UC-NRLF B 3 132 532 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. > Class LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICS. EDITED BY RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D. Number Seven. Hioraro of Economics ano Politics. Independent Treasury System of the United States. By DAVID KINLEY, A.B. l2mo $1.50 Repudiation of State Debts in the United States. By WILLIAM A. SCOTT, Ph.D. l2mo 1.50 Socialism and Social Reform. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D. l2mo 1.50 American Charities. By AMOS G. WARNER, Ph.D., Professor of Economics in the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. l2mo 1.75 Hull-House Maps and Papers. A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago. With Maps. 8vo 2.50 Special Edition, with Maps mounted on Linen. 8vo. . . . 3.50 Punishment and Reformation. By F. H. WINES, LL.D. l2mo 1.75 Social Theory. A Grouping of Social Facts and Principles. By JOHN BASCOM, Professor of Political Econ- omy in Williams College. l2mo 1.75 Proportional Representation. By JOHN R. 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GENERAL TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON. THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED TO EMMA CURTISS BASCOM, AVlKi.SK thoughts on its themes have kept COMPANY WITH MY THOUGHTS THESE MANY YEARS. PREFACE. The present volume is independent of the author's previous volume, entitled " Sociology." It is far more comprehensive, is for the most part diverse, and, so far as it offers the same material, presents it in a new form and in different relations. The volume is designed for the general student of Sociology rather than for the specialist. The references it contains are made both as giving authority and as drawing attention to co-ordinate, and often popular, discussions. The reader is not at liberty to infer, in each case, that the persons mentioned support the view of the author. As there are full bibli- ographies of Sociology, there has been no effort to add another. The book is both theoretical and practical. The problems discussed are offered for the sake of the principles involved in them, and the principles are urged for the sake of the problems which come under them. It is prompted by a progressive temper, and, it is hoped, will awaken, correct, and guide the same tem- per in others. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. Claims of Sociology — page § 1. The Comprehensiveness of Sociology 3 2. English and American Society 5 CHAPTER II. Definitions, Divisions, Preliminary Facts and Principles — § 1. Definitions 8 2. Divisions 9 3. Groups . 11 4. Definitions 13 5. Facts of Attainment 14 6. Influences operative on Organic Forces .... 16 7. Inheritance 19 8. The Things implied in Inheritance 21 9. National Type and External Circumstances ... 24 10. Growth of Society a Movahle Equilibrium ... 28 PART I. — Customs as a Factor in Sociology. CHAPTER I. Definitions and Divisions — Social Customs — § 1. Nature of Customs 33 2. Relation to Progress ;!4 3. Divisions of Customs — The Family 37 4. Marriage 40 ix X CONTENTS. PAGE 5. Relation of Parents and Children 41 6. Relation of Children to One an Other 43 7. The Family the School of Social Relations ... 44 8. Subjection of Women 46 9. Rights gained by Women 47 10. Political Rights of Women 51 11. Objections to these Rights 54 12. Divorce 59 13. Evils of Divorce 68 14. Customs which pertain to Classes 73 15. The Negro Problem 74 16. Manners 76 17. Amusements 79 CHAPTER II. Civic Customs — § 1. Four Forms 83 2. Economic Customs 84 3. Constitutional Customs 86 4. Judicial Customs S7 5. Administrative Customs 88 CHAPTER III. Religious Customs — § 1. Two Forms 91 2. Functions performed by them 92 3. Modification of Keligious Customs 93 4. Conservative Force of Religious Customs .... 94 CHAPTER IV. Customs and Reforms — § 1. Part played by Customs in Social Development . . 96 2. Reform 98 3. Instruments of Reform 100 4. The Press, its Service 103 5. The Press, its Evils 106 6. The Causes of its Failures 109 7. Its Relation to Society 114 CONTENTS. XI PART II. — Economics as a Factor in Sociology. CHAPTER I. page The Nature of Economics and Its Relation to Sociology — § 1. Nature of Economics 119 2. Economics a Deductive Science 120 3. Two Schools . * 121 4. Relation of Economics and Sociology 122 5. First Example, Rent 122 0. Second Example, Law of Malthus 125 CHAPTER II. The Postulates of Economics — § 1. First Postulate 130 2. Failures of the Postulate 135 3. Second Postulate 138 4. Third Postulate 140 5. Nature of Competition 145 6. Functions of Competition 148 7. Limitations of Competition 152 8. Competition as a Social Law 163 CHAPTER III. Social Growth in the Several Forms of Produc- tion. Agriculture — § 1. Divisions 166 2. The Relations of Agriculture 166 3. Tenure of Land 107 4. Holdings of Land 171 5. Socialism 175 6. A Single Tax 181 CHAPTER IV. Manufacture — § 1. Changes in the Form of Manufacture 191 2. Consequent Losses in Society 193 3. Consequent Gains in Society 196 4. Hours of Labor 109 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. COMM E BCE — P A i ; E § 1. Increased Rapidity of Commerce 205 2. Growth of Cities : 208 3. Social Changes 210 4. Social Results 214 5. Remedies 217 CHAPTER VI. Distribution — § 1. Ruling Principle in Distribution 220 2. Four Classes in Distribution — Rent 222 3. Capital 223 4. Management and Labor 224 5. The Amount under Contention in Distribution . . 226 6. Governing Idea the Public Welfare 230 7. Wage-system in Distribution . 232 8. The Labor-Movement 235 0. Effects of the Labor-Movement 237 10. Evils of the Labor-Movement 245 11. Co-operation 250 12. Profit-Sharing 254 13. Saving and Loan Associations, Savings-Banks . . 257 14. Gains of Workmen 261 15. Inequalities in Distribution 268 16. Social Principles involved in Distribution .... 271 CHAPTER VII. Exchange — §1. The Doctrine of Protection 276 2. A Sound Currency, Quality 278 3. Quantity 283 PART III. — Civics as a Factor in Sociology. CHAPTER I. The Theory and Functions of the State — §1. Relation of Civics 289 2. Rightfulness of the State 290 CONTENTS. Xlll 3. 4. Three Tests of Rightfulness Functions of the State 5. Four .Stages of Development in the State PAGE 295 297 301 CHAPTER II. Development in the Duties of the State § 1. Four Directions of Development 2. Three Forms of Law . . . 3. Municipal Law, Judicial Law 4. Statute Law .... 5. Administration of Law 6. The Miscarriage of Law 1. The Remedies . . . 8. Forms in Administration 9. A Higher Temper in Society 306 311 313 315 316 319 ■■',21 326 328 CHAPTER III. Crime and Pauperism — § 1. Criminal Law 332 2. Uncertainty of Punishment 336 3. Local Option 337 4. Law and Order Leagues 338 5. Pauperism 340 6. Ohligations of the State 342 7. Growth of Crime 345 CHAPTER IV. Education — § 1. Education as a Means of Equality 351 2. Moral Training :;57 3. Education and War ;!C>2 CHAPTER V. The Enforcement of New Duties between Citizens — §1. Evolution in the State 364 2. Concentration of Power 305 XIV CONTENTS. PAGE 3. Need of Additional Control 365 4. Railways 307 5. Offences of Railways against Stockholders . . . 375 6. Against the Public, Freights 379 7. Discrimination between Persons 387 8. Discrimination between Places 389 9. Interstate Commerce Commission 397 CHAPTER VI. New Duties in the State — § 1. Need of assuming New Duties, Trusts 401 2. Causes which have given rise to Trusts .... 403 3. Gains and Losses incident to them 405 4. Remedies 409 5. Patents 414 6. Water-Supply, Light-Supply, Street Railways . . 