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STUDIES IN THE THEORY
OF HUMAN SOCIETY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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TORONTO
Studies in the Theory
of Human Society
BY
FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF
CIVILIZATION IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS.
FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSO-
CIATION.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February. 1922.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
SAiSTA BAiiiiAKA
PREFACE
These consecutive studies are a book of Sociology without the
form or the formality of a text. The discursive manner has
permitted me to reiterate cardinal ideas and principles, exhibiting
them in many lights and relations. I have thought this important
in these days of loose thinking on social themes.
The theory of human society into which these ideas are or-
ganized is stated in Chapter XVI, as follows :
"If I can be said to have a system of sociology it is briefly this:
"i. A situation or stimulus is reacted to by more than one
individual; there is pluralistic as well as singularistic behavior.
Pluralistic behavior develops into rivalries, competitions, and con-
flicts, and also, into agreements, contracts, and collective enter-
prises. Therefore, social phenomena are products of two vari-
ables, namely, situation (in the psychologist's definition of the
word) and pluralistic behavior.
"2. When the individuals who participate in pluralistic be-
havior have become differentiated into behavioristic kinds or
types, a consciousness of kind, liking or disliking, approving or
disapproving one kind after another, converts gregariousness
into a consciously discriminative association, herd habit into so-
ciety; and society, by a social pressure which sometimes is con-
scious but more often, perhaps, is unconscious, makes life rela-
tively hard for kinds of character and conduct that are disap-
proved.
"3. Society organizes itself for collective endeavor and achieve-
ment if fundamental similarities of behavior and an awareness
of them are extensive enough to maintain social cohesion, while
differences of behavior and awareness of them in matters of de-
tail are sufficient to create a division of labor.
"4. In the long run organized society by its approvals and dis-
approvals, its pressures and achievements, selects and perpetuates
vi PREFACE
the types of mind and character that are relatively intelligent,
tolerant, and helpful, that exhibit initiative, that bear their share
of responsibility, and that effectively play their part in collective
enterprise. It selects and perpetuates the adequate."
I have endeavored to bring discussion and exposition to date.
The nearly completed first quarter of the Twentieth Century has
not been marked by discoveries comparable to those that lifted
the second half of the Nineteenth Century above all other years
in the history of knowledge; but it has been a time of rectifica-
tion in science. Logic has abandoned absolutes for variables,
and pigeon hole classifications for frequency distributions.
Physics and chemistry have begun to build from electrons. Bi-
ology has become experimental and Mendelian. Psychology has
become experimental and objective. It has discriminated between
reflex and conditioning; between original nature and habit.
Anthropology has discovered elements of religion older than
ghosts, and found more variates of primitive social organization
than Morgan and McLennan knew. These corrections of fun-
damental notions and of inductions that are data of sociology
have made the revision of sociology obligatory. I offer here an
individual contribution to that formidable undertaking. A large
part of the content of the volume is entirely new. Materials that
in a cruder form have been printed in various journals and pro-
ceedings, and a small portion taken over from Democracy and
Empire now out of print, have been worked over to the extent
of being nearly rewritten.
The chapter on "Order and Possibility" is not strictly a part,
but it sets forth prolegomena (as I conceive them) of a scientific
theory of human society. Many students of both psychology and
sociology continue to worry over "determinism," and in par-
ticular over "mechanistic" theories of life. Just what happens
to their apprehensions when the discriminations of a statistical
way of thinking are applied to them has not, I believe, before
been pointed out.
I am grateful to friends and colleagues for helpful criticisms
and suggestions; and especially grateful to student members of
my research group for untiring aid in "checking up" and "trying
out."
CONTENTS
I
HISTORICAL
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE .... 3
II. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE J 9
III. THE ECONOMIC AGES 33
IV. THE QUALITY OF CIVILIZATION 57
V. A THEORY OF HISTORY 66
VI. THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 94
II
ANALYTICAL
VII. ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 127
VIII. A THEORY OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 144
IX. THE MIND OF THE MANY 154
X. THE GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 175
XI. FOLKWAYS AND STATEWAYS 190
XII. SOCIAL SELF CONTROL 197
XIII. SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 209
XIV. THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 224
III
SYNTHETIC
XV. PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 249
XVI. FURTHER INQUIRIES OF SOCIOLOGY ..... 291
INDEX 303
PART I
HISTORICAL
STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF
HUMAN SOCIETY
CHAPTER I
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE
REVOLUTIONIZING as the life work of Charles Darwin was in
the fields of biology and psychology, one may doubt if his writings
disturbed the intellectual peace anywhere more profoundly than
in the already perturbed realms of pre-Darwinian social philos-
ophy. Borrowing a shocking thought from the Rev. Thomas
Robert Malthus, Mr. Darwin, in due course of time, gave it back
to Malthusians and Godwinites, to Ricardians and Ruskinites, to
Benthamites and Owenites, with a new and terrific voltage.
Nine years before The Origin of Species was published,
Herbert Spencer, in the concluding chapters of Social Statics,
had offered an explanation of society in terms of a progressive
human nature, adapting itself to changing conditions of life.
These chapters are the germ of that inclusive conception and
theory of evolution which were elaborated in the ten volumes of
the Synthetic Philosophy. Five years later, or four years be-
fore The Origin of Species saw the light, Mr. Spencer, in the
first edition of his Principles of Psychology, set forth an original
interpretation of life, including mental and social life, as a cor-
respondence of internal relations to external relations, initiated
and directed by the external relations. Finally, in April, 1857,
Mr. Spencer published, in The Westminster Review, the provo-
cative paper on "Progress : Its Law and Cause," in which a law
of evolution was partially formulated, and evolution was declared
to be the process of the universe and of all that it contains.
3
4 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Mr. Spencer thus had seen evolution comprehensively, as adap-
tation and differentiation. He had not yet mentally grasped the
universal redistribution of energy and matter, wherein every finite
aggregate of material units, radiating energy into surrounding
space, or absorbing energy therefrom, draws itself together in
order-making coherence, or distributes itself abroad in riotous
disintegration. That universal equilibration, which in fact is the
beginning and the end of material transformation, was the aspect
of the world which in thought Mr. Spencer arrived at last of all.
It is not given to any one human intellect to discover all truth,
and there is more in evolution than even Mr. Spencer perceived,
either at the beginning of his great work, or in the fulness of his
powers. 1 Intent upon the broader aspects of cosmic change, his
mind did not seize upon certain implications of rearrangement.
In the concrete world of living organisms, equilibration becomes
the relentless struggle for existence, in which the weakest go to
the wall. Natural selection follows. It was this intensely con-
crete aspect that Mr. Darwin saw, and intellectually mastered.
The distinction here indicated between evolution as a universal
process, comprehensively described by Spencer, and Darwinism,
or Mr. Darwin's account of one vitally important and concrete
phase of that process, has often been noted, and is usually ob-
served by careful writers. It is of particular importance in any
discussion of social evolution. One cannot hope to get far in a
theoretical study of human society if he does not heed the extent
to which our explanations of social origins, our philosophies of
history and of human institutions, have become not only evolution-
ist, in the Spencerian sense of the word, but also Darwinian.
It was not until the publication of The Descent of Man, in
1871, when controversy over The Origin of Species had raged
through twelve years of intellectual tempest, that the full signifi-
cance of natural selection for the doctrine of human progress was
apprehended by the scientific world. Mr. Spencer saw it when
1 And he did not finally reduce his general formula to its lowest terms.
As "universal," evolution is but a progressive emergence of order out of
turbulence, and therefore a progressive complication of relationships. All
other aspects of evolution are particularistic, for example, they are astro-
nomical or biological, or psychological or political, and no two of them are
of quite identical pattern.
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE 5
The Origin of Species appeared. Mr. Darwin himself had per-
ceived that he must offer a credible explanation of the paradox
that a ruthless struggle for existence yields the peaceable fruits
of righteousness. But it was neither Mr. Spencer, nor Mr. Dar-
win, who first recognized the specific phase of the life struggle in
which the clue to the mystery might be sought. The gifted thinker
who made that discovery was Walter Bagehot, editor of the Lon-
don Economist, whose little book on Physics and Politics or
Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of Natural Selec-
tion and Inheritance to Political Society, was published first as a
series of articles in The Fortnightly Review, beginning in Novem-
ber, 1867. Mr. Darwin rightly calls these articles "remarkable."
Revised and put together in book form they made a volume of
only two hundred and twenty-three small pages in large type, but
no more original, brilliant or, as far as it goes, satisfactory exami-
nation of the deeper problems of social causation has ever been
offered from that day until now. It anticipated much that is most
valuable in later exposition.
In the Social Statics, Mr. Spencer had shown that primitive
man, subsisting upon inferior species and contending with them
for standing room and safety, necessarily developed a human
nature adapted to the task of slaughter, cruel, therefore, and un-
scrupulous ; but that triumphant posterity, inheriting a subjugated
world, and no longer bound to kill, might become sympathetic
enough to cooperate successfully in peaceful activities. The exact
relation, however, of this process to group formation or to the
collective activity of a cooperating group when formed, Mr.
Spencer at this time certainly did not see. For, incredible though
it may seem, Mr. Spencer did not at this time so much as make
note of the terrific struggles for control of food-getting oppor-
tunities that occur among individuals or between groups of the
same species, or variety. Conflict among men of the same cul-
tural attainments Mr. Spencer thought of only as prompted by
surviving savage instincts, engendered by predatory habits, in the
lawless youth of the race.
It was specifically the phenomena of group solidarity and of col-
lective conflict, in distinction from a merely individual struggle
for existence, which Mr. Bagehot selected for examination, and
6 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
his mind penetrated directly to the essential conditions of the
problem. He said:
"The progress of man requires the cooperation of men for its develop-
ment. . . . The first principle of the subject is that man can only make
progress in 'cooperative groups'; I might say tribes and nations, but I
use the less common word because few people would at once see that
tribes and nations are cooperative groups, and that it is their being so
which makes their value; that unless you can make a strong cooperative
bond, your society will be conquered and killed out by some other society
which has such a bond; and the second principle is that the members of
such a group should be similar enough to one another to cooperate easily
and readily together. The cooperation in all such cases depends on a
felt union of heart and spirit; and this is only felt when there is a great
degree of real likeness in mind and feeling, however that likeness may
have been attained." l
Addressing himself to the question how the necessary likeness
in mind and feeling is produced, Mr. Bagehot answers: By one
of the most terrible tyrannies ever known among men, namely,
the authority of customary law ; and in accounting for the origin
and force of custom, he develops a theory of the function of imi-
tation which anticipates much, but by no means all, of the socio-
logical theory of Gabriel Tarde. Custom, however, tends to create
a degree of similarity among social units, and an unchanging way
of life, fatal to further progress. To reintroduce and to maintain
certain possibilities and tendencies toward variation is, as Bagehot
sees the process, one of the chief uses of conflict. Social evolu-
tion thus proceeds through the conflict of antagonistic tendencies,
on the one hand toward uniformity and solidarity; on the other
hand toward variation and individuality. In some groups, one of
these tendencies predominates. Contending together, group with
group, in the struggle for existence, those groups survive in which
the balancing of these tendencies secures the greatest group effi-
ciency. It is not too much to say that in this interpretation, Mr.
Bagehot arrived at conclusions which to-day we recognize as be-
longing to the theoretical core of a scientific sociology.
Mr. Darwin, in those chapters of The Descent of Man in
which he treats of the origin of social habits and the moral facul-
ties, adopts in substance the conclusions of Mr. Bagehot, and with
1 Physics and Politics, pp. 212, 213.
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE 7
his keen sense for what is essential, lays emphasis upon four
facts, namely : ( I ) the importance of group or tribal cohesion as a
factor of success in intertribal struggle, (2) the importance of
sympathy as a factor in group cohesion, (3) the importance of
mutual fidelity and unselfish courage, and (4) the great part
played by sensitiveness to praise and blame in developing both
unselfish courage and fidelity. In terms of these four facts, Mr.
