual. ^

But after all public thought and will have the same
superiority over unconscious adaptation (wonderful as
the results of that often are) as private thought and will
have over mere instinct and habit. They represent a .
higher principle of coordination and adaptation, one which,

397

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

prope rty employed, saves energy and prevents mistakes.
The British may have succeeded on instinct, but probably
they would have succeeded better if more reason had been
mixed with it; and the latter may save them from the de-
cay which has attacked other great empires.

* It is quite plain that the social development of the past

has been mostly blind and without human intention.
Any page of history will show that men have been unable
to foresee, much less to control, the larger movements of
life. There have been seers, but they have had only
flashes of light, and have almost never been men of im-
mediate sway. Even great statesmen have lived in the
present, feeling their way, and having commonly no pur-
pose beyond the aggrandizement of their country or their
order. Such partial exceptions as the framing of the
American constitution by the light of history and philoso-
phy, and with some prevision of its actual working, are
confined to recent times and excite a special wonder.

In particular the democratic movement of modern times
has been chiefly unconscious. As De Tocqueville says
of its course in France, ". . . it has always advanced
without guidance. The heads of the state have made no
preparation for it, and it has advanced without their con-
sent or without their knowledge. The most powerful, the
most intelligent and the most moral classes of the nation
have never attempted ... to guide it."*

Will has been alive only in details] in the smaller courses
of life, in what each man was doing for himself and his
neighbors, while the larger structure and movement

* Democracy in America, vol. i. Introduction.

398

THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL

nave been subconscious, and for that reason erratic and
wasteful. For it is just as true of large wholes as of indi-
viduals that if they blunder on without knowing what they
are doing much of their energy is lost. No doubt it is
better to go ahead even blindly than to stand still, and re-
markable things have been achieved in this way, but they
are little to what might be done if we could work out our
highest human nature intelligently, with assurance and
prevision, and on a large scale. A society which did this
would have the same sort of superiority to present society
as man to his sub-human progenitors.

The very idea of progress, of orderly improvement on
a great scale, is well known to be of recent origin, or at
least recent diffusion, the prevalent view in the past hav-
ing been that the actual state of things was, in its general
character, ur^lterable.*

Even at the present day) social phenomena of a large
sort are for the most part not willed at all, but are the un-
foreseen result of diverse and partial endeavors. It is
(seldom that any large plan of social action is intelligently
drawn up and followed out. Each interest works along
in a somewhat blind and selfish manner, grasping, fight-
ing and groping. As regards general ends most of the
energyjsjyasted; and yet a sort of advance takes place,
more like the surging of a throng than the orderly move-
ment of troops. Who can pretend that the American people,
for instance, are guided by any clear and rational plan in
their economic, political and religious development ? They

* Of course the Greeks had the philosophical conception of gen*
era! flux, but I do not know that they applied it to society with such
distinctness as to give anything worth calling an idea of progress,

399

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

have glimpses and impulses, but hardly a will, except on a
few matters of near and urgent interest.

In the same way the wrongs that afflict society are seldom
willed by any one or any group, but are by-products of
acts of will having other objects; they are done, as some
one has said, rather with the elbows than the fists. There
is surprisingly little ill-intent, and the more one looks into
life the less he finds of that vivid chiaroscuro of conscious
goodness and badness his childish teaching has led him
to expect.

Take, for instance, a conspicuous evil like the sweating
system in the garment trades of New York or London.
Here are people, largely women and children, forced to
work twelve, fourteen, sometimes sixteen hours a day, in
the midst of dirt, bad air and contagion, suffering the de-
struction of home life and decent nurture; and all for a
wage hardly sufficient to buy the bare necessities of life.
But if one looks for sin dark enough to cast such a shadow
he will scarcely find it. "Neither hath this man sinned
nor his parents." The "sweater" or immediate employer,
to whom he first turns, is commonly himself a workman,
not much raised above the rest and making but little
profit on his transactions. Beyond him is the large dealer,
usually a well-intentioned man, quite willing that things
should be better if they can be made so without too much
trouble or pecuniary loss to himself. He is only doing
what others do and what, in his view, the conditions of
trade require. And so on; the closer one gets to the facts
the more evident it is that nowhere is the indubitable
wickedness our feelings have pictured. It is quite the

400

THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL

same with political corruption and the venal alliance be-
tween wealth and party management. The men who
control wealthy interests are probably no worse inten-
tioned than the rest of us; they only do what they think
they are forced to do in order to hold their own; and so
with the politician: he finds that others are selling their
power, and easily comes to think of it as a matter of course.
In truth the consciously, flagrantly wicked man is, and
perhaps always has been, a fiction, for the most part, of
denunciation. The psychologist will hardly find him, but
will feel that most sorts of badness are easily enough
comprehensible, and will perhaps agree with the view
ascribed to Goethe, that he never heard of a crime which
he might not himself have committed.

Naturally ((he more mechanical the system is the less
of will and of live human nature there is in its acts. So
in Russia, says Tolstoy, "Some make the laws, others
execute them; some train men by discipline to auto-
cratic obedience; and these last, in their turn, become the
instruments of coercion, and slay their kind without know-
ing why or to what end." * In our reading and thinking
democracy there is at least the feeling that the working
of the whole ought to be the fulfilment of some humane pur-
pose, and a continual protest that this is not more the case.

I cannot hold out a prospect of the early appearance
of an adequate public will; it is a matter of gradual im-
provement, but it seems clear that there is a trend this
way, based, mechanically, on recent advances in com-
munication, and, as regards training, on the multiform dis-
ciplines in voluntary cooperation which modern life affords,

* My Religion, 45.

401

CHAPTER XXXV

GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL

30YERNMBNT NOT THE ONLY AGENT OP PlJBUC WlLL— THE Rela-
tive Point op View; Advantages op (Government as an
Agent — Mechanical Tendency op (Government — Char-
acteristics Favorable to Government Activity — Munici-
pal Socialism — Self-expression the Fundamental Demand
op the People — Actual Extension op State Functions.

In the growth of public will any agency amenable to
public opinion may serve as an instrument; and this means,
of course, any sort of rational activity, personal as well as
institutional. Thus the work of a secluded scientist, like
Pasteur or Edison, taken together with the general ac-
ceptance and application of his results, is as much an act
of public will as the proceedings of a legislature, and often
more — because they may show a more public spirit and p
wider knowledge and foresight What is necessary is
that somewhere there shall be effectual purpose and en-
deavor based on a large grasp of the situation. In short,
public will is simply a matter of the more efficient organi-
zation of the general mind : whatever in the way of leader-
ship or mechanism contributes to the latter has a share in
it; and we may naturally expect it to progress rather by
the quickening and coordination of many agencies than by
the aggrandizement of any particular one *

The view which many hold that public will must be
chiefly if not wholly identified with the institution of gov-

* If the reader is not clear as to what I mean by public will, I beg
to refer him to chapters I, XII and XXXIV.