416 CHAPTER VII. The State in the Exercise of its Rights — § 1. Injustices in Taxation 422 2. Principles on Which Taxes should be laid .... 424 3. Subordinate Principles 430 4. Forms of Taxes, Direct Taxes 432 5. Indirect Taxes 441 6. Independent Considerations mingled with Taxation, 444 7. Taxation in England and in the United States . . 449 CHAPTER VIII. The State as administered by Political Parties — § 1. The Necessity of Parties 453 2. Two Methods of the Transfer of Power .... 456 3. Evils of Government by Parties 458 CHAPTER IX. International Law — § 1. Method in which it has arisen 474 2. War 475 CONTENTS. XV PART IV. — Ethics as a Factor in Sociology. CHAPTER I. Nature of Ethical Law — page § 1. Source of Ethical Law 4s 1 2. Fields of Moral Action, Relation to Customs . . . 483 3. Relation to Economics 484 4. Relation to Civics 4U1 5. Justice 493 6. Postulates of Justice 494 7. Development of the Idea of Justice 495 8. Benevolence 497 9. Duties of the Citizen 497 10. Duties of the Ruler 499 PART V. — Religion as a Factor in Sociology. CHAPTER I. Gkowth of Religion — § 1. Growth of the Idea of God 505 2. Universality of Religion 508 3. Growth of the Conception of God 509 4. Suffering and Evolution 510 5. Spiritual Growth and Evolution 511 6. The Social Force of Religion and its Evolution . . 513 7. Religion and Customs, Economics, Civics, and Ethics 518 8. Functions of the Pulpit 524 CHAPTER II. Sociology and Evolution — § 1. Evolution in Society a Completing Term .... 527 2. Postulates of Social Evolution 528 3. Evidence of Social Evolution 529 4. Laws of Social Evolution 531 INTRODUCTION, INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. CLAIMS OF SOCIOLOGY. § 1. Sociology claims the attention of the thoughtful and the educated man for a variety of reasons. The other forms of knowledge derive much of their value, directly or indirectly, from their relation to social inter- ests. Science puts a great variety of powers at the ser- vice of society, and the ultimate value of its discoveries depends chiefly on the manner in which they affect the relations of men one to another. If, like the invention of gunpowder, they tend to level down classes, or, like the invention of soap, to level up the habits of men, they become direct factors in that final, comprehensive product — the public welfare. Art unites itself closely to science, extends and ap- plies its powers, and puts them in most immediate min- istration to society. The industrial classes will owe the degree in which they minister to men, and the measure of their own enjoyments, to the forms of labor which the useful arts assign them. The invention of the cotton-gin was a pregnant event in social states and changes. It strengthened the hold of slavery in Amer- ica, and helped to revolutionize society in England. Nor can philosophy lay upon itself any better labor 3 4 INTli OD UCTION. than that of a more penetrative and beneficent discus- sion of the rights of men, and of indicating the new dependencies which the progress of society makes pos- sible and demands. We may well study Sociology, therefore, because, more than any other branch of- knowledge, it gathers up and knits together our various attainments. It also claims attention because the forms of action which pertain to conduct and character move forward toward fulfilment and harmony in society. The acqui- sition of wealth, good government, ethical law, and re- ligious faith, all find their common field in society. Here they commingle, in fortunate or unfortunate re- sults, according to the wisdom and good-will with which they are directed. Sociology is not simply a practical study ; it is the sum and substance of practical inter- ests, high and low, developed among men. AYhat a man gets and does and enjoys, he must get, do, and enjoy in society. The law of all achievement is found in the elevation of men in that composite life they lead one with another. An urgent reason why the patriotic mind should give Sociology speedy attention is found in the many social questions, of every degree of moment, which are being broached everywhere. They are answered, wisely or unwisely, by thousands, the answer looking to action. The framework of society is undergoing rapid changes in obedience to this thought. No man can excuse him- self from taking part in these inquiries, any more than he can escape participation in their results. We cannot look forward to any large and general safety otherwise than through a just and generous response to these ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SOCIETY. 5 manifold claims of men which are pressing upon us. Society must take to itself higher duties, achieve more complete organization, or lose by strife and disintegra- tion some portion of the good already won. It is not a time in which indifference or negligence is at all bear- able. Our boat is in the rapids, and we must answer at once for its safety. § 2. While the constitution of men and the forms of society present sufficient agreement to give occasion to general principles in Sociology, these principles are ex- tremely variable in their practical uses. The particular stage of development, and the peculiar conditions of each community, define for it the economic and civic relations, and even the ethical duties, that are immediately perti- nent to its wants. Every line of action, therefore, must stand connected with a definite set of circumstances on whose character its fitness depends. We shall discuss the principles of Sociology chiefly in connection with the phases of progress offered by our own and by English society.. Our work, by this method, will at once be safer and more pertinent to our wants. Society in England and in the United States presents, in its operative causes, an advanced development. Eco- nomic and civic forces are especially vigorous. A greater variety of social questions arise here than elsewhere, and they are answered more freely and more directly under the influence of the principles involved in them. Though we are always exposed to the danger of suppos- ing our conclusions to be possessed of a wider applica- tion than belongs to them, Ave are not as likely to fall into this error in a community in which customs and national characteristics and familiar institutions count 6 INTllOBUCTION. for little, and a changeable social movement for much, in the determination of results. Social forces are more active, and society is more fluent under them, here than elsewhere. Changes in families, in fortunes, in position, and in place, are our constant and universal experience. Hardly a town or village shows active influences to-day which are in the direct line of those of fifty years ago. The records of the earlier times are to be traced quite as much by the names on the tombstones as by those borne by the living. Influential families have declined or been dis- persed, and new families with new interests have taken their place. Fortunes are made and lost almost momentarily with us. We look with alarm, not on this fact, but on instances in which large wealth is retained through successive generations. The following statement in the record of a city not more changeable than many others, indicates the ease and rapidity of our social transitions. Year. r of leading cturers in ter, Mass. who began eymen. 9 u v 3 ? u 2 3 V C ■£ — V ■5 ® .s = .i 1 fl) .» 