Darwin finds an answer to the question, how, within the condi-
tions fixed by a struggle for existence, social and moral qualities
could tend slowly to advance and to be diffused throughout the
world.
That the studies of both Mr. Bagehot and Mr. Darwin left
much still to be said on the subject of group feeling and coopera-
tive solidarity was shown when, in 1890, Prince Peter Alekseevich
Kropotkin published in The Nineteenth Century his fascinating
articles on Mutual Aid among Animals, afterwards supple-
mented by studies of mutual aid among savages and among bar-
barians. These articles contained nothing essentially new in
theory, but they contributed to our knowledge an imposing mass
of facts demonstrating how great has been the part played by
sympathy and helpfulness in the struggle for existence, and how
inadequate would be any interpretation of natural selection which
accounted for it wholly in terms of superior strength, cruelty and
cunning.
Mr. Darwin never claimed to offer an adequate explanation of
the variations which natural selection preserves or rejects. He
sometimes took them for granted, he sometimes spoke of them as
accidental or fortuitous. 1 He would have been the last to pretend
*It was left for the post-Darwinians, and in particular DeVries, to
demonstrate the distinction between "mutations" (variations large or
small that are inherited) and "fluctuations" (variations large or small that
are not inherited) and to apprehend its significance. The fact of mu-
tation (often large and conspicuous) ; the law of heredity discovered
by Mendel; the continuity of germ plasm discontinuous with somatic
cells and the fact that traits acquired by an individual after birth do not
descend in heredity, established by Weismann; have displaced both the
hypothesis of pangenesis and Darwin's view of the transformation of
species by cumulative variation ; but they have not touched essential
Darwinism, namely, recognition of the fact and the function of selective
death-rates among mutants. There is no evidence that Malthus saw, or
if he saw attached importance to the fact, that death-rates are selective.
8 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
that he had told us all that we should like to know about the be-
ginnings of herd habit, of sympathy or of sensitiveness to praise
or blame. But, starting from herd habit, sympathy and the desire
for approval as traits that may actually be observed, and that
presumably have somehow had a natural origin, Darwin and
Kropotkin convincingly demonstrate that groups possessing these
qualities have a certain advantage in the struggle for life.
To account more fully for the origins, in distinction from the
natural selection of the social qualities, was the problem that John
Fiske attacked in his theory of the effects of prolonged infancy,
first published in the North American Review of October, I873, 1
and a year later in the Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy. Fiske
discriminates between "gregariousness" and "sociality," without,
however, sufficiently analyzing the one or the other, or quite de-
fining the difference. 2 By sociality he seems to mean a relatively
high development of sympathy, affection and loyalty to kindred
or comrades. He argues that sociality has its origin in small and
permanent family groups. These are not necessarily monogamous
at first. They may be polygamous or polyandrian, and may
broaden out into clans. But they must be more enduring than
matings observed in the merely gregarious herd. The cause of
both definiteness and permanence he finds in the prolongation of
infancy, necessitating a relatively long-continued parental care
of offspring. The relations so established among near kindred
have conserved and strengthened the feelings of affection and the
sense of solidarity. Mr. Darwin recognized Mr. Fiske's theory
as an important contribution to the subject. It must be said in
criticism, however, that Mr. Fiske did not see all the implications
of prolonged infancy, or develop his theory into all its possibilities.
Admitting that the prolongation of infancy was probably a factor
in the evolution of stable family relationships, and therefore
played a part in strengthening the social sentiments, we must re-
member that the collective life and solidarity of the gregarious
group was probably a chief cause of the prolongation of infancy
itself. Demanding, as it did, relatively complex habits and ad-
1 Under the title: The Progress from Brute to Man.
'Nevertheless, the discrimination is one of the most significant that
had so far been made in sociology.
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE 9
justments, it operated to select for survival those individuals that
varied in the direction of high brain power and its correlated long
infancy. But this is to say that the collective struggle for exis-
tence was a factor in the evolution of man before man became a
factor in the evolution of society, and the fact is important.
Moreover, Mr. Fiske's theory no more explained the actual
origins of sympathy and cooperation than Bagehot's and Dar-
win's theories had done. Neither, for that matter, did Suther-
land's account of The Origin and Growth of the Moral In-
stinct? although Sutherland got somewhat further back when he
called attention to the reaction of parental care of offspring upon
the evolution of ganglia making up the sympathetic nervous
system.
At this stage the Darwinian interpretation of social origins had
arrived when, in 1894, there was published a work which had an
almost sensational reception. Hailed as a new gospel by minds
desiring above all things to find some solid ground for religious
convictions that had seemingly suffered violence in the course of
evolutionist warfare, this book was treated by scientific critics
with scant respect. The critics, I venture to think, were in error.
For, in fact, the Social Evolution of Benjamin Kidd raised a
profoundly important question, and gave an answer to it which,
while half wrong, was probably half right, and the half that was
right was a real and important contribution to knowledge. Stated
in the fewest possible words, Mr. Kidd's query was this :
Since natural selection saves the few and kills the many, why
does not the great majority of mankind try to curb competition
and put an end to progress ? Thus presented, Mr. Kidd's question
is the radical and fearless form of a question which socialism asks
in a form that, by comparison, is conservative and half-hearted.
And Mr. Kidd's answer, not so much as tainted with socialism,
is as fearless as his question. Progress has no rational sanction.
It is irrational and, from the standpoint of reason, absurd. Man
goes on multiplying, competing, fighting and making progress be-
cause he is not rational and has no desire to be. He lives not by
1 Published in 1898, a worthy product of Australian scholarship, which
its author described as largely a detailed expansion of the fourth and
fifth chapters of The Descent of Man.
io STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
reason, but by faith. He crucifies and kills himself to improve
the race, not because he is scientific, but because he is religious.
Perhaps it was because Mr. Kidd's thesis was paradoxical, that
theologians found something tangible in it while scientific men
did not. It should be possible now to look back upon it without
prejudice. On the face of it, it is an obvious fallacy, but back of
fallacy lies a truth.
The fallacy consists in an unwarranted assumption that indi-
viduals and families marked for extermination in the struggle for
existence are, in their own lifetime, aware of their impending
doom. Let us suppose that, of one hundred families now flourish-
ing, ninety will become extinct in the tenth generation, their
places being filled by a corresponding number of new families
branching from the one successful line. This would be natural
selection at a rapid rate. Yet to maintain this rate, only ten fam-
ilies have to drop out in any one generation, and ten new ones
to appear. This means that, at any given time, a ninety per cent,
majority of all persons at the moment living have an expectation
of further life, the termination of which cannot be foreseen. The
large majority, therefore, at any given time existing think of
themselves not as the unfit that must perish, but rather as the
fit selected to survive.
This way of stating the problem, however, brings us face to
face with a peculiarly interesting truth, for the apprehension of
which we rightly may give generous credit to Mr. Kidd. Ob-
viously, while no family stock or race at any time existing can
certainly know, or, while it remains still vigorous, find sufficient
ground to believe that it is doomed to perish, neither can it cer-
tainly know that it is indefinitely to survive. It struggles instinc-
tively and it achieves not altogether by knowledge or by reason,
but also in part by faith. It impulsively goes forward and it
hopes, it expects to endure. It believes in its future.
Therefore the ongoing drive by which a race, a family, or an
individual lives, is not anti-rational, nor yet super- rational. It is
rather sub-rational or proto-rational. It is deeper and more ele-
mental than reason. It is the will to "carry on" sustained by
faith in the possibilities of life. The question, therefore, which
Mr. Kidd should have asked, and which we, reviewing his work,
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE n
must ask in his stead, is this : May we identify our ongoing will
with what men in all lands and times have called "the soul," and
merge our elemental faith in the possibilities of life in the tre-
mendous social phenomenon of religion, which, in all the ages of
man's progress, has been one of his supreme interests ? Shall we
perhaps find that, when reduced to its lowest terms, to its essential
principle, religion is not, as has been supposed, so much a belief
in gods, or in a supernatural, in any way conceived, as an endeavor
to sustain and "save" the soul (i. e. to fortify the ongoing will)
and to nourish that primordial faith in the possibilities of life
which was born, and generation after generation is re-born, of
success in the struggle for existence; which may gather about
itself all manner of supplementary beliefs, including a belief in
spirits and in gods, but which will persist after science has
stripped away from it all its mystical and theological accretions ?
If we may and should, we can accept as a positive contribution to
the theory of human behavior Mr. Kidd's proposition that relig-
ion, a thing deeper and more elemental than reason, has been a
chief factor in social evolution.
The mention of socialism, when referring to the theories of
Benjamin Kidd, may serve to remind us of two further contribu-
tions to the Darwinian theory of society still to be mentioned.
William Hurrell Mallock's American lectures on socialism, 1 did
not enhance his reputation as a competent student of social phe-
nomena. Before passing judgment, however, one should examine
Mr. Mallock's Aristocracy and Evolution, a suggestive and
really important work, published in 1898. In this book Mr. Mai-
lock rises above his habit of literary trifling, and digs somewhat
below his prejudices, to examine not only fairly, but also cogently,
and with illumination, the phenomenon of personal ability as a
factor of social achievement. Distinguishing between a struggle
for existence merely, and a struggle for domination, he contends
that progress in any legitimate sense of the word is attributable
to the struggle for domination. No one, I think, can go far in
sociological study without seeing that this is a significant distinc-
tion for purposes of historical interpretation.
'Delivered in 1906; published 1907 as A Critical Examination of
Socialism,
12 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
One need not, however, draw the conclusion that democracy is
necessarily antagonistic to progress, as Mr. Mallock does. He
says:
The human race progresses because and when the strongest human
powers and the highest human faculties lead it ; such powers and faculties
are embodied in and monopolized by a minority of exceptional men ; these
men enable the majority to progress, only on condition that the majority
submit themselves to their control. 1
No student of social evolution would be less likely to dispute
these propositions than Francis Galton would be if he were now
living. In his studies of natural inheritance and hereditary genius,
Galton did more than any investigator before him to establish
them on a broad inductive basis. Since Galton, no investigator
has made more valuable studies in this field than Karl Pearson,
and no one more unreservedly than he accepts the conclusion that
superiority is necessary to social advance and that personal superi-
ority is a fact of heredity. Yet Mr. Pearson contends that to add
artificial advantage to natural superiority is fatal, because su-
periority cannot be maintained unless the herd, as well as the
superior individual, is carefully looked after and improved. The
superiority that achieves leadership and domination is usually the
power to do some particular thing exceptionally well. It is ex-
treme individuation, and it often is purchased at the cost of race
vitality. It is as necessary to maintain the one as to develop the
other. Mr. Pearson therefore finds the socialistic program not
incompatible with continuing progress by selection and inheri-
tance. 2
"To 'wage war against natural inequality' is clearly a reductio ad
absurdum of the socialistic doctrine. So far as I understand the views
of the more active socialists of to-day, they fully recognize that the
better posts, the more lucrative and comfortable berths, must always go
to the more efficient and more productive workers, and that it is for
the welfare of society that it should be so. Socialists, however, propose
to limit within healthy bounds the rewards of natural superiority and
the advantages of artificial inequality. The victory of the more capable,
or the more fortunate, must not involve such a defeat of the less capable,
1 Aristocracy and Evolution, p. 379.
'The Chances of Death, Vol. I., pp. 112, 113. Rejecting socialism
myself and defending a creed of socialized individualism, I have thought
it worth while to quote the exact words in which Mr. Pearson summarized
his argument.