402

GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL

ernment is a just one only in a certain narrow sense.
That is to say, the mechanism of government is indeed the
most definite and authoritative expression of public choice,
and if public will is to be limited to what is decided by a
count of voices and carried out, if necessary, by force,
then the government is its only agent. But only a small
part of the will of society is of this sort. In a larger sense
it is a diversified whole, embracing the thought and purpose
of all institutions and associations, formal and informal,
that have any breadth of aim, and even, as I have said, of
secluded individuals. Surely the true will of humanity
never has been and is not likely to be concentrated in a
single agent, but works itself out through many instru-
ments, and the unity we need is something much more
intricate and flexible than could be secured through the
state alone. Like other phases of organization, govern-
ment is merely one way of doing things, fitted by its char-
acter for doing some things and unfitted for doing others.

As to what these things are, we must, of course, take
the relative point of view and hold that the sphere of gov-
ernment operations is not, and should not be, fixed, but
varies with the social condition at large. Hard-and-fast
theories of what the state may best be and do, whether re-
strictive or expansive, we may well regard with distrust.
It is by no means impossible that the whole character of
the political state and of its relation to the rest of life is
undergoing change of an unforeseeable kind which will
eventually make our present dogmas on this point quite
obsolete.

The most evident advantage of government as a social

403.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

instrument — that which makes it the logical recourse of
those who seek a short way to regeneration — is its power
and reach. It is the strongest and most extensive of our
institutions, with elaborate machinery ready to undertake
almost anything, and power limited, in the long run, only
by public opinion.

Moreover, under a democratic system, it is definitely
responsible to the people. Not that it always serves them:
we know too well how apt it is to respect particular rather
than general interests: but there is always a definite means
of bringing it into line with public thought, always reins
which the people may grasp if they will. This has the
momentous effect that there is less jealousy of a demo-
cratic government, other things equal, than of any other
form of power. Feeling that it is potentially at least their
own, the people will endure from it with patience abuses
that would be intolerable from any other source. The
maddening thing about the oppression of private monop-
olies is the personal subjection, the humiliation of being
unable to assert oneself, while in public life the free citizen
has always a way of regular and dignified protest. He ap-
peals not to an alien but to a larger self.

The most general defect of government is that which goes
with its good qualities. Just because it is the most ancient
and elaborate machine we have, it is apt to be too me-
chanical, too rigid, too costly and unhuman. As the most
institutional of institutions it has a certain tendency
toward formalism, and is objectionable on grounds of
red-tape, lack of economy and remoteness from the
fresher needs of the people.

404

GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL

It is easy, however, for one impressed with this idea to be
too indiscriminate in its application. Much depends
upon the kind of government actually in question, upon
the interest the people take in it, and many other con-
ditions.

In the United States, for instance, each of us lives
under three somewhat distinct kinds of government-
federal, state and local — each of which has a large measure
of practical independence of the others, and may be
treated as a separate agent of public will. Moreover, it is
often the case that the larger systems — say the federal
post-office — allow a great deal of local autonomy in their
administration, making it flexible to local opinion.

Under this system, a township, village or small city is
no" unwieldy machine, but pretty much what the people
see fit to make it, and the fact that it is a phase of govern-
ment is no sufficient reason why any affairs it may choose
to undertake may not be as humanly and flexibly admin-
istered as those of a non-political association of equal
extent. They often are so administered, and the same
is true of great cities wherever a vigorous civic conscious-
ness exists and has had time to work out its instruments.
The question is only one of organization, and this con-
fronts non-political associations as well as political; large
private incorporations having notoriously about the same
experience of formalism, extravagance and malfeasance
as the state.

There are certain characteristics whose presence in a
given function is favorable to state activity, though they can*
not be said to indicate clearly where it should begin or end.

405

SOCIAL .ORGANIZATION

One of these, naturally, is the inadequacy or harmf ulness
of other agencies. The fact that a work is deemed neces-
sary and that there is no other adequate way of doing it
is the real basis of most state functions; not only the pri-
mary ones of waging war and keeping order, but of issuing
money, building roads, bridges and harbors, collecting
statistics, instituting free schools, controlling monopolies,
and so on.

Another is that the work in question should be sus-
ceptible of comparatively simple and uniform methods;
since the more various and intricate a function is, the more
difficulty will be found in getting it properly done by the
powerful but usually somewhat clumsy mechanism of
the state. The reasons that may justify a state post or
telegraph, for instance, do not necessarily suffice for the
assumption of the far more complicated business of the
railways.

Again, whatever the state undertakes should be some-
thing likely to be watched by public opinion; not necessa-
rily by the whole public, but at least by some powerful group
steadfastly interested in efficiency and capable of judging
whether it is attained. In the United States, certainly,
the successes or failures of government are largely ex-
plicable on this ground. Public education works well,
in spite of a constant leaning toward formalism, because
the people take a close and jealous interest in it, while the
monetary and financial functions are in like manner safe-
guarded by the scrutiny of the commercial world. But in
the matter of tariffs the scrutiny of the latter, inad-
equately balanced by that of any other interest, has
produced what is practically class legislation; and some-

406

GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL

thing similar may be said of many phases of government
action.*

From such considerations it seems that local government,
because it is on a small scale and because the people will
presumably be more able and willing to watch the details
of its operation, should be the sphere in which extension
of functions has the most chance of success. The more
the citizen feels that government is close to him and amen-
able to his will, the more, other things equal, he should be
inclined to trust it and to put himself into it. In spite of
much disappointing experience, it seems reasonable to
expect that small units, dealing with the every-day inter-
ests of the people, will, in the long run, enlist an ample
share of their capacity and integrity.

And yet the nearness of the whole to the will of the mem-
ber is psychical, not spatial, so that if the citizen for some
reason feels closer to the central government and trusts it
more, he may be more willing to aggrandize it. In the
United States the people often have more interest and con-
fidence in the federal system than in their particular states
and cities; one reason being that the constant enlargement
of private organization — as in the case of railways and the
so-called trusts — puts it beyond the power of local control.
Of course there is a natural sphere of development for
each of the various phases of government.

Municipal socialism has the great advantage over other
sorts of state extension of being optionally small units,
and of permitting all sorts of diversity, experiment and

* These principles are much the same as those put forth by W. Si
Jevons. See his Methods of Social Reform, 355.

407

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

comparison. There is nothing in it of that deadening uni-
formity and obliteration of alternatives involved in the
blanket socialism of the central state. The evils we suffer
from private monopolies — against which we may always
invoke the state if not other competitors — are as nothing
compared with those to be feared from an all-embracing
state-monopoly; and I feel sure that common-sense, a
shrewd attachment to the principle of "checks and bal-
ances/' and the spirit of local individuality will preserve
the English-speaking nations, at least, from serious
danger of the latter. In countries like France, where there
is a great traditional preponderance of the central au-
thority, it may be among the possibilities, though the prob-
able decline of war — the main cause of mechanical con-
solidation — should work in the opposite direction.