00 s> C » "" V « — affects society by altering the relation of classes to one another, and by modifying the organic dependencies of society within itself. Society, as a living experience, is different because of the forms of wealth and the meth- ods in which it is acquired and held. So also knowl- edge alters civic institutions, makes diverse degrees of liberty possible, and imparts new color and cogency to those moral relations which hold men together. It is right, therefore, that these facts should be left, in the FACTS OF ATTAINMENT. 15 discussions of Sociology, in the outer circle of condi- tions instead of being placed in the inner circle of effi- cient forces. They must enter freely into our estimates when we undertake, by means of our social principles, to reach any actual results, or reasonable anticipations, in the progress of men. Each problem, in its ruling terms, will be largely made up of these very facts. The possible changes of to-day belong to the exact phases of achievement which characterize the communities in which they are arising. Thus with us in the United States, the feasible and fitting steps of reform are closely connected with the ways in which we are pur- suing and holding wealth. Some have regarded a portion of these facts, for ex- ample, language and literature, as properly included, on account of their importance, in primary, organic forces. Yet the relative weight of facts of attainment does not alter the class to which they belong. Language remains a product of the organizing powers which unite men in society, though it is the most expressive and controlling among these results. It does not act directly on society, but indirectly, giving facility and ready extension to its intellectual processes. It is the vehicle of organic force, not the very force. The language and the commerce of England are closely associated ; but it is the commerce which extends the language, rather than the language which enlarges the commerce. The strong reactions of language and literature on the activities from which they spring, is a relation common, in a greater or less degree, to all facts of attainment. Eacts of attainment are the resources at any one moment at the disposal of organic life ; they are not the 16 INTRODUCTION. impulses of that life. Life will be strengthened or "weakened by their presence or absence, but will not be altered in its essential forces. Facts of attainment admit, in each direction, of sepa- rate presentation ; and so we have a history of produc- tion, a history of civilization, a history of institutions, a history of literature, a history of art. § 6. The influences which are operative on organic forces are of two kinds ; those which are internal, and those which are external. The internal influences are, first, the native endowments of individuals and of races ; and, second, their acquired characteristics. The distinc- tion between native endowment and acquired character- istic is not one of kind, but one of time. It is not unlike that between the waters of a river and the distinguish- able waters of its latest affluent. In a brief period, each successive addition takes its place with previous ones, and forms with them an inseparable whole. While, therefore, national character is an exceedingly weighty and stable term in all social problems, it is not an im- mutable one. New elements may be introduced among national tendencies, as streams of diverse quality flow into a river. The value of this term of national endow- ment ma}' be seen in the history of such a race as the Irish. The changes to which national character is sus- ceptible are disclosed in the characteristics of Americans as contrasted with those of Englishmen. The intensity which race-endoAvments may assume is well illustrated in the history of the clans of the Scottish Highlands. The very pathetic story of " The Highland Widow," by Sir Walter Scott, presents the invincible tenacity of tribal beliefs and customs. The length of time through which INFLUENCES ON ORGANIC FORCES. 17 these characteristics may accumulate is shown in the history of the Jews. The sharp practice of Jacob has not been purged out of the moral fibre of his pos- terity by the vicissitudes and violence of many centu- ries. External influences are also two ; and these, like the previous pair, are closely interlocked. They are, first, physical conditions, and, second, acquired resources. Nat- ural conditions are made up of such terms as the quali- ties of the soil, character of the climate, lay of the land, lay of the water. Collectively they constitute the en- vironment, that which encloses and acts upon a given form of. life, that with which the life stands in constant terms of interaction. Acquired resources are what we have already brought forward as facts of attainment. These facts of attainment may, some of them, as litera- ture and art, be of so subtile an order as to affiliate with inner tendencies rather than with outer endowments ; yet they are essentially an exterior substantial acquisi- tion. These possessions arise in extension of physical conditions, and in intimate interplay with them. This is obviously true of the forms of wealth and the means of production ; but these, in turn, shape institutions, enlarge knowledge, determine refinement, till at length the full environment of a community is made up — ■ primitive and acquired, present and historic, physical and spiritual. It then becomes impossible to cut asun- der these several influences. Very different weight is attached by different persons to external conditions as contrasted with primitive ten- dencies. Some look upon the former as slowly and cer- tainly productive of the latter, while others insist on 18 Introduction. the controlling force of native endowments. Buckle's " History of Civilization," Taine's " History of English Literature," Stephen's " Science of Ethics," enforce the first opinion — which, after all, is one of dissent. The great mass of conviction lies in the other direction. The doctrine of evolution has naturally led some to assign great productive power to environment. At short historic range — and it is at this range that we must settle sociological problems — this doctrine meets with great difficulties. One would think that Switzerland, as contrasted with Holland, should have been the home of art. Or, if one wishes to refer the love of lib- erty in Switzerland to its mountains, one is confronted with a like passion for freedom in the marshes of Hol- land. England, Scotland, and Ireland have shared, for a long time, physical conditions in many particulars the same, yet with marked diversities of character. If we take into consideration long periods, doubt- less the environment and the life it encloses tend to parallelism ; but when men are involved in the problem, the parallelism is secured cpaite as much by the action of the occupants of the soil on external conditions as by the action of these conditions on the occupants. More- over, the various social and political ends which men are pursuing frequently break up the continuity of en- vironment, and subject them, as they advance in civiliza- tion, to a great variety of new conditions. The habitat of civilized man is variable as compared with that of the animal. It is changeable in its potent terms in the same place, and it is changeable in place. The Englishman, for example, is becoming indigenous to every part of the globe. It is much better freely to rec- INHERITANCE. 