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE 13
or the less fortunate, that social stability is endangered by the misery
produced. At the present time a failure of the harvest in Russia and
America simultaneously, or a war with a first-class European power,
would probably break up our social system altogether. We should be
crushed in the extra-group struggle for existence, because we have given
too much play to intra-group competition, because we have proceeded on
the assumption that it is better to have a few prize cattle among in-
numerable lean kine than a decently-bred and properly-fed herd with no
expectations at Smithfield."
From this too brief account of the applications thus far made
of Darwinian theory to the problems presented by social relation-
ships, including human institutions, we may turn to the question of
further scientific possibilities in this direction. It will have been
noted that the theories reviewed are not as they now stand entirely
consistent with one another, and that none of them carries ex-
planation back to the actual beginnings and causes of group for-
mation. Perhaps if we could more adequately account, in terms
of the struggle for existence, for actual social origins, and for
successive stages of social evolution, the various fragments of
theory which we now possess would fall into orderly correlation.
Possibly also the most promising starting point for any new
attempt to achieve these ends may be found in a careful scrutiny
of what is involved in the struggle for existence itself. Close
readers of The Origin of Species know that although Mr. Dar-
win, when employing the phrase "a struggle for existence," usu-
ally meant by it a struggle for subsistence, he uses it also to mean
a struggle with the physical conditions of life, to which an or-
ganism that would survive must be or must become adapted.
"Two canine animals in a time of dearth," he remarks, "may truly
be said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live.
But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life
against the drought, though more properly it should be said to
be dependent on the moisture." * Also, "climate plays an impor-
tant part in determining the average numbers of a species, and
periodical seasons of extreme cold or drought seem to be the most
effective of all checks." 2 Yet further, "when we reach the Arctic
regions, or snow capped summits, or absolute deserts, the struggle
1 The Origin of Species, p. 78.
</., p. 84.
14 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
for life is almost exclusively with the elements." * Again, Mr.
Darwin often means, not a struggle for food or against the ele-
ments, but a struggle to avoid being converted into food. "Very
frequently," he writes, "it is not the obtaining of food, but the
serving as prey to other animals, which determines the average
numbers of a species." 2 And some of his most fascinating pages
deal with the variations, such as protective markings, colorings
and habits, which are helpful in the mere struggle for safety.
Once more, in those paragraphs in The Descent of Man already
referred to, in which Mr. Darwin recognizes the utility of group
solidarity, he, by implication, takes account of a struggle on the
part of associating individuals to adjust their interests and their
activities to one another in such wise that group life may be
maintained.
If, then, it is legitimate to use the term, "struggle for existence,"
"in a large and metaphorical sense," as Mr. Darwin says his prac-
tice is, 3 the struggle itself obviously consists of four distinct and
specific struggles, namely: (i) the struggle to react, to endure
heat and cold and storm, to draw the next breath, to crawl the
next yard, to hold out against fatigue and despair, to explore and
analyze the situation; (2) the struggle for subsistence wherewith
to repair the waste of reaction; (3) the struggle for adaptation
by every organism to the objective conditions of its life, and, (4)
the struggle for adjustment, by group-living individuals to one
another.
And this large use of the term is legitimate in fact. Mr. Dar-
win's only mistake was in calling it "metaphorical." For, as Karl
Pearson has pointed out, "the true measure of natural selection
is a selective death rate," 4 and any circumstance, whether it be
danger, or scarcity of food, or non-adaptation to physical condi-
tions, or mal-adjustment of associating individuals to one an-
other, which affects the selective death rate, is a factor in the
struggle for existence.
If so much be granted, a number of difficult questions get a real
1 The Origin of Species, p. 85.
'Ibid., p. 84.
'Ibid., p. 78.
* Essay on "Reproductive Selection" in The Chances of Death and
Other Studies in Evolution, Vol. I, p. 63.
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE 15
illumination. What are the true relations of religious, aesthetic,
intellectual, economic, ethical and social phenomena to one an-
other, and to life in its wide inclusiveness ? What, especially, is
the precise point of departure of social evolution from all that
precedes it and prepares for it? And what is the precise dis-
crimination needful of things social from things merely organic
or psychological ? The modes and the phases of the struggle for
existence suggest intelligible answers.
The struggle to endure and, withstanding fatigue, to go on, to
keep up courage and to maintain faith, develops into religion.
It avails, however, only if sensitiveness to situation warns of
danger, and reaction to peril achieves safety. Sensitiveness to
electrical and chemical conditions, to temperature, pressure and
sound, to light and shade, to color and form (in all their objective
degrees and proportions, dissonances and harmonies) and alert
reaction to them, are the beginnings of aesthetic interest and dis-
crimination, which, therefore, it seems, are vital concerns; not
triflings with life, as stupid people assume. They are the un-
wearying guardians of immediate safety. For assurance of
safety or continuing security, yet other reactions are necessary.
There must be an exploration of each situation and an analysis
of it. This is an intellectual business, an affair of ideas and of
thought processes, for which only man is competent. His attempt
to develop it is his scientific life.
Religion, then, the aesthetic life and the scientific life, are initial
products of the struggle to react, to hold out and to go on.
The struggle for subsistence initiates and broadens into the
economic life. The struggle for adaptation becomes the ethical
life. For adaptation, in its beginnings a mere taking on or per-
fecting of useful characters, develops, in time, into self-control,
self-direction and self-shaping.
Between adaptation and adjustment, no distinction whatever
has been made by a majority of evolutionist writers. Spencer
uses the word "adjustment" to include all that biologists and
psychologists commonly mean by adaptation. Yet the two things
are not at all the same. The struggles which they involve are not
identical struggles, and, for the purposes of sociological theory,
the distinction is of fundamental importance.
1 6 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Adaptation which, as it goes on, widens into and includes the
ethical life, at first is a mere conforming of the organism through
variation, selection and inheritance, to the physical conditions
under which it happens to live ; that is to say, to altitude, tempera-
ture, light or darkness, dryness or moisture, enemies, food supply,
and so on. Through adaptation, and because non-adaptation
means extinction, the individuals of any given species congregated
and dwelling in any given region where adequate food supplies
are found become increasingly alike, and the first two conditions
of social life, as Mr. Bagehot rightly explained it, namely, group-
ing and substantial resemblance, are provided. But, since they are
alike, individuals of the same variety or race, so brought together
in one habitat, necessarily want the same things, and, as often as
not, try in like ways to get them, reacting in one manner to any
stimulus that incites all of them, or to a common situation. They
compete in obtaining things which each is able to get by his own
efforts, or (unconsciously or consciously) they combine their
efforts to obtain things that no one could get unaided. In either
case their interests and activities are not altogether harmonious
and easily become antagonistic. Competition tends to engender
conflicts inimical to group cohesion; but in aggregations of ani-
mals or of human beings, in which individuals generally are sub-
stantially similar in behavior and approximately equal in strength,
conflicts are self-limiting in a degree. An equilibrium of "live and
let live" is arrived at, which makes gregarious life possible for
animals and conscious association possible for human beings. In
human communities the let live habit of noninterference becomes
a conscious toleration, in which adaptation passes into adjust-
ment, a reciprocal adaptation. It is a precarious adjustment at
first, because rivalries continue and conflicts recur. When, how-
ever, these provoke collective (i. e. group) reactions in defense
of the let live status, the struggle then begun is a struggle to
maintain adjustment and to improve it. On its success group
cohesion depends, and on group cohesion social evolution depends.
Or, to put the matter now in slightly different words, while the
struggle to react with ongoing will and discriminating intelli-
gence becomes differentiated into religious, aesthetic and scientific
activities; and while the struggle for subsistence becomes the
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE 17
economic life, and the struggle for adaptation broadens into the
ethical life, the struggle of resembling creatures to adjust them-
selves (together with their competitions and their adaptations) to
one another, is the beginning and the continuing process of group
cohesion, the precedent condition of human society and all that it
signifies.
Through success in all of these struggles, and not in one or an-
other of them only, there results a survival of the fit, namely,
organisms that are so equipped with proper parts and habits that
on the whole they fit into and conform to the essential conditions
of life incident to the environment in which they are forced or
elect to dwell.
Only a few of the countless billions of the fit are human, and
human beings are not in all cases the fit. There are regions and
circumstances in which man is unfit to live, and doesn't.
Human qualities have been winnowed and selected in a differ-
ential struggle, projected from and beyond the general struggle
for existence. They are products of a highly definite and intense
struggle for human existence.
This struggle has been not only a collective effort, as the life
struggle of all gregarious creatures is, but also a social struggle
another phenomenon altogether.
Pluralistically responding (i. e. in plural numbers reacting) to
common stimulation, communicating and associating, acting upon
one another by suggestion and example, and imitating one an-
other in a thousand ways, individuals generate similar feelings and
develop closely resembling ideas. Among them are feelings and
ideas of liking and disliking, of trust and distrust, of approval
and disapproval. These are social feelings and ideas, a human
equipment not found full grown, if indeed in rudimentary begin-
nings, in the animal mind. Also an awareness of similarities of
behavior and of character (and of conflicting dissimilarities) be-
comes a consciousness of kind, or type. Social feelings and ideas,
(emotions and thoughts) and the consciousness of kind fuse in a
conscious social sentiment, a state of the human mind, to which
gregarious instinct (if there is a gregarious instinct) is but a
small contribution. Social sentiment converts herd habits into
those common and usual but not invariable ways of doing things,
i8 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
those norms and elements of human custom, which Professor
Sumner has named the folkways.
Folkways and mores constrain the individual and become that
"most terrible of all tyrannies known to man" of which Mr.
Bagehot wrote. But it is a tyranny, as Bagehot demonstrated,
that perfects the group in cohesion and in unity of purpose. Con-
scious, then, of the usefulness of solidarity, the group endeavors
by definite policies to limit variation from type. Society thereby
becomes a type-conforming group of associates, endeavoring, by
self -instituted discipline to maintain as a type its distinctive char-
acteristics. Chief of selected and perpetuated traits are the dif-
ferential human reactions; conscious toleration, conscious sym-
pathy, and an intellectualized understanding.
In the three next following chapters fundamental conditions
and elemental processes of the struggle for human existence are
examined in further detail. The historic process as a whole is
then viewed comprehensively, and afterwards an attempt is made
to discover and to connect the historical factors of social theory.
The chapters of the second part of the volume are analytical
studies of determinative factors and controlling processes in
human society. In the third part an attempt is made to exhibit
their genetic and functional synthesis.
CHAPTER II
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE
IT would help to clear up those issues which have been brought
forward by the economic interpretation of history, if scholars
generally understood the true character of certain human interests
which we are in the habit of grouping under the word "culture."
To the historian who comprehends the part which religion and
language, manners and amusements, art and literature have played
in the drama of human progress, there is something almost per-
verse in the proposition that all which has happened in the world
can be explained in economic terms. . Not only does economic
explanation in history savor of materialism in that sense of the
word which is ethical rather than scientific, but it seems to be
wholly inadequate.
Yet the question raised, as all will admit, is perplexing. The
word "economy" has become one of the most elastic in the vo-
cabulary of science. It means the whole system of industry and
business whereby a modern population sustains existence. It
means the production and distribution of wealth. It also means
the total phenomena of wants and satisfactions. Whenever the
economist, turned historian, discovers that he cannot account for
a social development in terms of property or of industrial or-
ganization or of "the iron law," he falls back on the most abstract
meaning of his words, and has no difficulty in proving that since
all the forms of culture are satisfactions of wants, they are
economic phenomena. He might demonstrate also that they are
cosmic phenomena, and the one "interpretation" would be as
illuminating as the other. Admitting that cultural products are
both cosmic and economic, our common sense assures us that they
are distinguishable from undifferentiated comet tails, and that it
would be interesting to know wherein their economic nature
differs from that of stock yards and rolling mills. The crux of
19
the whole question is right here. Are the facts of culture eco-
nomic in some precise sense, as the facts of industry are? Is
culture in general an economy, of a different order from the
economy called industry; and if so, which economy is radical, or
primordial? Is culture an offshoot of industry, or has industry
been evolved from culture ; or are there two economies, indepen-
dent and coordinate from the beginning? These questions can-
not be answered by scientific intuition.