There are few things that would be more salutary to the
life of our people than a lively and effective civic conscious-
ness in towns, villages and rural communities. I trust
this is growing and feel no dread of any socialism which
it may prove to involve. One of the best things I have
known Ann Arbor to do was to hold a public-school carni-
val on the occasion of the opening of a new high school.
There were all sorts of performances by the children,
largely of their own devising, and the people were interested
and brought together as never, perhaps, before. It was
communal, it was ours, and the social spirit it evoked was
a common joy. Enterprises of the same nature on a
larger and more permanent scale, such as the recreation
centres of Chicago, are beginning to arise in various parts
of the country.

It seems probable that the plain citizen must look largely

408

GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL

to the communaKlife to supply that chance for self-ex-
pression which town residence and the specialized nature
of modern industry have so largely restricted. Urban life
is inevitable, and instead of regretting the country the
city-dwellers had better make the most of the new situa-
tion, through playgrounds, public amusements, socialized
schools, recreation centres, and, in general, a more vital
and human civic organization.*

The fundamental need of men is for self-expression, for
making their will felt in whatever they feel to be close to
their hearts; and they will use the state in so far and in
such a manner as they find it helpful in gratifying this
need.

The more self-expression, therefore, there is in other
spheres of life, the less need, relatively, people will feel
of acting through government— a principle which should
remind those who dread the growth of the latter that the
only sure way to restrict it is by developing a real, affirma-
tive freedom in other relations. Political democracy plus
social and economic oppression is pretty sure to equal
state socialism, because men will look to political control
as a refuge. But if general conditions are free and open,
men will be the more sensible, by contrast, of the unfree
aspects of state activity.

A lack of economy in government will not much check
its aggrandizement if the need of it is strongly felt on
other grounds, since human nature, on the whole, cares
very little for economy in comparison with freedom and
justice. One will more willingly pay a water-tax of twenty

* Compare Simon N. Patten, The New Basis of Civilization, 124.

" 409

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

dollars to a city government in which he has a voice than
of ten to an alien and overbearing corporation.

In our day there is a tendency toward extension of state
functions which after all is perhaps no more than symmet-
rical in view of the general expansion of larger structures
in every sphere. It does not seem to outstrip the growth,
for instance, of private corporations, or labor unions, or
of individual wealth. It is easy to see a tendency to state
socialism if you look only at the new functions of the state;
easy to see an opposite tendency if you fix your attention
on private organization. Whether or not the state is
relatively increasing its sphere is not easy to decide. The
new conditions of life bring men closer together, creating
a general need of wider organization; and, so far as now
appears, this need is to be met by the simultaneous de-
velopment of various structures already well begun; such
as popular government and education, private industrial
and commercial corporations, labor unions, mutual-aid
societies, philanthropical associations, and so on.

The special demand for state extension seems to spring
chiefly from two conditions: the need to control the ex-
orbitant power of private economic associations, and the
need of meeting novel problems arising from life in great
cities. In these and similar directions an intelligent and
practised democracy will proceed tentatively, "with the
firm foot below/' always balancing the loss against the
gain. Experiments in political socialism are sure to be tried,
which will prove instructive and perhaps beneficial. How
far they will be carried no man can say, but I see no special
reason to fear that they will go to any pernicious extreme.

410

CHAPTER XXXVI

SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL

Growing Efficiency of the Intellectual Processes — Organic
Idealism — The Larger Morality — Indirect Service —
Increasing Simplicity and Flexibility in Social Structure
— Public Will Saves Part of the Cost of Change — Human
Nature the Guiding Force Behind Public Will.

The main source of a more effective public will is to
be sought not, peculiarly, in the greater activity of govern-
ment, but in the growing efficiency of the intellectual and
moral processes as a whole. This general striving of the
public mind toward clearer consciousness is too evident
to escape any observer. In every province of life a multi-
form social knowledge is arising and, mingling with the
higher impulses of human nature, is forming a system of
rational ideals, which through leadership and emulation
gradually work their way into practice.

Compare, for instance, the place now taken in our
universities by history, economics, political science, soci-
ology and the like with the attention given them, say, in
1875, when in fact some of these studies had no place at
all. Or consider the multiplication since the same date
of government bureaus — federal, state and local — whose
main function is to collect, arrange and disseminate social
knowledge. It is not too much to say that governments
are becomhig, more and more, vast laboratories of social
science. Observe, also, the number of books and period-

411

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

icals seriously devoted to these subjects. No doubt much
of this work is feverish and shallow — as must be expected
in a time of change — but there is, on the whole, nothing
more certain or more hopeful than the advance in the
larger self-knowledge of mankind.

One result of this clearer consciousness is that idealism
is coming to be organic; that is to say each particular ideal
is coming to be formed and pursued in subordination to
a system of ideals based on a large perception of fact.
While putting a special enthusiasm into his own work,
the idealist is learning that he needs to have also a general
understanding of every good work, and of the whole to
which all contribute. For him to imagine that his is the
only work worth doing is as unfortunate as for the cap-
tain of a company to imagine that he is conducting the
whole campaign. Other things equal, the most effective
idealists are those who are most sane, and who have a
sense for the complication, interdependence and inertia
of human conditions.

A study of the ideals and programmes that have had most
acceptance even in recent years would make it apparent that
our state of mind regarding society has been much like
that which prevailed regarding the natural world when
men sought the philosopher's stone and the fountain of
perpetual youth. Much energy has been wasted, or nearly
wasted, in the exclusive and intolerant advocacy of special
schemes — single tax, prohibition, state socialism and the
like — each of which was imagined by its adherents to be
the key to millennial conditions. Every year, however,
makes converts to the truth that no isolated scheme can be

412

SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL

a good scheme, and that real progress must be an advance
all along the line. Those who see only one thing can
never see that truly, and so must work, even at that, in
a somewhat superficial and erratic manner.

For similar reasons our moral schemes and standards
must grow larger and more commensurate with the life
which they aim to regulate.* The higher will can never
work out unless it is as intelligently conceived and organ-
ized as commerce and politics. Evidently if we do not
see how life really goes and what good and ill are under
actual conditions, we can neither inculcate nor follow
the better courses. There is nothing for it but to learn
to feel and to effectuate kinds of right involving a sense of
wider and remoter results than men have been used to
take into account. As fast as science enables us to trace
the outcome of a given sort of action we must go on to
create a corresponding sense of responsibility for that
outcome.