19 ognize both tendencies as independent terms, than it is to make an arbitrary choice between them. § 7. External influences pass by transfer ; native en- dowments by inheritance. The law of inheritance thus becomes of great moment in Sociology. Inheritance, taken in connection with Sociology, has three forms, physical, social, and moral. Physical inheritance is the passage of physical powers and tendencies from parents to children. It remains an open question whether there is any direct transfer of intellectual and spiritual en- dowments ; whether the mental powers and proclivities of the offspring are simply those passed to it by the parents, or whether they are relatively independent and primitive endowments. The transfers incident to physi- cal inheritance seem sufficient to explain existing agree- ments, while the marked diversities, both in kind and degree, in intellectual endowments between parents and children, seem to indicate the absence of any close de- pendence in this higher relation. It is not easy to understand how, under a severe law of transfer, either intellectual or spiritual genius should appear, as it has so often appeared, in the line of mediocre abilities. Physical inheritance must profoundly modify intellec- tual powers — extremists identify the two — first, by its transfer of sensuous organs, determined to definite forms and degrees of activity; and, second, by a transfer of nervous conditions fitted in widely different degrees and ways to sustain mental activity. A certain type of per- ceptive and cerebral endowment goes far to determine the precise phase of the mental and spiritual powers which will accompany it. The examples of the inheri- tance of musical powers, given somewhat fully by Gal- 20 INTRODUCTION. ton, seem to enforce the law of physical, rather than of intellectual, descent. 1 Musical power is especially de- pendent on physical perception, and on a nervous and muscular organization in delicate response to this per- ception. Without these physical gifts, excellence in music is impossible ; with them, excellence is inevitable. Physical inheritance, then, in man assumes even more importance than in the animal, as the developed mechan- ism of the mind goes with it. Here again, without be- ing bold enough to affirm that this method of transfer covers the entire case, we may well believe that it includes the larger share of it. Social inheritance is a transfer of social influence by social nurture. It is not a formal delivery of specified things, as wealth descends from father to son ; nor yet a physical inheritance, as the bodily weaknesses of the parent reappear in his offspring: it is an undesigned, impalpable, but very efficacious, transfer of those impres- sions and convictions which maintain the continuity of our households and of our communal life. It is not easy to estimate at their true value that accumulation of social sentiments and incentives which gathers in every family, and spreads through every community, till it becomes an impulse which none can escape. These un- formulated feelings supply most of the motives which prompt daily action. Galton draws attention to the fact that statesmanship has so often passed by inheritance. This transfer would seem to be largely of this social order. A son who in- herits fair intellectual abilities from a father, occupying a high civil position, is at once enclosed by opportunities 1 " Hereditary Genius," by Francis Galton. INHERITANCE. 21 opening a comparatively easy road to distinction, and he is acted on by incentives which make it hard not to pursue this road. The social influences which belong to a household and to the relations of that household to the community, must always go far in determining the pursuits of children. Social inheritance is a potent factor in the continuity of employments. Acquired skill, family convenience, mutual aid, and concurrent feelings all lie in one direction. A third form of inheritance is moral transfer. By this is meant direct inculcation — instruction in its pri- vate and public forms. The free schools of the United States are a most direct and extended means of carrying forward the national life. That they may do this work more perfectly, they call distinctly for the vital, ruling impulse which is expressed in ethical law. The moral force alone gives knowledge momentum, controlling and constructing power. These three forms of inheritance are so blended to- gether as to be inseparable in their effects. Moral forces slowly shape physical forces, and physical forces give conditions to moral forces. When, therefore, our atten- tion is drawn to any one of these mediums of transfer, it must speedily be united, in its comprehension, to the other two. The underlying physical powers, the half- conscious instinctive social impulses, the fully formed moral motives, in many ways pass into one another and together secure the continuity of our lives. § 8. Inheritance, allowing the word to include the three forms now indicated, involves two tendencies or series of facts. The first and fundamental one is the ten- dency to uniformity, to transfer qualities, be they physi- 22 INTRODUCTION. cal, social, or moral, from parents to children without change. It is this fact which inheritance primarily expresses. But this law does not include all the phe- nomena of transfer. There is another tendency in con- travention of this tendency, that toward variety. New physical features appear from time to time in offspring. These, in turn, come under the primary law of inher- itance, and so their permanent establishment becomes possible. There is a third tendency of less moment. When the conditions which have given occasion to varieties are withdrawn, there is a disposition in the form of life under consideration to revert to its earlier type. This is termed atavism. It belongs to social and spiritual, as well as to physical, inheritance. If the forces securing a vigorous, complex, social life become weak, social in- stitutions revert to earlier, simpler, and more arbitrary forms. Tramps may be looked on either as escaping from industrial conditions by reversion, or as standing for a small remainder which has never come fully under these conditions. In social growth, variety enters in various ways. It often turns on individual endowments. A great man is a pivotal man on whom the community swings forward. Such a person offers in an intense form the very incen- tives which the community calls for. The mass of men respond most directly to personal influences. Society is thus marshalled under a leader, and renews its march. Such a man was Peter the Great in the history of Russia. Individuals may also give new intensity to national sentiments, in conflict with, coherent growth, and so VARIETY IN SOCIAL GROWTH. 