On the one hand we know that in modern life churches and
theatres, clubs and "society" are maintained from the products
of iron and cotton mills, coal mines and oil wells, wheat fields and
lumber camps. On the other hand, we know that the Ingsevones
and Herminones, whom Tacitus described, had neither mills nor
mines, nor much cultivated grain, nor marts, and yet they had
religion and a splendid mythology, choral song, and social festi-
vals. Historically, culture had a vast development before industry
got beyond its rudest beginnings. Industry, however, supplies us
with material goods, food, clothing and shelter, which minister
to those bodily needs that are older than the cravings of the mind.
Moreover savages and barbarians have had practical as well as
ceremonial arts. As a rule (but not always) they have obtained
something to eat before devoting themselves to tom-toms and
prayer. Altogether, antecedent and consequent in our investiga-
tion seem to be mixed.
In the attempt to get them into a genetic order let us first care-
fully recognize facts that are beyond argument. It is by directing
human labor and by controlling the processes of nature that mod-
ern industry creates vast quantities of goods, including food sup-
plies in excess of what nature offers freely in unsolicited bounty.
In achieving this end modern industry is dependent upon man's
acquisitions of scientific knowledge and technical skill. Knowl-
edge and skill have had beginning and growth in man's ceaseless
interrogation of nature through unnumbered generations, and in
his attempt to imitate her ways. These questionings and imita-
tions lead back into a maze of religious ceremonies and beliefs,
back through the world of ghosts to an earlier world of mana,
then further back to those earliest forms of expression and of
mimicry, of which language and manners were born, and at last to
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE 21
those primordial reactions of which adventure, fortitude and faith
were born. Modern industry, then, presupposes among its ante-
cedents the whole cultural history of man considered as a mental
preparation for his present task.
This, however, is not all. Industry presupposes certain mo-
tives for productive effort, and these are more than pangs of
hunger and cold. They include not only the demand of the body
for nourishment and protection, but also the demand of body
and of mind for exhilarating activity ; for stimulation and exalta-
tion ; for the pleasures of sight and of sound, of imagination and
of sentiment, and for the deeper satisfactions of understanding.
In their turn all these satisfactions are concretely embodied in
cultural forms handed down to us from the past. On the side of
motive also, therefore, modern industry presupposes the long
historical evolution of culture.
Thus, indirectly at least, culture has an economic function. As
motive and means a necessary antecedent of the whole industrial
scheme of the modern world it must be recognized among eco-
nomic causes. Has it, then, or has it had in the past an economic
function more immediate, an economic character less disguised?
Did it originate in economic effort? As a product of evolution it
must be regarded as in some way related to the struggle for ex-
istence. Did it grow and differentiate because it contributed in a
practical way to life maintenance, or only because it happened to
be correlated with useful activities, and fortunately added some-
thing to the variety and interest of an existence which it had no
power to sustain ?
The answer to this question is not doubtful. In its earliest
forms culture is an economy; a practical, utilitarian thing. Only
in its late developments does it become a diversion. To the primi-
tive man culture in general, like music or dancing in particular, is
a serious business.
Bird and beast subsist on what they find. They are not, how-
ever, helpless creatures of a strictly fatalistic luck. Their reflex
and instinct mechanisms serve them well. Without comprehen-
sion they strive, and without thought they discriminate. Their
cries and gestures, by-products of zeal and alarm, proclaim dis-
coveries, warn of dangers, stimulate or depress. Also, through
22 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
beating the air and the bush in a random trial of this and that
which results now in failure and now in accidental success, they
recondition their instincts. They learn, and acquire habits. They
practice cautious approaches and unhesitating avoidances. They
learn concrete good and evil, what things and powers revive and
comfort them, what hurt and incapacitate them. Out of ap-
proaches and avoidances they develop play habits of mimicry,
which like cries and gestures serve them by way of self-stimula-
tion and exhilaration. These first acquisitions (not known by
their beneficiaries to be such) are the rudiments of culture.
Primitive man develops articulate sounds into predicative dis-
course, the indispensable means of communication in the higher
forms of aggressive and defensive cooperation. He develops
address and reply, approach and avoidance into manners. Ap-
proaches he develops into contacts and alliances through which he
"gets power" (mana) and so into totemism. Avoidances he de-
velops into taboos, interposed between himself and evil. Mimicry
he develops into dance and song, and for ages the supreme pur-
pose for which he cultivates these arts is to stimulate himself to
moods of "power" and then by stimulating to enchant the realms
of plant and animal life. Presently out of such enchantments as
are practiced by the native Australians whereby those children of
nature believe that they multiply the witchetty grubs on which
their uncertain life depends, and such initiation ceremonies as
those of the "white clay men" (the Titanes) of ancient Crete, he
develops drama and myth. Out of mimicries also he creates tech-
nical arts of carving and drawing, of weaving and building.
Everything that he does, and worship above all, is with practical
intent. Whether thinking of natural processes in terms of im-
personal mana he piles his altars with rice or with maize and
sprinkles them with water to bring down saving rain, or, at a
later time, having peopled the world with ghosts and then with
personal gods of ghost extraction he prays and propitiates, his
worship is as purely economic in motive as is that of the modern
man of affairs who puts his contribution into the plate to fortify
his credit at the bank. Casting bread upon the waters is an old
practice, in which worship and economy are as one.
Nor was this ceremonial economy of primitive man as ridicu-
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE 23
lously idle as the modern skeptic may imagine. It did in fact very
greatly contribute to economic security. The effect of taboo was
to preserve multitudes of plant and animal species from indiscrim-
inate destruction, and, what was equally important, to compel men,
forbidden to subsist on this and that, to seek other food supplies
and thus to diversify consumption. The significance of this latter
fact will again be referred to later on.
And even where mere mimicry and supplication failed to ex-
tort from nature that which she yields only to patient industry
directed by scientific knowledge, they increased man's well-being
in another way. Differentiated into a thousand modes of pic-
turesque and enlivening activity, they became habits which man
has continued to cherish for the immediate pleasure which they
afford. They multiplied his interests, expanded his ideas, dis-
ciplined his mind. They provided immediate satisfactions, and
continued to provide them for all those human needs which are
not merely material ; while, at the same time, taboo and ceremony
contributed to his material security.
Whatever, then, culture may be today, it has been in its time an
economic system, as truly as industry is now. It was the economy
of primitive man. It was the first means of differentiating and
of protecting the food supply, and it was the first means of dif-
ferentiating the immaterial needs, thereby enormously broadening
economic demand, and strengthening economic motive. Yet it
was a radically different economy from that which now maintains
the enormous population of the world. In the hope of discovering
the scientific aspect of the difference, let us submit the bare out-
line of facts, which has thus far been given, to a more precise
analysis.
In a following chapter, on "The Economic Ages," in which I
shall pay a more adequate attention to the psychological character
of phenomena that I am here but superficially describing, I shall
suggest reasons for recognizing four stages of economic develop-
ment, namely, an organic, an instinctive and habitistic, an appre-
hensive, an ascertaining. The economy of plant life is organic
only. The economy of animal life is organic, instinctive and habi-
tistic. The economy of human life is organic, instinctive and
habitistic, apprehending and credulous, and ascertaining. Man
24 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
alone systematically attempts to improve his condition. His first
experiments, however, directed by naive conceptions of nature,
are with the arts of enchantment and propitiation : his apprehen-
sive economy is ceremonial. Not until late in his career does he
become a systematic worker and develop a verifiable business
economy.
The organic, the instinctive and the ceremonial economies have
an essential something in common which marks them off from
modern industry, and which makes their phenomena the subject
matter of one grand division of economic science, while the busi-
ness phenomena of industry belong to another grand division. If
this distinction can be made clear, the true significance of culture
as a preliminary economy, and the antecedence of cultural phe-
nomena to nearly everything which we nowadays call economics,
will be established.
We must begin with a brief reference to phenomena of wants
and satisfactions, which are the data of all economic theory. The
need for food is so far from being the only original want that in
fact it is coordinate with demands equally imperative, no one of
which, taken by itself, is antecedent to another. Life would
perish as quickly if the energies which are evolved by the assimila-
tion of food could not normally be expended, as it would through
starvation. Expenditure in cell division and reproduction is the
universal mode, and it results in that multiplicity of organisms
which conditions the life struggle for each one. It is supple-
mented in the animal creation by motor activities, and these, in
the higher species, are differentiated in endless complications
through their correlation wittt a developed nervous system. All
of these activities of body and mind as they appear are enlisted in
the food quest, in the phenomena of reproduction and race main-
tenance, and, finally, in determining the relations of organisms to
one another. Again, each mode of activity, once established,
creates a continuing demand in the organism for the further en-
joyment of such expenditures of energy. Accustomed to the
chase, beast or man suffers miseries if deprived of freedom. Ac-
customed to the functions of race maintenance, the organism that
is deprived of offspring finds the pleasures of its own existence
largely curtailed. Long used to the presence of fellow creatures
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE 25
and to activities of antagonism or of sympathy, the individual in
isolation begins to perish, as surely as if he were deprived of food.
Finally, every activity of the mind in its questioning of nature,
and in its practical efforts to ameliorate the conditions of life,
creates a craving for its own renewal.
As rapidly as activities are differentiated, the need for discharge
of energy in each new channel becomes a demand for a particular
class of satisfactions, which must not be confused with the final
satisfaction of actual expenditure any more than food is mistaken
for the pleasure of consuming it. Food is a preliminary or me-
diate satisfaction. Means are necessary also to the end pleas-
urable activity. In general they may be described as stimuli.
For the pleasures of the chase the stimuli of forest and game are
needed. For the active pleasures that young creatures have in
the antics of play they need the stimulus of one another's pres-
ence. For all of the lighter pleasures of intellectual activity we
need the stimulus of fellow minds. For a major part of our
happiest emotional activity we need the stimulus afforded by the
presence of those who, through long association with us, have
become objects of attachment. In highly evolved societies the
stimuli of intellectual and emotional activity have become innu-
merable, and to provide them is as much a part of man's foresight
as to provide for the production of energy and its conservation
by food, clothing and shelter.
The. original wants of an organism, then, are those of energy-
supplying substance, and of stimuli provocative of energy dis-
charge. The wants of the former class can be differentiated to
a very slight extent only. Those of the latter class can be varied
indefinitely. The multiplication of wants and of satisfactions is
mainly a multiplication of activities and of stimuli.
How are the satisfactions of each class provided? There is a
large number of life-sustaining substances, and there are many
stimuli of activity, which not only are not produced by industry,
but which are not even obtained through intent, or by effort.
They are put in the way of the creatures that enjoy them, and
are absorbed or reacted upon as a matter of course. The lowest
organisms are wholly dependent upon such resources, and the
highest, including human beings, are still dependent upon them
26 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
largely. Sunshine and air we accept without a thought of what
it would mean to have to get them by effort. The infinitely
varied stimuli which create our pleasurable sensations in the
presence of nature, and the ideas of nature that are slowly or-
ganized in scientific knowledge, are all a part of nature's unso-
licited bounty. The economy which utilizes them is purely bio-
logical and psychological, but it may be of any stage, from the
merely organic economy to the rational.