The popular systems of ethics are wholly inadequate,
and all thinking persons are coming to see that those
traits of decency in the obvious relations of life that we
have been accustomed to regard as morality are in great
part of secondary importance. Many of them are of
somewhat the same character as John Woolman's refusal
to wear dyed hats — we wonder that people do not see
something more important to exercise their consciences
upon. When the larger movements of life were subcon-
scious and the good and ill flowing from them were

* This line of thought is developed by Professoi E. A. Ross in his
book, Sin and Society.

413

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ascribed to an inscrutable providence, morality could not
be concerned with them; but the more we understand them
the more they must appear the chief field for its activity.

We still have to do with obvious wrong — the drunkard,
the housebreaker, the murderer, and the like — but these
simple offences are easy to deal with, comparatively, as
being evident and indubitable, so that all normal people
condemn them. No great ability or organization up-
holds them; they are like the outbreaks of savages or chil-
dren in that they do not constitute a formidable menace
to society. And, moreover, we are coming to see that they
are most effectually dealt with by indirect and preventive
methods.

The more dangerous immorality is, of course, that which
makes use of the latest engines of politics or commerce
to injure the community. Wrong-doers of this kind are
usually decent and kindly in daily walk and conver-
sation, as well as supporters of the church and other re-
spectable institutions. For the most part they are not
even hypocrites, but men of a dead and conventional
virtue, not awake to the real meaning of what they are
and do. A larger morality requires that they should be
waked up, that a public conscience, based on knowledge,
should judge things by their true results, and should know
how to make its judgments effectual.

Moreover, this is not a matter merely of the bad men
whom we read about in the newspapers, but one of per-
sonal guilt in all of us. It is my observation that the same
wrongs which are held up to execration in the magazines
are present, under appropriate forms, among teachers,
lawyers, ministers, reputable tradesmen, and others who

414

SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL

come under my immediate notice. We are all in it: the
narrow principles are much the same, the differences being
largely in the scale of operations, in being or not being
found out, in more or less timidity in taking risks, and so on.

A somewhat similar problem is that of energizing indi-
rect service. The groups we serve — the nation, the educa-
tional institution, the oppressed class, for instance — have
come to be so vast, and often so remote from the eye, that
even the ingenuity of the newspaper and magazine press
can hardly make them alive for us and draw our hearts
and our money in their direction. The "we" does not
live in face-to-face contact, and though photo-engravings
and stereopticons and exhibitions and vivid writing are
a marvelous substitute, they are often inadequate, so that
we do not feel the cogency of the common interest so im-
mediately as did the men of the clans. "Civilization,"
says Professor Simon Patten, "spares us more and more
the sight of anguish, and our imaginations must be cor-
respondingly sharpened to see in the check-book an agent
as spiritual and poetic as the grime and blood-stain of min-
istering hands." * How far this may come to pass it is hard
to say: for myself, I do not find it easy to write checks for
objects that are not made real to me by some sort of per-
sonal contact. No doubt, however, our growing system
of voluntary institutions — churches, philanthropic soci-
eties, fraternal orders, labor unions and the like — are
training us in the habit of expressing ourselves through the
check-book and other indirect agents.

I expect, however, that the best results will flow not
* The New Basis of Civilization, 61.

415

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

merely from an intelligent general benevolence that writes
checks for all sorts of good causes, but from a kind of
specialization in well-doing, that will enable one by fa-
miliarity to see through the tangle of relations at a par-
ticular point and act in the view of truth. In philan-
thropy, for instance, an increasing number of men and
women of wealth and ability will devote not only their
checks but trained thought and personal exertion to some
particular sort of work which takes hold of their interest —
to the welfare of dependent children, of the blind, and so
on — making this their business, giving it the same close and
eager attention they would any other business, and so com-
ing to understand it through and through. These, along
with salaried workers, will be the leaders in each special
line, and will draw after them the less personal support
of those who have confidence in them; but people will
never send much of their treasure where their heart does
not go first. Every city and neighborhood has its urgent
social needs which the resident may study and devote him-
self to with much better results to the world and to his
own character than if he limits himself to the writing of
checks. And for that matter every occupation — as law,
medicine, teaching and the various sorts of business and
hand-labor — has its own philanthropies and reforms into
which one may put all the devotion he is capable of. If
each of us chooses some disinterested form of public ser-
vice and puts himself thoroughly into it, things will go
very well.

Another tendency involved in the rise of public will is
that toward a greater simplicity and flexibility of structure

416

SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL

in every province of life: principles- are taking the place
of formulas.

In the early history of a science the body of knowledge
consists of a mass of ill-understood and ill-related obser-
vations, speculations and fancies, which the disciple takes
on the authority of the master: but as principles are dis-
covered this incoherent structure falls to pieces, and is
replaced by a course of study based on experiment and
inference. So in the early growth of every institution the
truth that it embodies is not perceived or expressed in sim-
plicity, but obscurely incarnated in custom and formula.
The perception of principles does not do away with the
mechanism, but tends to make it simple, flexible, human,
definitely serving a conscious purpose and quick to stand
or fall according to its success. Under the old system
everything is preserved, because men do not know just
where the virtue resides; under the new the essential is
kept and the rest thrown away.

Or we may say that the change is like the substitution
of an alphabet for picture writing, with the result that
language becomes at the same time more complex in its
structure and simpler in its elements. When once it is
discovered that all speech may be reduced to a few ele-
mentary sounds the symbols of these, being sufficient to
express all possible words, are more efficient and less cum-
bersome than the many characters that were used before.

The method of this change is that struggle for existence
among ideas which is implied in the wide and free inter-
course of modern life. In this only the vital, human and
indispensable can survive, and truth is ever casting off
superfluity and working itself down to first principle*.

417

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

We have remarked this in the case of religion, and it would
be easy to find the same process at work in other traditions.
The modern world, then, in spite of its complexity,
may become fundamentally simpler, more consistent and
reasonable. Apparently formalism can never more be
an accepted and justified condition, any more than reason
can be exchanged for the blind instinct of the lower ani-
mals. It will exist wherever thought and feeling are inade-
quate to create a will — as is much the case at present —
but people will not be content with it as in the past.
There will be creeds, but they will affirm no more than is
really helpful to believe, ritual, but only what is beautiful
or edifying; everything must justify itself by function.

Public will, like individual will, has the purpose of
effecting an adaptation to conditions that is rational and
economical instead of haphazard and wasteful. In general
it should greatly diminish, though it can hardly obviate,
the cost of social change. In commerce, for instance, it
has already rendered crises less sudden and destructive
— in spite of the enormous scale of modern transactions
— and the time should not be very far away when trouble
of this sort will be so foreseen and discounted and so pro-
vided against by various sorts of insurance as to do but
little damage. In the same way the vast problem of pov-
erty, and of the degeneracy that springs from it, can be
met arid in great part conquered by a long-sighted phi-
lanthropy and education. In religion there is apparently
no more need of that calamitous overthrow of the founda-
tions of belief from which many suffered in the passing
(generation. In the state violent revolution seems likely

418

SOME PHASES OP THE LARGER WILL

to disappear as fast as democracy is organized; while in
international relations it will be strange if we do not see
a rapid diminution of war. In all these matters, and in
many others, social costs are capable of being foreseen
and provided against by rational measures expressing an
enlightened public will.