23 divert or retard the joint life. Napoleon Bonaparte in- flamed in France the martial ardor of a warlike race, and so helped to divide and disperse its energies for a century. The ministration of individuals to nations, and the cordial support of leaders by an enthusiastic people, give us the most interesting chapters in human history. Great moral and spiritual forces have entered the world almost exclusively through extraordinarily endowed in- dividuals. New phases of development have followed conquest. The conquest of the East by Alexander, giving occasion to such cities as Antioch and Alexandria, became a ruling factor in civilization. The slowly subduing force of Grecian culture in Roman character, incident to the conquest of Greece by Rome, is as significant a fact as history anywhere offers. A third occasion for variety in national character is found in emigration. Each Grecian city planted in a foreign land took on new characteristics. Each English colony is subjected to fresh experiences which quickly alter national tendencies. The American type and the English type are very distinguishable. A nation is also altered by immigration. Our na- tional character is being modified by the great variety of immigrants we have received. The ultimate result becomes a cause of grave apprehension. There are also occasionally sudden social changes which deeply modify the character of a community. The abolition of slavery in the Southern States was such a change. The South has taken on new forms of industry, altering social sentiments and social relations. The modern industrial world, in all civilized countries, 24 INTRODUCTION. is quite different from the world which preceded it, the change being due to new forms and greatly increased force in production. § 9. National type and external circumstances are in such close and rapid interaction, that it is not easy to keep them apart in our consideration of them. We may, however, advance some general propositions con- cerning them. National type and external circumstances are, in ref- erence to each other, of variable value. Either may gain sudden force in reference to the other, and pass through a period of unusual dominance. A conquered tribe may sink into abject submission. Discouragement may overtake and depress a nation, as it does individ- uals, and leave it " scattered and peeled." Yet heavier misfortunes may knit other races more firmly together. Thus Jewish character, in spite of the grinding pro- cesses of many ages, many places, and many nations, remains as distinct and invincible as ever. A people may readily yield to one set of influences, like the in- habitants of Alsace and Lorraine, and firmly resist an- other. We cannot assign either exact or permanent values to these two factors. They are subject, between themselves, to a changeable interplay of power. Nations in earlier, ruder, and feebler periods are more submissive to external circumstances than in later and stronger ones. If a race comes suddenly under an extended change of conditions, even though the new conditions are favorable, it frequently fails to respond to them. The inner life is disturbed and unbalanced by its new terms, not quickened and nourished by them. Thus the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands show NATIONAL TYPE AND CONDITIONS. 25 signs of shrinking up and withering away before the strong light of a sudden civilization. The Indian, as contrasted with the Negro, in our own country, has shown less elasticity, less power of adaptation, less pa- tience in accepting new impulses. Some races seem to show, in comparison with other races, exhausted vitality, as do plants in the vegetable world. The Japanese are manifesting unusual power, and are passing rapidly and successfully through a wide circle of changes. On the other hand, civilization, while it may seem chiefly to accumulate the external conditions which shape our lives, often greatly deepens and strengthens the life itself. Thus the English readily accept and uniformly thrive under the circumstances offered by any quarter of the globe. They show remarkable power of colonization, and push forward or push out of the way the feebler races they encounter. The Portu- guese, on the other hand, and in some degree the Span- iards, suffer deterioration as the ultimate result of their enterprise. The world has gained comparatively little by their conquests and colonies. It has been said, " The animal is the creature of environment, man is the creator of environment." 1 This assertion implies a constant growth of spiritual power in its mastery over the world. A third allied proposition is that misfortune depresses moral power, and prosperity loosens the limitations of circumstances and makes change increasingly easy. In- deed this statement approaches a truism, since we often mean by misfortune that which bears back personal power, and by prosperity that which calls it out. We J "The Humanities," J. W. Powell, The Forum, vol. x. p. 410. 26 INTRODUCTION. do not always distinguish between the external losses which are ready to occasion a depression of life, and that depression itself ; between the gains which strengthen a growing impulse, and the very impulse. In each case the misfortune and the fortune lie chiefly in the altered response of society to its circumstances. Thus we have the proverb, " Nothing succeeds like success." The mo- mentum of a people counts for much, as does also its inertia. We express them as courage and discourage- ment. They have an expansive and restrictive power beyond merely mechanical measurements. The struggle between type and environment offers in society three phases, and leads to a fourth principle. Each of these phases has given occasion to much diver- sity of opinion. In persons we express the two tenden- cies as freedom and fatalism, the power of the individual over his terms of life, the degree in which these terms govern the life they embrace. The ever-returning diver- sity of statement at this point serves chiefly to show the great value, and the variable value, of each factor. In education this conflict reappears as ability and acquisition, native tendency and training. In a lower grade of life we express the difference as stock and breeding. There are those who attach excessive impor- tance to each of these two agents, as contrasted with the other, in the composite result. Thus it has been said, that if a person could compose the ballads of a nation, he would thereby shape its character. But these ballads are themselves the product of the national character and history. A nation can no more take on its ballads at pleasure, than it can assume its language or its physical traits. Its ballads are the composite expression of its, inner and outer life. RELATION OF THE TWO. 27 Neither of these two terms in education can be handled successfully without the other. Now one, now the other, will seem to predominate amid the variable phases through which men are passing. The transfer is so constant and vital between them as to confuse the lines of distinction. The third form of this contrast is between temper and institutions in a community, between mobility and immobility in a people. We assign mobility to national power, immobility to the force of events. The Anglo- Saxons are thought to have a race-predilection for free institutions. Their freedom is referred to race-endow- ments quite as much as to external circumstances. Tyr- anny, on the other hand, is indigenous in the Oriental world ; it is incorporate in the character of the people. Americans are mobile in the last degree. The Chinese are immobile, in a like degree. The two cannot shape themselves to each other. A single consideration is sufficient to show that these two terms, inner and outer force, must each enter freely into all our social studies. The one influence, circum- stances, owes its significance to the fact that it acts on and modifies the other influence, character. Till this modification takes place, variety in circumstances is of no moment. Personal force, on the other hand, shows itself at once in acting on and reshaping circumstances. It is at this point, the changes it accomplishes, that we take its measurement. The two elements are so com- pletely reciprocal that the one loses significancy without the other. It must find its expression and measure in the other. Our most comprehensive principle, then, is, that we 28 IN TR OD UCTION. find in the interaction