By the normal evolution of the organism further objective satis-
factions, belonging to the class stimuli, are provided ; in the lower
forms of life without conscious effort, but among human beings
with more or less of forethought, and at much cost in economic
sacrifice. These are offspring and fellow-beings, with all their
potentialities of sympathy and of rivalry, of social intercourse and
of cooperation.
A third mass of satisfactions is obtained through a measure of
effort, which, however, consists simply in finding and taking pos-
session of what nature provides. It is made up of those food
supplies that are the dependence of most of the higher animals
and of primitive man, and of various materials which both ani-
mals and men use for nests or shelter, and men for clothing.
To a much greater extent than we realize the human race still
subsists by foraging rather than by producing. We consume
great quantities of wild fruits and of game, of medicinal barks
and herbs, of furs and feathers which are merely gathered, and
are not increased in supply by any process of breeding or culti-
vating. In a large measure our so-called extractive industries
are merely survivals of a primitive foraging economy. Lumber-
ing by the usual wasteful methods is a conspicuous example of it.
There is a fourth array of satisfactions, consisting substantially
of stimuli of bodily and mental activities, intellectual and emo-
tional, which are enjoyed only by man, and the origins of which
we have been describing. All have sprung from instinctive reac-
, tions, mimetic habits, approaches and avoidances. Originally de-
veloped with practical intent, they become important to man for
the sustenance of mind and soul rather than of body. Language
and manners, worship and amusements, plastic and poetic arts,
these involve productive intent and effort, and in the beginning
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE 27
they are regarded as productive means, as truly as capital is in
modern days. Nevertheless, they are in reality productive of
subjective satisfactions, rather than of material goods, and so are
not properly to be classed as agents of a productive economy.
The fifth and final array of satisfactions is that which is created
by modern productive industry. It comprises the great bulk of
our food supplies, and of our clothing, comforts and luxuries;
and their creation involves the production also of great quantities
of auxiliary goods, including tools and machinery and means of
transportation.
All of these satisfactions save those of the last division named,
are an inheritance from an almost immeasurable past. Are there
any categories of economic science which apply to the products
of that "preliminary age," as Bagehot called it, no less than
to the wealth of our modern world? The answer has already
been given by implication in what has been said of the func-
tions of reproduction and of culture in differentiating both wants
and their satisfactions. The numerical increase of a species raises
the life of each individual to a higher power by multiplying a
thousand fold the stimuli of activity. Cultural products raise it
to yet higher powers both by diversifying its material basis of
subsistence, and by almost infinitely multiplying its interests.
Now just to the extent that men have a wide variety of ma-
terial satisfactions, and that their interests are multiplied by
innumerable stimuli of activity, they have a relatively high stand-
ard of living. That the standard of living is a complex of cul-
tural facts hardly needs demonstration. What men desire and
expect in life is an epitome of their race history in social inter-
course, manners, art, amusements and religion. Here, then, in
identifying the preliminary economies with the evolution of a
standard of living we bring them within the scope of familiar
economic concepts. A phenomenon of the diversification of wants
and satisfactions, the standard of living is a fact not of produc-
tion primarily, but of consumption. Thus we arrive at the broad
economic significance of culture. The evolution of culture is the
evolution of a consumption economy. 1
*I take the phrase from Simon N. Patten, but he must not be held
responsible for the uses that I make of it.
28 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
The classical economists recognized a department of their
science which they called the consumption of wealth ; but they
never knew what to make of it. Accepting the self-luminous
proposition that wealth cannot be consumed until it is obtained,
they touch upon consumption, if at all, at the end of their expo-
sition, and only so far as to show how the consumption of wealth
reacts upon its increase. This fact ought to have disclosed to
them the causal relation of consumption to production. Jevons
and the Austrian writers perceived the psychological aspect of it,
and by deriving from the facts of consumption the marginal
theory of utility and of value, they restated economic theory.
Marshall, broadening the treatment, identified the theory of con-
sumption with the theory of demand, and placed it before the
theory of supply, that is, of production.
The whole truth of the matter, however, is that the phenomena
of consumption are not only psychologically antecedent to the
phenomena of production, as motive to deed, but, as we have
seen, they are also historically antecedent. For ages there was
consumption before there was any production, and without grasp-
ing that fact man's economic and social history is not to be under-
stood. Like the lower animals he depended for supplies upon
the proffered bounty of nature. His only business was to con-
sume what she gave. His ideas and habits of consumption,
therefore, were his original economy. There was, in short, a
consumption economy long before there was a production
economy.
And that is not all. When man became convinced that he must
do something to increase the supplies that nature offered, he knew
nothing of industrial methods. He did not even suspect the im-
portance of differentiating his consumption. But through avoid-
ance and taboo, and by trying through magical stimulation and
religious ceremony to wheedle food from the powers of earth and
air, he did vary his consumption in fact, and differentiation once
begun was bound to continue until it became a great multiplication
of wants. The immediate effect of differentiation was to establish
a conservative and relatively advantageous use of the environ-
ment. Here again history confirms theory. Economists recognize
the indebtedness of their science to Patten's studies of the relation
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE 20
of a diversified consumption to marginal utility and to the total
supply of goods. Diversified consumption does not soon en-
counter diminishing returns. It is the simplest way to ameliorate
economic conditions, and it was the primitive way.
Differentiation begins with the multiplication of organisms and
the evolution of their relations to one another. It begins, in
short, in the needs and satisfactions of collective life. In relations
with offspring and other fellow-creatures we have the first new
forms of energy-expenditure which have been referred to as
correlative with the need for energy-supplying substances. In the
relation of the individual to his fellows we have the stimuli which
first expand his consumption.
From pluralistic behavior and relations are presently developed
the things of culture ; from language, manners and religion to the
arts of expression and of utility. Culture in turn, in its economic
aspect, is nothing more nor less than the diversification of con-
sumption. It is the expansion and perfection of the consumption
economy.
But we have not yet exhausted the possibilities, of the consump-
tion economy so nearly identical with culture. It is through the
diversification of consumption that man passes over into a pro-
duction economy, and it is in the standard of living, created and
measured by the diversification of culture, that we have the effi-
cient cause of the modern production of wealth.
Through using a large number of nature's freely offered goods
in new and varied ways, man slowly discerns the possibilities that
lie in the cultivation of roots and grains, the breeding of animals,
the development of instinctive arts into rude manufactures, and
finally exchange. Perhaps we cannot trace all the steps by which
magical mummeries became agriculture and herding, and imita-
tions of natural objects for purposes of incantation or enchant-
ment became practical utensils or beautiful adornments, but there
is no doubt that for ages the practical was not yet separated from
the ceremonial. And without attempting to explain just how
exchange began, we can say that one of its earliest forms was a
give and take between the community and its unseen powers. The
ceremonial rites of magic and religion offer services and gifts, and
man expects to be rewarded for them by a relative abundance.
30 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
This exchange has in it also the germ of the idea of capital.
Closely connected with such ceremonies are those of propitiation
between man and man, whereby the various products found in the
foraging of many individuals, families and hordes, being cere-
monially passed from one to another, in the course of time are
passed for the sake of a varied consumption, until the whole
affair becomes a trade, and exchange is seen to be a means of
producing a greater sum total of satisfactions.
In the question whether the standard of living determines
industrial production, or industrial production determines the
standard of living, we come back to close quarters with the whole
issue over the economic interpretation of history. If the stand-
ard of living determines production, then the "interpretation of
history" runs back into that early economy which survives as
culture. Men cannot have more to eat and to wear, or better
houses or bigger churches, or handsomer theatres and clubs, or
choicer books and pictures, or indulge in more music or travel
than they can produce or find the means to pay for ; but neither
can they produce given quantities of these things unless they de-
sire them strongly enough to put forth necessary exertion, to
make necessary sacrifices, to undergo miscellaneous hardships,
and to keep their minds alert enough to bring them all to comple-
tion. In a word, the standard of living is not the sum and sub-
stance of what a population actually has. It is literally what the
word means the standard, the ideal of comfort and luxury which
a class or people is striving to realize ; not its day-dream of what
some fairy godmother might provide, but its sober estimate of
what it believes to be possible, and is determined by all reasonable
effort to try to secure. So defined and understood, the standard
of living is beyond question the cause and not the effect of pro-
duction.
We may now summarize our results to this point. The or-
ganic, instinctive and ceremonial economies, of the world of veg-
etation, of animal life and of primitive man, are all parts of a
consumption economy which is antecedent historically as well as
psychologically to the production economy of the modern world.
The consumption economy increases well-being not by producing
goods through cultivation, breeding or manufacture, but by so
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE 31
diversifying wants and satisfactions that the adaptation of or-
ganism and environment is wider in its basis and more stable
than it can be when consumption is simple. The diversification
of wants and satisfactions begins in the multiplication of organ-
isms through reproduction, and in the evolution of pluralistic rela-
tions. It is continued and perfected by the evolution of culture.
The consumption economy, by thus determining habits and mo-
tives, creates the standard of living, and the standard of living in
turn, when mental evolution has achieved the transition to a pro-
ductive economy, determines the extent of wealth production.
Certain further facts may now be conceded, and we are then in
a position to comprehend the full economic significance of culture,
because the successive steps of economic causation in history
will appear in their genetic order. Accepting as true that theory
of distribution which accounts for the share of each productive
factor by its marginal productivity, and, in like manner, for the
share of each component part of a productive factor, for ex-
ample, a particular group of laborers, it is clear that the social
distribution of wealth is determined by the productive power of
the various groups and classes in the population. This produc-
tive power is in turn determined, so far as causation lies in motive,
by the standard of living of the producing groups, and so far as
it lies in ability, by their bodily power, moral equipment, mental
discipline and acquisitions. Normally these factors are corre-
lated, and all in a large sense are products of culture. They are,
in a word, the cultural equipment of the respective groups.
Chiefly important is the extent to which primitive conceptions
have been superseded by scientific knowledge.
The social distribution of wealth, it may be admitted, is a true
cause of changes in mores and in law, while these in turn, involv-
ing as they do conceptions of rights and liberties, are true causes
of changes in political organization and policy.
Therefore, still more briefly stated, our conclusion is : A con-
sumption economy, the chief factors in which are pluralistic rela-
tions and their great objective product, culture, creates presently
a productive economy and the beginnings of law and government,
and it continues to determine the scope of the productive econ-
omy, while the latter, once in full operation, determines the
32 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
further evolution of law and politics. Let us then have as much
economic interpretation of history as the facts can be made to
yield, provided that we know what we are talking about. An in-
terpretation in terms of those ideas and practices which are the
subject-matter of economic science, as the term is ordinarily un-
derstood, will carry us but a very little way. To get back to the
beginnings of the historical process and to true causes, we must
go deep into the origins of the consumption economy and follow
its evolution through the unfolding of culture.
CHAPTER III
THE ECONOMIC AGES
IN those pleasantly discursive writings which Alfred Russell
Wallace in advancing years brought together in the volumes en-
titled Studies Scientific and Social, and which include, with dis-
cussions geological, biological and anthropological, other discus-
sions that are economic, political and educational, the reader finds
a chapter described by the headline, "The Problem of Utility."
Naturally, if he is familiar with those developments of economic
theory which interested us in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, he will assume that the great English evolutionist, who
shares with Darwin the honor of having discovered the process of
organic evolution by natural selection, found time to give atten-
tion to the abstruse problems associated with the names of Cour-
not, Menger, Jevons, Walras, Von Wieser and J. B. Clark. Upon
turning, however, from the table of contents to Chapter XVIII
itself, one discovers that it is further described by the question,
"Are Specific Characters always or generally Useful ?" and by the
following quotation from an article which Mr. Wallace published
as early as 1867 :
Perhaps no principle has ever been announced so fertile in results as
that which Mr. Darwin so earnestly impresses upon us, and which is
indeed a necessary deduction from the theory of natural selection, namely,
that none of the definite facts of organic nature, no special organ, no
characteristic form or marking, no peculiarities of instinct or of habit,
no relations between species or between groups of species, can exist but
which must now be, or once have been, useful to the individuals or races
which possess them.