The guiding force back of public will, now as ever, is
of course human nature itself in its more enduring char-
acteristics, those which find expression in primary groups
and are little affected by institutional changes. This
nature, familiar yet inscrutable, is apparently in a posi-
tion to work itself out more adequately than at any time
in the past

STUDY QUESTIONS

Although Social Organization is primarily a book for
the general reader it has come to be rather widely used
as a text-book, and the author, judging from his own ex-
perience as a teacher, has thought that a series of printed
questions would be useful in the study of it. These ques-
tions do not cover the whole ground and are by no means
intended to take the place of other methods of study,
but rather to aid in defining and emphasizing the more
essential principles. The student should never be con-
tent until he can give with every answer illustrations
drawn from his own experience: there is no other way of
understanding this subject.

Original papers, based on observation, and treating some
practical question from a sociological standpoint, should
be prepared in connection with the study.

The two opening chapters on Social and Individual As-
pects of Mind are rather difficult for students with no pre-
vious knowledge of social psychology, and some may find
it better to postpone a thorough study of them to the end
of the book. They sum up, in a way, the conception of
the "socius," that is, of the relation of the individual to
society, developed in the writer's Human Nature and the
Social Order.

421

STUDY QUESTIONS

A. Social and Individual Aspects of Mind

Chaps. I-n

1. In what sense is the mind of society, or of any social group, a
unit? Give original illustrations.

2. "Social consciousness and self-consciousness are inseparable."
Explain this and illustrate it from your own experience.

3. Describe the process by which the two phases of conscious-
ness develop in a child's mind.

4. Explain "sympathetic introspection" and give original illus-
trations.

5. Explain and illustrate the three aspects of consciousness
mentioned at the end of Chap. I, showing that they are phases of
a single whole.

6. Discuss the "organic view of mind" as to whether it should
have a good moral effect, using your own illustrations.

7. Explain and illustrate "Real reform must be sympathetic."

8. Discuss the place of praise and blame, reward and punish-
ment, in an organic view of social life.

9. What sort of reforms in the treatment of crime does the or-
ganic view suggest to you?

10. How does the organic view affect personal responsibility?
When may emphasis on the latter be inexpedient?

11. Just why does the organic view call for more social knowl-
edge?

12. What does sociology lead us to see in history? Pages 21-22.

B. Primakt Groups
Chaps. III-V

1. Explain the psychological nature of a primary group, illus-
trating from your observation.

2. What harm would it do one to grow up without experience of
primary groups outside the family?

3. What difference have you noticed between boys and girls as
to the kind of primary groups they form?

4. When we say that "human nature does not change," just
what do we mean and what evidence is there that the statement is
true?

422

STUDY QUESTIONS

5. Discuss the statement "Human nature is a group nature."

6. What is meant by saying that the ideal of moral unity is the
mother of social ideals? Pages 33-35.

7. Can the "selfishness of human nature" be reconciled with
the ideal of moral unity? Pages 35-38.

8. Show just how group play tends to make orderly and public-
spirited citizens.

9. How far and just how do you think that play-groups should
be recognized or fostered in the public schools?

10. Do you think equality is a primary ideal? If so, in just
what sense?

11. In what ways are modern conditions harmful with respect
to primary groups?

12. What activities are there in your home locality looking to a
betterment of primary groups?

13. What are the chief reasons why kindness is not a ruling ideal
in business? Pages 51-57.

14. Just how are Democracy and Christianity related to primary
ideals?

C. Communication
Chaps. VI-X

1. What was the effect of communication upon Hellen Keller,
and why? Page 62/.

2. Compare what you might learn about a person (1) by seeing
him frequently without exchanging words, and (2) by an intimate
correspondence without seeing him.

3. Show just how a word enables us to form ideas that we could
not otherwise have.

4. What is meant by saying that language economises ex-
perience?

5. Show that in learning a word we are taught by our remote
ancestors.

6. What ground is there for holding that speech is as old as
human nature?

7. Show by original illustrations what writing does for society.

8. Do the same for printing.

9. Take some non-literary art in which you are interested and
discuss it in relation to communication.

423

STUDY QUESTIONS

10. Describe the character of modern communication and its
general effect upon mental life.

11. What was the basis of the old doctrine that democracy must
be confined to cities, and how has modern communication affected
the question?

12. Answer carefully the question whether a university increases
or diminishes the individuality of a man who comes from a small
town.

13. What can be said pro and con regarding the "dead-level"
theory? Pages 92, 159.

14. What views have you formed from your own experience
regarding superficiality in education? Can you suggest remedies?

15. Discuss the question, Does contemporary life overstimulate
the individual?

D. Democracy
Chaps. XI-XVII

1. Describe, as you conceive it, the working of public con-
sciousness in tribal society.

2. Discuss the part played by popular assemblies in tribal society
and at the present time.

3. Discuss the sphere and value of tradition in primitive society.

4. Just what would you give as the meaning and scope of "de-
mocracy" in the modern sense? Pages 113-120.

5. Show by an example the process through which a true public
opinion is formed.

6. Explain the proposition "Government by popular impression
is not real democracy."

7. In what sense may public opinion be organized even though
there is no majority for any one view?

8. What practical importance is there in recognizing minorities,
or dissenting individuals, as parts of public opinion?

9. Discuss the view which looks upon public opinion as an
average of individual minds.

10. Under what conditions will a group be likely to function
through its best members? Through its worst? Give examples.

11. Discuss the question how many and what kind of matters
general public opinion can deal with.

424

STUDY QUESTIONS

12. Show by example in just what ways the opinion of special
groups is controlled by general public opinion.

13. Give and defend your opinion on the question. Do the people
rule in American politics?

14. Mention the strongest arguments you know against de-
mocracy, and answer them.

15. Discuss the question what masses (as distinguished from
leaders) contribute to democracy.

16. Discuss the question whether the masses or the well-to-do
classes are more likely to be right on public questions.

17. What may be said for the view that the masses of foreign
immigrants are likely to raise the ideals of American democracy?

18. What limits are there to the practicability of immediate
popular rule, as by referendum, initiative and recall? Page 129.