of these two elements, namely, inner and outer force, another form of that movable equilibrium which is the condition of social growth, as it is, in one form or another, of all growth. § 10. The notion of a movable equilibrium is widely applicable to mechanical, vital, and social phenomena. One turns sharply in skating. The skater overcomes the force that would throw him outward by inclining inward. By virtue of motion he maintains his balance between conflicting tendencies. If he were suddenly checked, the outward fling would vanish, and the inward weight would issue in a fall. The rider on a bicycle runs the gauntlet of innumerable tumbles on the right and on the left, by virtue of a motion which holds in equilibrium the conflicting forces. He cannot, for a moment, maintain the safety at rest which he easily commands by movement. The solar system is at once the most prominent and the most changeable example of a movable equilibrium. We readily conceive life in the plant and the animal under this same relation. Hereditary force carries the life in one direction, the changing conditions of the environment tend to deflect it in other directions. The actual variations which arise are fresh adjustments under these diverse tendencies, combining them in a result compatible with both. The progress of society is also a movable equilib- rium, maintained under a variety of opposed forces. The radical, the progressive, the centrifugal forces are personal powers — impulses acting in society through its more advanced members — and changing circum- stances which make unexpected demands and impart Movable equilibrium. 29 unusual incentives. The conservative, repressive, cen- tripetal forces are national type, inheritance, tradition, custom — the perpetuity of the conditions and the firm- ness of the limits within which the national activity is moving. We have in China a striking example of retarded motion under an accumulation of one set of forces. Customs everywhere pervade and possess the life. Imi- tation is a conspicuous characteristic. Memory is a supreme intellectual endowment. The educated classes lay hold of the literature of the past and roll it over and over in each successive generation as the sum and substance of wisdom. Religion settles down into a worship of ancestry. The very language loses interior development, grows by painful accretion, and lays an immense burden on the retentive powers. As the maturer trunk of an endogenous tree becomes too com- pact for fresh deposits, so may national life become too elaborate and firm for new development. The vital processes are slowing up toward suspension or toward revolution. In contemplating society, we readily start with the impression that it is open to every form of change, to easy improvement. "With a larger experience of the many points of resistance and the unexpected forms of reaction which may set in, we may readily pass over to the opposite conclusion that society cannot be diverted from its predetermined orbit, and that it is better that we should adjust ourselves to it, rather than enter on the perplexing and futile effort of adjusting it to our ideals. The first conviction gives rise to fanaticism, the second to cynicism, and both are equally wide of 30 INTRODUCTION. the truth. Both forget that society is a movable equi- librium which may be controlled, but must be controlled by skilful handling under its own conditions. Conflict- ing tendencies must be united in a forward movement which may be accelerated rather than retarded by the intensity of the strife. In a combination of forces, the power which drives the body along the diagonal may be made up of forces which, left to themselves, would have impelled it a less distance on either side. Thus we may say of religious life, a leading phase of social life, that it presents a line of conduct the resul- tant, on the one hand, of sensuous impressions, and on the other, of spiritual insights. If the two are com- bined in the same ictus, a sober and rapid unfolding of the entire spiritual nature follows. There is then no limit to the control which can be exercised over society in its progress, if our directing and correcting powers are applied through long periods under and with the forces which are potent at the very time and place we are considering. Each effect, each modified movement, begets the conditions of a more facile movement at the next stage, till in the end, as in all skilful performance, nothing seems so easy, so perfectly knit together, as the most difficult achieve- ment. Society that is moving forward draws its strength from all sides. PART I. CUSTOMS AS A FACTOR IN SOCIOLOGY. PART I. CUSTOMS AS A FACTOR IN SOCIOLOGY. CHAPTER I. DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS. — SOCIAL CUSTOMS. § 1. Customs are the conventional methods by which men in society order their action in reference to one another. They arise spontaneously under social feel- ings. Men are gregarious ; and the herd and the method of the herding are, in a large degree, inevitable. Cus- toms are the product of these primitive organic tenden- cies among men. In reference to all later and more voluntary acts of association, they constitute the vital substance, the social protoplasm, which is presupposed as the supporting and plastic material subject to all later organic changes. They are to the social life what physical habits are to the body of man ; the basis on which voluntary action rests, that above which it rises, that into which it sinks. The tendency to establish and repeat a familiar method belongs to human action. Customs, in their origin, are deeply though obscurely planted in the instinctive, organic proclivities of the race. The authority of customs is found, in the first in- 33 __, 34 CUSTOMS. stance, in the feelings which they express and gratify. They are a spontaneous product of the feelings. They shortly, however, acquire an additional authority in the good order they establish, the interests they sustain, the calculable terms of action which they offer. They thus gather to themselves in a most imposing and imperious form all the motives and sentiments which unite men to one another. Any extensive dissolution of customs is a breaking down of the affinities by which men are bound to each other — is social chaos. Customs are most potent with the ignorant. They in part take the place of those moral motives which bind together the more thoughtful. Men of the widest intel- ligence hold them in high consideration, but they do so because of the impossibility of supplying their place with the uncultivated. They act in the absence of higher motives. Boys are abjectly subject to the opin- ions and ways of their playmates. They secure no suf- ficient ground in reason from which to take up the labor of resistance. Young men, journeymen, college students, show this disposition to submit to prevalent, irrational customs. The governing sentiments of these little worlds rest on tradition. Their members oppose the unreasoned ways of the past to the better methods that are coming to prevail in the wider world which encloses them. Cus- toms are thus the instinctive methods of restraint which overtake those otherwise ungovernable — an anticipation of reason and an organic substitute for its deficiencies. § 2. Customs thus stand in a complex and important relation to progress. The first step in progress is the power to combine. The germ tendency is this organic PURPOSE SUBSERVED BY CUSTOMS. 