The principle thus described Mr. Wallace called "The Principle
of Utility." As thus employed, the phrase sounded strange to ears
that had grown familiar with such locutions as "final degree of
utility," "marginal utility" and "subjective utility." The late
33
34 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
nineteenth century economist had ceased to think of utility apart
from the psychological facts of want and satisfaction. Yet none
would deny that Mr. Wallace's employment of the word was an
old and common one. Moreover, it would not be inconsistent with
one definition given by Jevons namely, "a circumstance of things
arising out of their relation to man's requirements" 1 if for the
phrase "man's requirements" we might substitute the words "the
requirements of a living organism." Such a substitution, how-
ever, would distort Jevons's conception and that of the whole
school of writers to which he belonged. For Jevons elsewhere
says : "Whatever can produce pleasure or prevent pain may pos-
sess utility." It is by the latter definition that we should interpret
his phrase "man's requirements." In the last analysis, according
to an economic calculus, man's requirements are the diminution
of pain and the increase of pleasure.
Thus, plainly there were and are two distinct notions of utility :
one a concept of utility as objective, which plays a large part in
the theory of biological evolution ; the other a concept of utility
as subjective, which became and will remain an important factor
in economic theory. Utility objective is a circumstance of things
arising out of their relations to organic life. It is a realized
capacity to maintain life or to develop it, and the life so served
may be conscious or unconscious, animal or only vegetal. Utility
subjective is a pleasure-producing or a pain-preventing circum-
stance of things, itself varying with a state of mind want or
satiety and consciously known or recognized as a cause of
conscious satisfaction.
Not only in their employment of this somewhat technical word
"utility" do the biologists and the economists reveal an interesting
divergence of thought, but also, as was intimated in Chapter II, in
their use of the words "economy" and "economic," as well, they
present a significant contrast. The economist, however deeply
tinged his ideas may be with the color of modern biological knowl-
edge, habitually thinks of economy as a practice or condition of
human beings who have acquired arts, and who produce wealth
i.e., exchangeable goods by means of industry, well regulated
1 Theory of Political Economy, ch. iii.
THE ECONOMIC AGES 35
by "business methods.'' Inherent in this conception an almost
essential part of it is the notion that economy presumes a con-
scious being, endowed with capacity for pain and for pleasure,
to plan and direct the economy and to profit by it. It is a notion
that, after all, "economy" is only a refined form of the Greek
"housekeeping," which the word originally meant.
From the Greek OIKOS, however, a far more general concept
has been derived, and it is this which we straightway encounter
when we turn from the pages of the economists to those of the
biologists. Housekeeping is a system of activities and rela-
tionships that subserve the well-being of the housekeepers.
Hence is derived the highly general notion of "economy" as
any system of activities and relations which furthers the well-
being of any class or species of living things. This is the
biological meaning of the word, and we have therefore such
phrases as the "economy of the animal kingdom," "the economy
of the vegetal kingdom" and ' even the most general concept
of all "the economy of nature." In these notions there is no
implication of consciousness, of pleasure or of pain, and no pre-
sumption of intelligent planning or management on the part of
the organisms that are benefited by their economy. The thought
is altogether objective.
The bearing of these reflections upon our theories of society
and upon the cult, (for such it has become) of the economic in-
terpretation of history, was considered in Chapter II. It was
there contended that if economic phenomena imply conscious
intelligence, systematized industry and "business methods," even
if no more complex than those of the ol/cos management of old
Hellas, it cannot be maintained that economic phenomena are
antecedent to social relations, and that if on the other hand
economic phenomena are fundamental, it is incontestable that the
economic interpreters must drop the economic conception of
"economy" and adopt the biological. In this contention, as the
reader was told, there is more to be said.
The theses which I now undertake to prove are : First, that in
every stage of the evolution of life, from that of the lowest
vegetal organisms to that of the highest human consciousness,
economy is a function of two variables, namely, ( I ) the physical
36 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
environment, (2) a plural number of living organisms or indi-
viduals; second, that the relation of these two variables to each
other, which may at any time be affected by changes occurring
in the physical environment, is at all times largely determined
by the relations which the organisms or individuals in plural
number sustain to one another; and, third, that economy, as thus
determined, is developed through four great stages or ages, which
I shall call, respectively, the Organic Economy, the Instinctive
Economy (instinctive and habitistic), the Apprehensive Economy,
(childishly reasoning), and the Ascertaining Economy (scientifi-
cally rational) ; and that for unnumbered generations economy
into which reasoning enters is an Apprehensive and Ceremonial
Economy (apprehending and credulous yet fearing) before it
becomes an Ascertaining (a verifying) and Business Economy.
An analytical description of these economic ages will constitute
the sufficient proof of my three propositions.
We begin, then, with the organic economy. This phrase must
be interpreted as an abbreviation of a longer expression namely,
the economy of living organisms that are without psychologically
functioning nervous mechanisms. It is the economy of the
vegetal kingdom, and of the animal kingdom in so far as nervous
mechanisms function physiologically only. From the standpoint
of evolution it is the lowest stage in the economy of living
things, and from the standpoint of time it is the primal economic
age the economy that must have prevailed before there were
differentiated nerve cells, or dawn of that elemental sensibility
which was to develop into conscious intelligence.
So understood, organic economy is a system of activities and
relations that subserve the well-being of merely vegetal organ-
isms and of all organisms in so far as they are physiological only.
In what, then, does that system of activities and relations con-
sist? The answer has been given in elaborate detail in the
writings of the Darwinian evolutionists. The activities include
alimentation, the waste and repair of tissue, and reproduction.
Before Darwin's day an account of these processes would have
been an extremely simple affair. Each would have been described
in terms of observations made upon single and separate organ-
isms, with but slight intimation that at every instant the physiolog-
THE ECONOMIC AGES 37
ical processes were vitally conditioned by the relations of co-
existent organisms to one another. Darwin revolutionized the
description by showing that alimentation was conditioned by a
struggle for existence, and that metabolism and reproduction
were conditioned by natural selection, a result of unequal ali-
mentation and other consequences of the struggle for existence.
In short, Darwin and the Darwinians first gave us an approxi-
mately complete account of organic economy, and the precise
fact, previously ignored or misunderstood, which they brought
into prominence and explained the significance of, was that of
the varying relations of coexisting organisms to one another,
whereby the whole scheme of organic economy was, from point
to point and from generation to generation, determined.
Nor is it merely the relations of organisms of many species
indiscriminately mingling in the same environment that thus
determine the scheme of organic economy. Most important
of all relations are those subsisting among individual organisms
of the same species and, above all, of the same subspecies or
variety and of the same generation. Between widely unlike
species there may be mortal antagonism or there may be a
relation of mutual protection. Precisely the same is true of
the individuals constituting a variety, except that now the rela-
tion of mutual protection is more important than the relation of
antagonism. In the struggle for existence among the hundreds
of varieties of plants in any garden or field there is, indeed, a
continual crowding to the wall of weakly individuals by compet-
itors of their own kind; but in the long run it is whole kinds
that are crowded out, while large tracts are overrun by the
multiplying individuals of a single kind, whose very numbers
and contiguity are their chief protection against the encroach-
ments of any other species. Every individual stem of lichen,
moss or fern is protected by surrounding masses of organisms
like itself; every blade of grass or grain, by thousands of such
blades ; and every pine in the wood, by the forest of pines about
it. Thus in the realm of merely organic life we discover the
economic importance of a grouping in one place of many indi-
viduals of the same kind. And this grouping and mutual pro-
tection of individuals of like kind, while not to be described as
38 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
a social fact, is yet a basis for social phenomena. It is a pre-
or subsocial grouping, the beginning of developmental arrange-
ments that may culminate in social relationships.
How organic economy shades into instinctive economy we
very imperfectly know. Manifestations of irritability in nervous
matter we can perceive. Reflex actions developing into co-
ordinated movements can be observed. An instinct is a combi-
nation (or a complex) of reflex tendencies which normally
complete themselves in action. Energized and stimulated it
"goes," as an internal combustion engine goes when it gets fuel
and the spark. When instinct has appeared in the organic world,
a new development of economy has begun. Generations, num-
bered probably by millions, must live and die before it can
become a conscious calculation and creation of utilities, but the
well-being of the responding organism is now furthered by
means vastly more complex than those which suffice for sub-
instinctive life. Movement from place to place by the organism
itself, and the ability of the organism to move things from
place to place, have become factors of immeasurable importance
in the economic scheme.
In due course irritability takes on sensitivity (psychologists
have too often identified these two) but sensitivity itself, and the
process by which it develops into sensation, into pain and pleasure,
and ultimately into intelligence, are facts which arise out of and
disappear into the unknown.
Instinctive action, then, may be accompanied by sensation, by
pleasure or pain, by awareness, but it is not a conscious adaptation
of means to ends in the sense that consciousness effects the
adaptation. The delicate work of the wasps and bees in making
their nests, the complicated labors of the nest-building fishes, the
weaving and sewing and clay modelling of birds, the collective
hunting and fishing and the collective defense against enemies
seen among both birds and the gregarious mammalia all these
are a mechanistic behavior, as truly if a small measure of "trial
and error" enters into them as when they are unvarying.
In short, in the whole marvelous economy of the animal king-
dom, from the protozoa to man, there is no certain trace of what
the subjective economists could by any stretch of meaning call
39
economic. The welfare of the organism which is subserved
by adaptation includes a subjective element. Pain and pleasure
have appeared, and the adaptation of means to ends tends on the
whole to allay pain and to increase pleasure; but as yet sub-
jective utility that is, a circumstance of things varying with
subjective want or satiety, and consciously recognized as the
cause of an agreeable state of mind does not exist. Only the
elements out of which it may slowly be developed have come into
being.
Yet, to an extent far greater than in the sub-instinctive or
pre-instinctive organic world, economy has become a function
of the relations of individuals to one another, at every moment
determining the relations of each individual to the purely ma-
terial environment. Readers of Darwin, Wallace, Brehm, Kro-
potkin, and later writers too many to name, do not need to be
told that every food-getting and nest-building instinct, as well
as every protective instinct in the animal kingdom, has been
influenced quite as much by rivalry and combat as by quantity
of food, the nature of the inhabited earth or water, or the cli-
matic conditions which have entered as factors into the struggle
for existence. In a yet greater degree, perhaps, have all these
instincts been developed through the pluralistic like-reactions to
common situations, and through the interstimulations, of the
herd. It follows that, to an enormous degree, instinct is a
product of the closely related activities of creatures of the same
kind, living together in a common habitat. Even more than segre-
gation determines well-being in the vegetal kingdom does con-
sorting determine the well-being of an animal species. In fact,
ages before man appeared upon the earth, and ages before any
creature existed that could have entertained the concept of
subjective utility, economy had been developed to the stage in
which collective action and a division of labor counted as factors
of high importance.
When evolutionist doctrine became a part of the common stock
of ideas among knowing people, economists avowedly or tacitly
assumed that the economy of industrial humanity was through
various stages developed out of the instinctive economy of
animals. The "historical economists" of Germany and their
40 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
American disciples before 1914 took pride in their reconstruction
of the process. It seems that in the beginning was a "hunting
stage" ; then, in the course of ages, appeared the "pastoral stage."
At length, after more ages, dawned the "agricultural stage," and
finally, in the fullness of time, came to fruition the "industrial
stage" the end and consummation of nature's eons of travail.