19. Under what circumstances might the extension of rule by
popular vote mean less democracy rather than more?

20. Discuss the view that democracy tends to be the rule of an
irresponsible "crowd."

21. Explain any views regarding public opinion you have been
led to form by experience in college affairs.

22. Discuss (1) democracy and (2) transition as possible causes
of inferior achievement. Page 158 ff.

23. Explain "individualism may not be favorable to the pro-
duction of distinguished individuality."

24. On the supposition that nature intended you for a poet or
artist, discuss the influence of the conditions under which you were
brought up.

25.. Just what do you understand by "culture groups" in
relation to higher intellectual achievement? In what respect,
if any, do you think the university deficient from this point
of view?

26. What is meant by "poverty of types" in connection with
American life? Page 167.

27. What conditions, specially characteristic of American life,
are favorable or unfavorable to high intellectual achievement?
Pages 167-176.

28. What is meant by calling ours an "age of diffusion"?
Page 174/.

29. Mention some tendencies of sentiment that are character-
istic of modern life and show why. Pages 177-188.

425

STUDY QUESTIONS

30. "The world was never so Christian in feeling." In just
what sense is this true and how is the matter related to primary
ideals, communication and democracy?

31. What contemporary conditions are favorable and what hos-
tile to the growth of brotherhood? Can you show that these op-
posing conditions have a common source?

E. Social Classes

Chaps, xvm-xxvn

1. Explain the conditions in human nature tending to produce
inheritance classes or castes. What tests would you apply to dis-
cover whether caste exists? Page 211/.

2. What special conditions of society (apart from race) favor the
growth of caste, and why? Pages 220-228.

3. Give your view regarding the maintenance of the color line
at the south, with reasons.

4. Discuss the question whether immigration is likely to give
rise to caste in the United States.

5. Leaving aside race and immigration do you think the caste
principle likely to gain or lose in the United States, and why?

6. In what sense is it true that more class-consciousness is de-
sirable in our society? Pages 240-245.

7. Explain what open classes are, under what conditions they
can flourish, of what advantage they are to society and what is
meant by their overlapping.

8. In what sense and in what degree do you think classes actu-
ally exist in the United States?

9. What is meant by saying that from the point of view of
classes there are two kinds of freedom? Pages 245-247.

10. To what extent do you think we are ruled by a capitalist
class? What are the methods through which this rule is exercised?

11. Discuss, pro and con, the question whether capitalist as-
cendency is beneficial.

12. What do you think of the view that ambitious young men
are a support to the ruling class?

13. Discuss the comparative power and security of an upper
class (1) under a caste system, (2) under open classes.

14. What safeguards are there against violent revolution by a
lower economic class?

426

STUDY QUESTIONS

15. Discuss the question whether democracy favors the ascend-
ency of wealth, or otherwise.

16. Why do we have democracy in politics but not in industry?
What is the outlook in this regard?

17. What, from a public standpoint, are the advantages and
disadvantages of the organization of labor?

18. Discuss the social condition of unorganized labor and what
can be done to better it.

19. In what sense are the poor a class; in what sense not?

20. Why is the question whether poverty is due to social or per-
sonal causes fallacious?

21. Discuss the argument: The poor are vicious or incompetent,
hence their poverty is their own fault.

22. What is the precise meaning of "the unfit" in relation to
biological evolution, and how far is it applicable to the poor? How
does the answer bear on questions of social reform?

23. Discuss the question who is to blame for poverty.

24. What is meant by saying that the self-respecting poor are
defenders of the general welfare?

25. Discuss, pro and con, the question whether class hostility is
likely to increase.

F. Institutions

Chaps, xxvm-xxxin

1. Explain the nature and origin of institutions, illustrating from
student life.

2. Explain the statement (Page 316) that in the development
of the child we have to do with the interaction of two types.

3. Show, with illustrations from your experience, how institu-
tions and personality are related. How may they be opposed?

4. Discuss the question whether the moral standards of institu-
tions are necessarily lower than those of persons.

5. "Innovation or the opposite may be a public habit." Ex-
plain and illustrate this statement. Pages 328, 329.

6. How does the "solidarity" of America differ from that of
France? Pages 330-335.

7. Show the difference between modern and mediaeval society
as regards tradition and convention.

8. Explain formalism and give illustrations from your observa-
tion.

427

»»

STUDY QUESTIONS

9. Explain disorganization, giving illustrations and showing its
relation to formalism.

10. To what extent, in your opinion, is this a time of disorgan-
ization ? Explain your view fully.

11. Explain what is meant by the "new regime in the family,
and contrast with it the old regime.

12. How is the present state of the family related to changes in
industry and communication?

13. Discuss the decline in the birth-rate and the laxity of family
discipline as related to the growth of freedom and individuality.

14. What is your view of the present social status of women as
related to disorganization in society?

15. Explain the personal and institutional causes tending to in-
crease divorce.

16. How would you answer the question, Is the family degen-
erating?

17. What would you give as the basis, in human nature, of religion?

18. Just what do you understand by religious institutions?
Show that they must share the nature and changes of other insti-
tutions contemporary with them.

19. Mention and illustrate the chief dangers inherent in religious*
institutions.

20. Do you think the Christian church "institutionized"? If

^B^fT*** h ° W far M «P««^^.«wi for the '

FoL^ 4 -" - ^ be ^ to be d^S
24. Answer the same questions as under 2a r^^!

G. Public Will
Chaps. XXXIV-XXXXI

1. Explain what is meant bv nuhho *riii ™a •* i ..
dividual will 7 P lnSi and lts Nation to in-

regard?
428

vrga**.

ducation
timet

torn-
how

STUDY QUESTIONS

3. Discuss the question whether the most serious social wrongs
are intentional. If not, is any one to blame? Pages 15, 400, 401.

4. What, in general, are the advantages and disadvantages of
the government (as compared with private enterprise) in any under-
taking? What sort of undertakings are best suited to government?

5. What is meant by "the growing efficiency of the intellectual
and moral processes as a whole"? Page 411.

6. In just what sense, and why, do we need a new kind of moral-
ity?

7. Explain the view that a new kind of institutions is developing,
characterized by principles rather than formulas. Can you give,
illustrations?

8. Explain "organic idealism." To what ideas and methods is
it opposed? Page 412.

9. What is "the cost of social change" and how can public
will diminish it?

INDEX

Abbott, Lyman, 187.

Achilles, 110.

Addams, Jane, 25, 137, 190, 101, 244,
850,385.

Agreement, not essential to public
opinion, 122.

Alphabet, 417.

Amenomorl, 331.

Anarchism, 196; in the church, 374.

Anarchy and spoliation, fear of,
276.

Anderson, W. L., 83.

Ann Arbor, school carnival in, 408.

Architecture, as communication, 79,
172; disorganisation in, 390 ff.

Aristocracy, hereditary, 210, 257,
282 f.

Army, German, 324; American, 325.

Art, visible society a work of, 21;
collective judgments on, 125; in
relation to democracy, 157 ff.;
spirit of, 244 f.; 321, disorganiza-
tion in, 390 ff.