35 tendency. Without it later movements would secure no basis. The more conscious and complete process must rest on the less conscious and complete one. Customs, in their ease of formation, express the readiness of growth ; and in their stability, the firmness of growth. The nations which readily take on customs, and hold them with as much tenacity as is consistent with renew- ing them, have the most power. The Greeks, in conse- quence of their volatile and elastic character, had less organizing force than properly belonged to their great intellectual endowments. They created many cities, but no large communities. The Romans, far more sub- missive to customs, and to laws the outgrowth of cus- toms, carried with them everywhere the vigor of empire. The English, equally productive in the realm of law, have shown like power in subjecting and guiding races of men. Natural selection works for those nations pos- sessed of that organizing tendency whose primitive expression is custom. 1 But progress involves two movements, the instinc- tive one by which social construction is secured, and the more thoughtful one by which this construction is con- stantly reshaped for more comprehensive and adequate ends. Customs stand for the first, and the development of ethical motives for the second. It is as essential, therefore, to growth that custom should steadily give way before the moral reason, as it is that it should be readily formed in the first instance. Social develop- ment, like the growth of the body, involves constructive and destructive processes in constant interplay. Too great resistance in customs is as fatal to the unfolding 1 "Physics and Politics," Walter Bagehot. 36 CUSTOMS. moral life as too great facility of change. A successful equilibrium allows each tendency perfect expression and unites them at their maximum. The immediate force of customs is the feelings which are nourished by them. These feelings, which may have passed quite away from their original and more rational basis, interpose an obstacle to progress which often defies argument. For this reason ridicule, calling out an adverse set of feelings, is often an effective weapon in reform. That which is not at the moment sustained by sound thought, cannot be overcome by sound thought. Progress, involving a complete develop- ment of our rational powers, must often, for the moment, depend on the pressure of circumstances and avail itself to the utmost of current sentiments that a fresh plastic state of the public mind may be reached, and that earlier organic tendencies may not be allowed to anticipate and exclude later ones. Customs must show a dynamic as well as a static force. The swing of the pendulum downward must prepare the way for its swing upward. The momentum which carries the national life into a custom must also carry it beyond that custom. Social and civil institutions must not take to themselves infal- libility. The one key of all complications is movement ; but this movement must be one of distinct departures and moderate and definite measurements. Society, in every one of its phases, has the greatest difficulty in toning down to a healthy growth its own organic forces. They in turn sweep over and suppress one another. Thus there is no direction in which belief, because of the indeterminate and exhaustless nature of the truth at its disposal, should have freer and wider DIVISION OF CUSTOMS. 37 sweep than in our spiritual life. Yet religion, quickly subjected to its own earlier achievements, submits itself to doctrines, rites, and ordinances which first express, then restrain, then strangle its growth. A current doc- trine of the fourth and fifth centuries was that "that should be held for Catholic truth which has been be- lieved everywhere, always, and by all." * The equilibrium of faith lies in reconciling the power to retain the spiritual acquisitions we have made with the power to secure further insight ; in framing an orbit of revolution in the open spaces of the yet unfin- ished system to which we belong. § 3. Customs are of three leading forms, social, civic, and religious. Social customs pertain to the intercourse of men in society; civic customs are associated with action as ordered by the state ; religious customs attach to conduct as it comes under the government of faith. Social customs, in turn, fall into three classes; viz., first, those which pertain to the family ; second, those which are involved in the relation of classes to each other ; third, those which concern the general inter- course of men. The last named we term manners. The germ cell of our organic life is the family. Here all relations commence, and to it they are constantly returning. This is the seed from which each crop is grown, and this the seed to which all crops return. From the family spring classes, tribes, nations; while national life gives the occasion for economic, civic, re- ligious activity. No matter how far this development proceeds, it returns at every step to expand and perfect the household. 1 " Continuity of Christian Thought," Al. V. G. Allen, p. 161. 38 CUSTOMS. All social growth, therefore, finds expression in the family, in its purity, in its strength, in its liberty. The nation whose life is most deeply rooted in its house- holds will be the nation of the most comprehensive, peaceful, and permanent prosperity. The purity of the household prepares the way for its strength, and its strength enables it to grant the largest liberty. As its strength becomes interior and spiritual, it puts the least coercion on action, and concedes it the freest, most beneficent law. The beauty of the family lies in its cohesive force as associated with individual freedom. It therein becomes the model of all fortunate social construction, as well as the interpreting idea, in many ways, of our highest spiritual relations. The family involves three primary relations, that of parents to each other, that of children to parents, that of children to each other. These leading connections fall, in a large household, into many subordinate ones. When we add to the distinctions between sons and daughters, and between older and younger children, those which arise from diversity of character, we have a large group of dependencies in which like and diverse ties are most happily blended ; all the members of the household hanging, like the grapes of a single cluster, by one stem. If the first of these three relations fails, all are likely to fail with it. The attachments of the household are usually measured, in their tenacity, by the love of par- ents, primarily expressed toward each other. If love does not fill this its first channel to overflowing, it is likely to find its way but slowly into secondary ones. We must, ordinarily, rely on the love called out in par- ents toward each other as the uniform and sufficient PURITY. 39 occasion of affection for their children ; and on the love of children for their parents as the chief source of mutual regard. Hence purity, the indispensable condition of love in the first relation, becomes the root-virtue of the house- hold, the germ of all social obligations. Purity is the distinctive quality of the first human tie, that which lies between parents; strength is the distinctive quality of the second relation, that between parents and children; and liberty of the third relation, that between children. The cohesion of the household lies in the authority of the parents as justified and supported by affection. The early Roman family was one of great vigor. Absolute authority belonged to the father, an authority which followed the son as long as the father lived, and the daughter till she was transferred to another household. The mother was held in high honor, but her authority was merged in that of the father. The subjection of children was as complete as that of slaves. 