With all respect to laborious and learned men, I must protest
that this economic philosophy of history is inadequate. It fails
to grasp the actual facts which have marked the transition from
instinctive to rational conduct in the human species. Not that
there is anything untruthful about it as far as it goes. It is
true that man hunted and fished before he learned how to milk,
and that he probably had made some progress in the dairy busi-
ness before he learned how to yoke oxen to the plough, although
not before his squaws had learned how to tickle the earth with a
stick. But it is also true that historical economists too often had
a keener sense of chronology than of value. Their "historical"
scheme of economic evolution was as accurate as the multiplica-
tion table; but it was one from which everything of real signifi-
cance in economic evolution was as carefully omitted as lese
majeste from a chancellor's address.
The real question for which we should, if possible, find the
answer is this: How did the human mind, slowly developing
from instinct to reason, successively re-grasp the environment,
successively re-interpret the relations of cause and effect and
successively re-attempt to control the processes of nature in the
interest of human welfare? Primitive man caught fish and
killed game; but did he fish like Henry Van Dyke or hunt like
Theodore Roosevelt? And, what is more important, did he think
of man's relation to fish in the Van Dyke way, or of his relation
to very fierce beasts in the Roosevelt way?
It so happens that we have an overwhelming mass of evidence
that primitive man would have thought it absurd to the last
degree to go "a-fishing" with no better equipment than a beau-
tiful rod, a neat basket, a choice assortment of flies, a dainty
luncheon and a vest-pocket edition of Keats. He would confi-
dently have lotted on meeting an ignominious death if he had
gone forth to battle with the mountain lion with no better im-
THE ECONOMIC AGES 41
plements than the "latest improved" rifle, a bowie knife, a brace
or two of pistols and buckskin leggings. The primitive man
would have made from a bit of wood as neat a carving of the
fish as his artistic instinct and humble tools could fashion, and
would have put it in the water to swim in the direction which
the fish usually followed. Then he would fervently and be-
lievingly have prayed to the fish to come; and this would have
caused them to arrive. When he went hunting, he would first
have made an ingenious trap; then he would have clothed and
decorated himself in the best possible imitation of the ferocious
beast to be caught. Buckskin leggings might, indeed, have had
some virtue at this stage of the procedure, but on the whole the
primitive man would have thought them insufficient. Having
completed these preparations, he would nonchalantly have strolled
into the woods in the direction of the trap and, quite carefully
failing to see it, have very carelessly fallen into it, crying out
in alarm that he was caught. Then, regaining his composure, he
would have extricated himself as best he could, and readjusted
the trap, knowing with certainty that the first unsuspecting beast
that wandered that way would be caught and done for.
These fables teach that the economy of primitive man is as
unlike the economy of his modern child, even when the latter re-
verts to the "hunting stage," as the savage theory of creation
is unlike Darwinism. The primitive man's economy is no longer
merely instinctive and habitistic. He has ideas, he consciously
contemplates his situation, he perceives relations which the lower
animals have never discriminated, and his imagination runs riot
in explanatory activity. And yet it never once occurs to him
that his well-being is to any great extent within his own control,
least of all that by systematic labor, directed by "business
methods," he could become master of his economic situation. He
is beginning to be rational, but he is not yet scientific. He views
the world as a fearsome aggregation of "creepy" objects, pos-
sessed of mysterious and often amazing powers for good and for
evil. His well-being, as he believes, depends almost entirely upon
his relation to those powers.
Instinct, even when overlaid by habit, is relatively unerring in
its action. The instinctive bee does not experiment with new
42 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
geometric designs in constructing its cell. The instinctive bird
goes about its nest-building business with a directness that might
well be the envy of the human architect or contractor. There is
little hesitation at any point in the instinctive economy of the ani-
mal kingdom. But reason is never unerring, never unhesitating.
While instinct is correlative of the adaptation of an organism to
those facts of the environment which remain constant, reason is
correlative of that variation from old adaptations, which an or-
ganism must make to a changing environment or to the varying
features of an environment in which some features remain con-
stant. Reason, therefore, always means choice, and choice means
some hesitation, some deliberation. Accordingly, the rational
economies of man (the apprehensive and the ascertaining), un-
like the instinctive economies of the animal, are marked by per-
plexity, by doubt, by experimentation and the slow, painful
process of discovery. Inevitably, therefore, rational economies
develop by stages which can be understood only if we can trace
the progress of man's intellectual development. The "obvious"
stages of "hunting," "pasturage" and so on will doubtless still
go chiming down the ages in the Mother Goose philosophy of
history but, as was said, they have no scientific significance. Are
there, then, any indications, psychological and historical, whereby
we may discriminate the ages through which rational economies
have been evolving?
Reasoning is a trial of this and that in thought, supplementing
and economizing the trial of this and that ("trial and error") in
action. Seemingly it begins with guessing, or conjecture. All
authorities agree that the transition from instinct to reason is
seen in that warfare of "contrary impulses" which was so ad-
mirably described by James 1 and in the "hesitation" emphasized
by Marshall. 2 Circumstances having arisen, through environ-
mental change or otherwise, in which instinct or habit no longer
can guide the organism aright, the mind begins to "wobble." It
casts about more or less wildly for an answer to its questionings,
and that casting about or conjecturing we call in our everyday
speech merely guesswork.
1 Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 389-393-
2 Instinct and Reason, pp. 417, et seq.
THE ECONOMIC AGES 43
Now guessing, as we all know, is the prevailing intellectual
method of childhood, when reason is struggling with instinct
for supremacy. It is the confirmed intellectual method of igno-
rant and undeveloped minds, in which reason is arrested at the
childhood stage. Guesswork, however, is extraordinarily fallible
as a guide to action. Sometimes it pierces the situation by a
happy intuition, and sometimes it hits disastrously wide of the
mark. Stumbling along a miry road on a dark night, the back-
woodsman comes to a swollen stream and "guesses" that he can
ford it. Plunging in, he finds it not half so deep or so violent
as it looked, and he emerges on the other side complacently glad
that he isn't the kind of fellow to be too easily scared. This
reflection, however, is not the only idea in his mind at the
moment. He is at the same time blessing his "good luck." Had
it turned out that the stream was more formidable than he had
guessed, and had he reached the farther bank barely alive and
mourning the loss of his outfit, he would have been found not
only chagrined over his bad guessing, but also energetically damn-
ing his bad luck. A strong belief in luck, in fine, always coexists
with the guesswork stage of intellectual activity. The guess hits
or goes astray, and luck does the rest.
Thus far the psychology of the primitive human mind as it
survives among ourselves. How is it with the primitive human
mind as it survives among savages? All observers unite in
testifying that the lowest savage reasoning is purely conjec-
tural, and that one of the strongest beliefs of the lowest sav-
age is his ineradicable faith in luck. The element of industry
enters into the economic life of the savage as largely, possibly,
as it does into the economy of the lower animals. The savage
looks for food and puts forth effort to appropriate it. He
sometimes constructs rude weapons and equally rude tools. He
sometimes builds a rude shelter and sometimes contrives a bit of
clothing. Yet in all this economic activity he is disturbed and
made doubtful of his procedure as the instinctive animal never is.
If the savage gets the idea into his head that luck is against a
particular plan of procedure in his hunting or fishing, or is
against a certain pattern of construction, his economic activity in
these directions is instantly inhibited. He then loafs about until
44 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
guesswork and luck suggest a new procedure. That this is the
true explanation of the seemingly paradoxical fact that the prim-
itive man, a little higher in the scale of existence than the highest
quadrumana, is often less industrious and much less systematic in
his economic activities than many lower species are, cannot, I
think, be questioned by any investigator familiar with both the
psychology and the sociology of savage groups. The fact is not,
however, as paradoxical as it seems. A luck economy is the first
stage of a rational economy, and the very lowest sort of rational
economy is a degree advanced beyond the highest instinctive and
habitistic economy. It is precisely because the savage does hesi-
tate and trust to luck that he breaks down a lot of habits which
would have been fatal to progress and, more or less by accident,
adopts many new ways in which the potentiality of progress lies.
One test of any hypothesis concerning the early stages of
an evolutionary process is found in survivals of each early stage
in a later time. What was chronologically first to a great extent
survives as the structurally or functionally low, just as the rocks
old in time are in position deep down in the stratification.
Do we, then, find in civilization significant survivals of the luck
economy? Turn to the pages of Hesiod and read over again the
Works and Days, but especially the calendar of lucky and un-
lucky days at the end :
Mind well, too, and teach thy servants fittingly the days appointed
of Jove. . . . The eleventh and twelfth, both in truth are good, the one
for shearing sheep, the other for reaping laughing corn : but the twelfth
is far better than the eleventh, for on it, look you, the high hovering
spider spins his threads in the long summer day, when also the wise
ant harvests his heap. On this day, too, a woman should set up her
loom, and put forth her work. But on the thirteenth of the beginning
of the month avoid commencing your sowing; though to set plants it
is best. The sixteenth, however, is very unprofitable to plants. . . . Nor,
in truth, is the first sixth day suitable for the birth of girls, but a favor-
able day for cutting kids and flocks of sheep, and for enclosing a fold
of sheep. . . . On the eighth of the month emasculate the boar and loud
bellowing bull, and on the twelfth the toil-enduring mules. . . . On the
seventeenth watch well, and cast upon the well-rounded threshing floor
Demeter's holy gift; and let the woodcutter cut timbers for chamber
furniture, and many blocks for naval purposes, which are fit for
ships. . . . Now, few, again, know that the twenty-ninth of the month
is best both for broaching a cask, and placing a yoke on the neck of
THE ECONOMIC AGES 45
oxen and mules and fleet-footed steeds. ... On the fourth day open
your cask. 1
Hesiod and the graceless agricultural brother whom he admon-
ished lived long ago, to be sure, yet the practical American of
the twentieth century need not plume himself on being much
less a devotee of luck than was the imaginative Greek. Give the
average American his choice between making a certain compe-
tence by diligence and good judgment or possibly making a for-
tune by operations in land or in stocks, he will take the gamble.
Endless protestations by "the moral element" have only demon-
strated that the love of gambling is one of the strongest of human
passions. Guesswork and a belief in luck, in fact, run through
all our business undertakings and bring to naught innumerable
promising enterprises. I have often wished that an ingenious
statistician would compute the annual average loss of property
and of life in the United States directly attributable to the belief
in luck. The railroad corporation takes its chances with wornout
rails and decrepit bridges and pays hundreds of thousands of
dollars in damages. The owners of buildings take their chances
with "jerry" construction and see their property disappear in
collapse or in smoke. The shipowner takes his chances with
rotten hulks on the sea, and the banker with rotten securities on
the street. One and all, they are devotees of luck. Even the
religious beliefs of this most secular and most sceptical of peoples
are permeated through and through with the primitive man's
philosophy of luck. I remember in my boyhood hearing old
ladies tell of finding names for babies by opening the Word of
God at random.
The second stage in the development of reason, following
close upon the guessing or conjectural, is that of reasoning
from analogy. The mind begins to form conclusions by assuming
that essential resemblance, or identity, goes with superficial like-
ness. Imagination is a lively coadjutor of reason at this stage,
and the reasoning is as likely to follow the psychological laws
of the blending of mental images as to obey any law of logic.
Yet, even so, it enormously multiplies the number of possible
ways in which man can experiment in his economic life. Imag-
*The translation is that of the Bohn Library.
46 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
ination, however riotous, corresponds on the whole a little better
than conjecture to objective possibility. In other words, experi-
ments suggested by imagination and analogy are likely to yield
a larger percentage of successes than experiments suggested by
mere guesswork.
Now it is quite in keeping with the nature of things psycho-
logical that we discover, at a certain stage in the evolution of
savage culture, a system of thought and practice which corre-
sponds to the analogy-loving stage in the development of reason.