Arts, non-verbal, as communica-
tion, 77 ff.

Assemblage, public, 109.

Athletic sports, 163, 199.

Attenuation of sentiment, 178.

Augustine, 374.

Austen, Jane, 102.

Autocratic control of industry, 262 ff.

Average-theory of group action,
123 ff.

Bacon, Francis, 76, 318.
Bagehot, W., 178.
Baring-Gould, 325.
Biological type, the, 315 f.
Birth-rate, decline of, 358 ff.
Blame, 15 ff, 201 ff.
Bourget, Paul, 160, 171.
Brooks, John G., 45.
Brotherhood, sentiment of, 189 ff.
Browne, Sir T., 70, 153.
BrowneU, W. C, 161, 166, 321, 332 ff.
Bryce, James, 85, 136, 182, 276, 280,
869, 381.

Buck, Winifred, 43.
Burckhardt, 354.
Burke, 330.
Burne-Jones, 168.
Burroughs, John, 93.

Camp-fire, Assembly around, 109 f.

Carlyle, 167, 323.

Carnegie, A., views of on wealth.
281.

Capitalist class, ascendency of, 256 ff.

Caste, 209 ff.

Change, social, in relation to caste,
217, 225, 231.

Check-book, in social reform, 415 f.

Chicago, 212; recreation centres in,
408.

Child, the, his relation to the world,
315 ff.

Children, development of social con-
sciousness in, 7 ff., 72; reforms in
the interest of, 318 f.; "spoiled,"
358 ff.

China, lack of communication in,
86.

Chinese, 186, 198.

Chivalry, 224.

Choice, excessive, 172; versus mech-
anism, 823; spirit of, 359 ff.,
365 ff.

Christianity, 52, 73, 136, 166, 203 ff.,
253, 304, 373 ff.

Church, the, 204, 322, 342, 347, 370;
disorganization in, 372 ff.

City life, 94, 178 f., 409.

Class animosity, 301 ff.

Class atmosphere, 272.

Class-consciousness, 240 ff., 275,
284 ff., 305.

Class struggle, the, 241, 277, 286.

Classes, social, 179 f., 209-309; open,
239 ff.; open, in relation to wealth,
248 ff.; capitalist, 256 ff.; organi-
zation of the ill-paid, 284 ff.; hos-
tile feeling between, 301.

Classical culture, 388 f .

Clergymen, facial expression of, 67.

431

INDEX

C/ommerclallsm, 167; in relation to
art, 173 f., 261, 846, 888 ff.

Commons, J. R., 286.

Communication, 64; significance of,
61 ff.; growth of, 66 ff.; modern,
a cause of enlargement and ani-
mation, 80 ff.; modern, in relation
to individuality, 91 ff.; in relation
to superficiality and strain, 08 ff.;
in relation to crowds, 151, 180, 191;
in realtion to caste, 226 f., 888 f.

Community ideal, the, 83 ff., 52, 805.
See also We-feeling and Moral
unity.

Compensation, principle of, in social
organization, 55 ff., 116, 118.

Competition, 85, 56, 158, 199 ff.,
210, 226 f., 285, 239 f., 244, 328.
See also Survival of the fittest.

Comte, 237.

Conflict. See Competition.

Confusion, in relation to art and lit*
erature, 162 ff.; to sentiment, 193.
See also Disorganization.

Conquest, a cause of caste, 221.

Conscience, public, 387.

Consciousness, growth of in history.
107 ff.

Consciousness, public, 10 ff., 82,
411 ff.

Consciousness, social, 4 ff.; devel-
opment of in children, 7 ff., 71,
850.

Conservatism, 827 ff.

Constitution of the United States,
314, 398.

Convention and tradition, 335 ff.

Conventionalism, 339 ff.

Cornish, F. W., 224.

Cost of change, 418 f.

Country life, effects of, 93 f. v 178 f .

Courage, 187.

Creeds, 375 ff., 418.

Crime, 202 f .

Crises, commercial, 418.

Crowd excitement, in relation to de-
mocracy, 149 ff.

Crowds, psychology of, 149 ff.

Cuba, 822.

Culture groups and types, 163 ff.,
248, 388 f.

DANTB, 86, 70, 165, 173, 190, 388.
Darwin, 29, 67, 189, 295, 321.
Dead-level theory, 93, 159 ff.
Declaration of Independence, 48,
134,

Dellenbaugh, F. 8., 108.

Demand, economic, often degrading,
141.

Democracy, among children, 45;
source of its ideals, 61; dependent
upon printing, 75; relation to
modern communication, 85 ff.; an
inadequate name, 86; as mental
organization, 105-206; a discipline
in self-control, 152; and distinc-
tion, 167 ff.; in relation to wealth,
278 ff.; to Childhood, 318, 329 t
834, 398.

Descartes, 5 ff.

Determinism, moral value of, 19 f .

De Tocqueville, Alexis, 27, 92, 99,
101, 116, 159, 172, 175, 235, 329,
398.

Devine, E. T., 297.

Dialects, revival of, 96.

Diffusion, a result of modern com-
munication, 81; possibilities of,
87; not opposed to selection, 88;
zeal for, 174; the age of, 175.

Dill, Samuel, 114.

Discussion. See Opinion.

Disorganization, spiritual, 162 ff.,
347 ff.; in the family, 356 ff.; in
the church, 372 ff.; in industry,
883 ff.; in education and culture,
386 ff.; in fine art, 389 ff.

Distinction, apt to cause isolation,
138 f.; in relation to democracy
157 ff.

Divorce, 365 ff.

Domestic service, 367.

Donovan, J., 109.

Dorsey, J. O., 111.

Dress, 805.

Drink, 293 f .

Economic Intxbprbtjltion or His-
tory, 255.

Economic system, confusion in, 383.

Education, 48, 87, 117, 227, 234;
formalism in, 845 f., 849; of wom-
en, 863 ff.; disorganization in,
386 ff.; public, 406.

Efficiency, social, depends upon free-
dom, 284 f.

Ellis, H., 864.

Emerson, 126, 167, 176, 246, 842, 885.

Emulation, 307.

Energy, persistence of, 328.

England, 274, 281, 301, 302, 840,
358, 397 f.

Ennui, 99.

432

INDEX

Environment, 214 f., 230, 291 ff.,

316 f.
Equality, 180, 257, 301 f.
Ethics. See Morality.
Eugenics, 296.

Facial Expression, 66 f.

Family, 10 f.; as a primary group,

24; as a source of primary ideals,

24, 48, 62; traditional careers

in, 236 f . ; disorganization in, 356 ff.
Fashion, 336 ff.
Fellowship, 174 f., 242 ff.
Ferguson, on architecture, 391.
Feudal system, 223 ff.
Formalism, 56, 198, 342 ff., 376 ff.,

418.
Fort Sumter, attack on, 154.
France, 155, 166, 276, 330, 331 ff.,

398, 408.
Frederick the Great, 86.
Freedom, as a primary ideal, 46; two

aspects of in relation to classes

245 f.; 275,325.
Free-will, 20.