1 This sever- ity of relations was softened by the affections incident to them. The strength of the Roman household was lost in its later history with the loss of purity, the loss of permanency in the marriage relation. A tie in the beginning too absolute became fatally relaxed. Liberty in the household expresses itself in the per- fect equality of children, and in the submission of the authority of parents to the terms assigned by the ends of nurture as softened and expanded by affection. The liberty of the household is that lawful liberty which freely adopts and spontaneously completes the obliga- tions which are attaching to the conjoint life; it is the 1 Mommseu's " History of Rome," vol. i. chap. v. 40 CUSTOMS. product of active and well-directed affections, the liberty which belongs to all in the fulfilment of a common life. § 4. Marriage rests on a physical, customary, eco- nomic, civic, ethical, and spiritual basis. Its growth in completeness and power lies between these two extremes, a physical impulse and a spiritual fellowship. It cov- ers the entire intervening ground, and draws strength from every part of it. As early as the earlier portion of the third century, Modestinus, a great Roman civilian, affirmed : " Marriage is a union of a man and woman by which the whole of life is partaken of in common, and all rights, human and divine, are freely interchanged between them." * The sexual relation is the most universal, potent, and transcendental relation that lies between living things. It is well-nigh commensurate with life. It is associated with offspring, is the creative point at which new pow- ers, new varieties, new species, find entrance. It is transcendental in the sense that the results so far tran- scend any terms of mechanical or physical explanation we can put upon them, as to remain ultimate facts which we are compelled to accept with no knowledge of their causal grounds. The starting-point in marriage is animal impulse, pass- ing sluggishly on through polyandry and polygamy into monogamy. Promiscuity is not the general condition of animal life, or even of plant life in its higher forms. In both of these we find the appearance of more or less posi- tive limitations. Monogamy is a primary necessity of our spiritual, rather than of our physical, life. We should have difficulty in making it imperative on the lower 1 " Roman Civil Law," Sheldon Amos, p. 278. MARRIAGE. 41 ground simply. It is what Goethe terras a " culture con- quest." Nowhere is the supremacy of the claims of our higher nature more distinctly made out, or more author- itatively enforced on their own basis, than in marriage. There is no deterioration less doubtful, more dreadful, more self-avenging, than impurity, judged from a social and spiritual point. The word impurity is well chosen as designating the mental uncleanness, the ever-renewed corruption, the increasing defilement, which attend the insatiate lust. This darkest among dark sins rests al- most exclusively on the social and spiritual wrongs it suffers and inflicts. In historical growth the lowest point in sexual relation and the primitive point in human life do not necessarily correspond. Human life may sink as well as rise. Monogamy may exist in conflict with polygamy ; and polygamy, under the poverty and depression of defeated and persecuted tribes, may assume lower phases. Along the line of general development there lie, above and below, sporadic results which do not represent the rul- ing tendency. It is too easy a social theory to assume that all which now offers itself as basest in human life is basal, and that we have only to trace thence the steps of historical development. 1 § 5. The relation of parents to children rests on nat- ural affection, on interest, on social position, and on spir- itual affections. Men, in common with all animals, have natural affections, - — feelings which spring irresistibly from physical connections. These are slowly limited and supplemented by spiritual impulses. In the degree in which man's condition is allied to that of the brute, we 1 " Unity of Nature," Duke of Argyle. 42 CUSTOMS. may believe that these more brutish impulses prevail, and serve their primary purpose of guarding the family. It is plain that natural selection must act vigorously in favor of those races in which the natural affections maintain the household. Interest comes in at an early period to sustain natu- ral affection. In a period of conflict the strength of a household depends on sons and daughters. So true is this that crimes of violence were first conceived as di- rected against the family and open to its claims of rep- aration, rather than as against the individuals and the community. The slow entrance and ultimate prevalence of social and spiritual sentiments at length unite liberty to strength in the household. These anticipate the strife and division which are ready to attend on the lower im- pulses. There is no growth of a truly spiritual order which does not accrue to the household. Whatever foliage and fruit adorn life, they are sure to cluster the thickest and hang the heaviest on these domestic branches. The contention of authority and liberty in the house- hold is seen in that arbitrary limit of authority which we term " coming of age." The Roman family, in its unusual strength, assigned twenty-five years as this limit, and then greatly restricted the emancipation. In the household, which has come under the government of spiritual incentives, liberty arises continuously and im- perceptibly out of authority. There are no definite limits between them. The seed-vessel drops its seeds in no more ready obedience to nature than the house^ hold its offspring, capable of a larger life. RELATION OF CHILDREN TO ONE ANOTHER. 43 § 6. The third relation, that of children to each other, is, in some sense, more ultimate and universal than either of the other two. It is, in its perfection, the best fruits of the family. Equality, that equality which takes the widest range in civic institutions, is its ruling idea. We pass from the liberty of the household to the liberty of the state. Narrow interests and more re- stricted ends of organization are for a long time in con- tention with the freedom of the family. Thus diversity of values and rights have attached to sons as contrasted with daughters, and to the eldest son in comparison with younger sons. Subjection or liberty will prevail in the household ac- cording as organization or as nurture is the ruling idea. If the purpose of the family is to frame an institution whose collective interest is somewhat distinct from, and decisively superior to, that of its members, if the idea of government on. which it proceeds is monarchical, then we shall have a subordination in children fitted to carry out this purpose. If the primary purpose of the house- hold is conceived to be nurture, the bringing of men and women into the full possession of their powers, then we shall have equality, liberty, generous interaction, as its organic law. Nurture implies that large estimate of in- dividual worth which puts men on essentially the same basis, and makes the common interest an aggregate of personal welfare. As long as the family embraces in part civic functions, as long as the father i