Galton, Francis, 214, 317.

" Gangs" of boys, as primary groups,

49.
Garibaldi, 325.
Genius, 348.

Germany, 27, 248, 306, 324.
Gesture, 66, 69.
Gibbon, Edward, 73, 77.
God, 188, 196, 203, 205, 352, 353,

354, 372, 373, 380.
Goethe, 78, 165, 367, 401.
Gossip, organized, 84 f.
Government, as public will, 402 ff.;

sphere of, 403 ff.; transformation

of, 411.
Greece, refinement in, 180.
Greed of gain, 36, 254.
Green, J. R„ 108.
Groups, primary, 23 ff. See also

Types, Classes and Institutions.
Gummere, F. B., 107, 222.

Hamsrton, P. G., 140, 356, 390.

Hartt, R. L., 94.

Haste, 170 ff.

Heine, 95.

Herbert, Geo., 287.

Heredity and environment, 294 f.,

316.
Hlgginson, T. W., 127, 136, 282.

History, organic view of, 25&

Holbein, 67.

Honesty and policy, 184.

Hopefulness, 187.

Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus), U0t

Hostile feeling, 199 ff., 301 ff.

House of Commons, 341.

Howard, Geo. E., 24.

Howells, W. D., 271.

Human nature, relation to primary
groups, 28 ff.; dependent upon
communication, 62 f., 419.

Humanism of sentiment, 178, 180 ff.

Huxley, 190.

Idealism, Organic, 412 f.

Ideals, primary, 32 ff., 51 ff., 118; of
groupa, x^oi.; 165 f.

Imitation, two kinds of, 336.

Immigrants, 294, 295.

Immigration, 169, 220 f., 369.

India, caste in, 224.

Indians, American, kindness among,
41; individuality among, 110 f.

Individual, in relation to institu-
tions, 313 ff.

Individualism, in art, 166, 243, 347
ff.; domestic, 357 ff. See also
Disorganization.

Individuality, how affected by mod-
ern communication, 91 ff.; in
tribal life, 110; development of in
history, 112, 116 ff.; in relation to
democracy, 160 ff.; moral, 201 f.;
enjoyment of, 307; in harness,
324, 332 ff.

Inheritance principle, 209 ff.

Institutions, in relation to privileged
classes, 140 f., 186, 313-392; and
the individual, 313 ff.

Intolerance, 344.

Introspection, sympathetic, 7.

Italy, 167, 185, 186, 347, 348.

Jambs, Henry, 84, 171, 174.

James, William, 20, 138, 253.

Japan, 328, 330.

Jesus, 16, 203 ff., 377.

Jevons, W. S., 407.

Johnson, Doctor, 93.

Johnson, Samuel (the orientalist)

225.
Justice, sentiment of, 181.

Keller, Helen, 62 f.
Kempis, Thomas a, 137, 138c

433

INDEX

Kindness, 40 ff., 180 ff.
Kropotldn, P. A., 41, 180.

Labob Movbmbnt, 106, 842, 248,

268, 275, 284 ff .
Labor trouble*, 808.
Lamb, Chariot, 88.
Latin language, 74.
Law students, 141.
Lawfulness as a primary ideal, 42 ff.
Lawyers, 260.
Leadership, 185 f., 402.
LeBon, G., 140, 158.
Lecky, W. H. H., 06, 144.
Las, H. C, 76.
Lee, Joseph, 84, 48.
Lincoln, 76.
Lindsey, Judge, 80.
literature, in relation to democracy,

157 ff.; growth of refinement In,

170; disorganisation in, 300; of

social knowledge, 411 f.
Lloyd, A. H., 810.
Lloyd, H. D., 140, 268, 264.
Longinus, 115.
Lowell, J. R., 101, 878.
Loyalty, 38 f., 182.
Luther, 75.
Luxury, 806, 350.

Macaulay, on democracy, 143 f.

MacchiaveUi, 184.

Mackenzie, J. 8., 02.

Maladjustment, as a cause of pov-
erty, 203 f.

Malthus, 205.

Manners, tendency of, 107 ff.

Mantegna, 320.

Manual training, 304.

Marriage, 282, 356 ff. See also
Family.

Masses, in relation to public opinion,
185 ff.

Middle ages, caste in, 222 ff., 267.

Might and right, 320.

MUton, 76.

Mind, organic view of, 8 ff.; demo-
cratic, 107-207.

Mind-cure doctrines, 207.

Mir, Russian, 26.

Mob. See Crowd.

Money-value, nature of, 265 f.

Montesquieu, 86, 116, 142, 261, 802.

Moral aspect, of the organic view of
mind, 18 ff.; of institutions, 322;
Of public will, 307.

Moral principles, need of settled,
200 f., 807.

Moral unity, 33, 188, 182, 885.

Morality, of group action, 124; spe-
cialisation in, 130; mode of prog-
ress in, 181 ; of captallsts, 250 f . ; in-
ternational, 322; the larger, 418 ff.

Music as communication, 77, 70.

Natolson, 184.

Nationality, persistence of, 06.

Natural Bight, doctrine of, relation
to primary ideals, 47 f .

Natural selection, 180, 204 ff.

Nature and nurture, 214.

Negro question, 218 ff.

Negroes, 205.

Neighborhood, the, 24 ff., 40.

Newspaper, in modern communica-
tion, 83 ff., 151, 102 f., 270 f., 846.

North Carolina, mountain people of,
04.

O'Bhmn, R. L., 846.

Omahas, war party among, 110 f.

Opinion, public 10 f., 85, 108, 121 ff.,
144 f., 307 f., 406. See also De-
mocracy.

Opportunity, freedom of, 233 ff.,
245 f., 257 f.

Opposition, morality of, 37. See
also Competition.

Organic conception of society, 3 ff.,
13 ff., 255. See also table of con-
tents.

Organic idealism, 412 f.

Organisation, social, 8, 2a, 22. Sea
also table of contents.

Organizing capacity, 266.

Originality of masses, 135.

08trogorsld, 00.

Painting, 77 ff., 170, 380 f.

Paralysis, general, 103.

Pater, Walter, 14, 70.

Patten, Simon N., 200, 400, 415.

Paul, St., on truth, 182.

Personality, relation of to social

organisation, 53; to specialization,

130 f. ; interest in at elections, 143;

161, 214 f. See also Individuality.
Persons, judgment of by the msnsco,

142 ff.
Philanthropy, 48, 105, 200, 35&

416.
Plato, 86, 125, 150.
Play-group, the, 24 ff., 84 ff.

434

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