It is known as magic, and long was regarded by ethnologists as
all of a piece with ghost worship and primitive supernaturalism
in general. Then the suggestion was made, and too well backed
up by facts to be dismissed lightly, that magic, instead of being
the beginning of supernaturalism, is, in reality, the beginning
of naturalism, in a word of a natural philosophy. Ethnologists
like Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia, Miss Kingsley in
West Africa and W. W. Skeat in the Malay Peninsula, unaware
of each other's researches, almost simultaneously arrived at this
view, and discussion of it was well summed up by Frazer, in a
new edition of The Golden Bough. The fundamental principles
of magic, according to Mr. Frazer, can be reduced to two,
namely :
First, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause;
and second, that things which have once been in contact but have ceased
to be so, continue to act on each other as if the contact still existed.
From the first of these principles the savage infers that he can produce
any desired effect by merely imitating it; from the second he concludes
that he can influence at pleasure and at any distance any person of
whom, or anything of which, he possesses a particle.
When Mr. Frazer wrote this passage the lore of "mana" and its
vocabulary ("orenda," "power," "virtue," "it," and so on) hardly
existed as a chapter in anthropology. In view of what is known
now it will not do to assume that the savage attributes mysterious
potency to imitations as such or to contacts (past or present) as
such. Presumably he looks upon them all as means only for
calling forth or for communicating this or that mana, good or
evil, inhering in this or that concrete thing or person. I say
"this or that" mana because we may be sure that the savage is
no pantheist. He has no abstract notion of a universal power,
THE ECONOMIC AGES 47
indwelling in everything and everybody. He knows only specific
and various powers. They are migrant, however, and communi-
cable : they are contagious. Each mana is something that a thing
or a person can "catch" or impart by contact, and sometimes in
other ways.
These notions serve the savage mind in more ways than one.
They gather accretions of analogy and convert them into simple
classifications. Persons that have the same mana are akin, and
things that have the same mana are a kind. Conversely, things
and persons that are of a kind or a kin have the same mana, and
so have things that are alike. Also things or persons, even
things and persons can be made of a kind or a kin by exchanging
mana or by partaking of the same mana. This can be done by
contact a laying on of hands, for example, or by eating the
same food or drinking the same drink or by otherwise sharing
something. Also it can now and again be done without physical
contact or any sharing of material substance. The savage knows
that by getting excited he excites others, and that others by
getting excited excite him. He knows that when he mimics
others are likely and apt to mimic, and that when they mimic he
yields to an impulse to fall into like mimicry. "Power" leaps
through distance, from one to another. Often it goes further,
from men to animals and from animals to men, a common excite-
ment infecting all. Does it even from men and animals infect
vegetation and from vegetation infect animals and men? The
savage assumes that it does.
Satisfying the earliest craving for theory and naively practiced
as the first art of control over nonhuman realms, magic gives
plan and direction to the entire scheme of economy. Examples
of its application to fishing and hunting have already been given.
Others could be added almost without limit. When an Aleut
has wounded but not killed a whale he separates himself from
his people for three days and, abstaining from food and drink,
snorts in imitation of a dying cetacean. This helps the whale to
die. 1 The Galelareese of Halmahera an island west of New
Guinea when going out shooting are careful to put a bullet in
*I. Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of
Alaska, p. 154.
48 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
the mouth before dropping it into the gun. By thus imitating the
eating of game, success in hunting is rendered certain. 1 A
Blackfoot Indian who has set a trap for eagles will not eat
rosebuds, because, if he did, when an eagle alighted near the trap
the rosebuds in the hunter's stomach would make the bird itch
and, instead of swallowing the bait, the eagle would merely sit
and scratch itself. 2 When a Malay has baited a trap for croco-
diles he is careful in eating his curry to begin by swallowing three
lumps of rice successively. This helps the bait to slide easily
down the crocodile's throat. 3 Spencer and Gillen have described
in minute detail the elaborate ceremonies performed by the
Central Australian natives for the purpose of multiplying the
witchetty grubs which are an important means of subsistence.
Men of the witchetty grub totem build a long narrow structure
of branches in imitation of the chrysalis case of the grub. In this
bower the men seat themselves and sing of the witchetty in its
various stages of development. At length they shuffle out in a
squatting posture, singing of the insect emerging from the
chrysalis. This insures an abundance of grubs. 4
Survivals of imitative magic are not quite so easy to identify
in later civilizations as are survivals of the economy of luck,
yet they are by no means infrequent. Many of the festivals
connected with agriculture among the Greeks and the Romans, and
similar festivals surviving until a comparatively recent period in
parts of Central Europe, are clearly of this nature. In nearly all
of these festivals a pantomimic element in the songs and dances
and in the processions around or back and forth across the fields
is associated with a sacrificial element of later origin. The panto-
mimic element may without much hesitation be regarded as a
survival of the age of magic. The myth of the burning brands
tied to foxes' tails, which we find in the story of Samson, and
again in the Fasti of Ovid, 5 is believed by Mannhardt, Frazer and
1 M. J. van Baarda, "Fabelen, verhalen en overleveringen der Gale-
lareezen," in Bijdragen tot de Taal-Landen Volkenkunde. van Neder-
landsch Indie, Vol. XLV (1895), p. 502; quoted by Frazer, Golden Bough
(second edition), Vol. I, p. 25.
' * G. B. Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, pp. 237, 238.
8 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 300.
4 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 176.
8 Vol. IV, p. 681 et seq.
THE ECONOMIC AGES 49
others to have originated in the widely spread notion that the
fox's tail bears a close resemblance to the ear of wheat. Pro-
fessor Gubernatis * quotes a modern Italian folk tale in which a
fox is frightened away by chickens, each of which carries in its
beak an ear of millet. The fox is told that these ears are all
foxes' tails, and he runs. It is probable enough that, in a long-
forgotten past, the foxes were let loose to run over the fields, that
the magic influence of their tails stimulating fertility might insure
an abundant harvest. Presumably, however, the burning brands
were thought of not so much as imitative and symbolic of the
light and heat of the sun that would be necessary to ripen vegeta-
tion, as charged with and releasing the same "power" that the
sun gives forth. Such a use of the brand is, indeed, so obviously
in keeping with the "general run" of magic practice that one is
surprised to find Fowler, commenting upon Ovid, saying: "If
the foxes were corn spirits, one does not quite see why they
should have brands fastened to their tails." 2 The Roman festi-
val of the Parilia consisted very largely of imitative magic. The
sheepfold was decked with green boughs and a great wreath was
hung on the gate :
Frondibus et fixis decorentur ovilia ramis,
Et tegat ornatas longa corona fores. 3
This sort of decoration found throughout Europe to the present
day at May Day, Midsummer, Harvest and Christmas, is admit-
tedly a survival of primitive magical rites to influence ^vegetation.
The purification of the Roman sheep by sprinkling was, in like
manner, in form imitative and symbolic, in substance an impart-
ing of mana. The real purification was accomplished by burning
sulphur.
That many survivals of a magic economy could be found
in our own country I have not the slightest doubt. A few prac-
tices will occur to almost every one. When John Uri Lloyd in
Stringtown on the Pike makes Cupid turn his coat inside out in
order to change his luck, he describes a practice that is by no
means confined to negroes. Once I witnessed the magical treat-
1 Zoologvedl Mythology, Vol. II. p. 138.
a Roma#i Festivals, p. 78.
1 Ovid, Fasti, IV, 737, 738.
50 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
ment of lockjaw, on a Massachusetts farm not distant from my
own. A nail driven into the hoof of a horse by a careless black-
smith was, when pulled out by the veterinary surgeon, carefully
greased by the owner of the horse, wrapped in flannel and kept
in a warm place until after the equine obsequies. 1 In out of
the way neighborhoods American farmers still believe that hogs
should not be killed in the old of the moon, because a waning
moon will make the pork shrink in the pot.
A higher stage of reasoning than the analogical is the deductive
and speculative, or dogmatic. The mind has grasped the differ-
ence between mere analogy and necessary implication. It has
acquired logic. Granted certain premises, the deductive thinker
can with a high degree of certainty arrive at necessary conclu-
sions. He begins to reconstruct the entire scheme of knowledge.
But, enamoured of logical method, he fixes attention almost
exclusively upon the successive steps of the reasoning process,
often to the entire neglect of the premises upon which the whole
superstructure rests. The premises, therefore, of the most pre-
tentious system may be a lot of childish beliefs fortified by age
and sacredness.
It is when this stage of reasoning is reached that barbarian
man, reconstructing his philosophy of nature, as represented
both in magic, and in the belief in ghosts, almost as ancient,
begins to people the unseen realms of the sky, of the sea and of
the underworld of earth with personalities of supernatural power ;
he begins to create the immortal gods. To his anthropomorphic
deities he now ascribes the function, of meting out good and
evil. His whole welfare he conceives is determined by their atti-
tude toward him as an individual or, to a yet greater extent, by
their attitude toward the community to which he belongs. Their
friendliness must at any cost be secured. They are supposed to
have the needs and to be subject to the passions of men. They
must therefore be propitiated ; they must be well fed and lavishly
praised. If the propitiator has reason to know that his deities
have arrived at "the agricultural stage," he gives them corn and
wine. If, however, like Cain, he reasons from false premises, he
comes to grief, and the blessing falls upon the Abel who has
'For a like example, see Cooper, The Spy, ch. xi.
THE ECONOMIC AGES 51
offered meat. The entire scheme of economy is now transformed.
It becomes a sacrificial economy. Communities and individuals
prosper in their herding and their agriculture if they are faithful
and, above all, generous in their sacrifices. Everything that
happens is viewed as a special providence. Droughts, famines
and pestilences are punishments, to be averted, not by forestry or
quarantine, but by holocausts and prayer. Glorious crops and
riotous prosperity are rewards bestowed upon exemplary piety.
To recount the survivals of the sacrificial economy in civili-
zation would be to catalogue half of the doings of Babylonians
and Egyptians, of Greeks and Romans, and of later Western
peoples. More significant is it to observe specific survivals that
preserve the combination of the magic economy with the sacri-
ficial, as well as specific survivals of a later time which show
the continuing influence of the sacrificial tradition in communities
that have become materialistic and businesslike. Of the former
there is probably no better specimen than the festival of the
Fordicidia (April 15), one of the oldest sacrificial ceremonies in
the Roman religion. It consisted in the slaughter of pregnant
cows, one in the Capitol and one in each of the thirty curiae.
The cows were offered [says Fowler], as all authorities agree, to Tellus,
who, as we shall see, may be an indigitation of the same earth power
represented by Ceres, Bona Dea, Dea Dia, and other female deities.
The unborn calves were torn by attendants of the virgo Vestalis Maxima
from the womb of the mother and burnt, and their ashes were kept by
the vestals for use at the Parilia a few days later. This was the first
ceremony in the year in which the vestals took an active part, and it
was the first of a series of acts, all of which are connected with the
fruits of the earth, their growth, ripening and harvesting. The object
of burning the unborn calves seems to have been to procure the fertility
of the corn now growing in the womb of mother earth, to whom the
sacrifice was offered. 1
Here we have a perfect connecting link between the magic
economy and the sacrificial. The burning of anything of value
would have been sacrifice. The selection of a product and em-
blem of fertility, that the corn might abundantly fructify, that
was the cult oi mana become magic.
One almost hesitates to speak of very modern examples of the
1 Roman Festivals, p. 71.
52 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
sacrificial economy, even in a strictly scientific spirit, lest one
should unwittingly wound the religious feelings of people whom
he respects. Disclaiming all such intention, however, let me call
attention to the almost unparalleled intensity of the belief in
Providence which prevailed in New England down to the present
generation. Among the earliest acts of the Plymouth colony was
the institution of days of fasting and of thanksgiving, which were
no such mere holidays as we have become used to in later times.
Let no one imagine that these religious institutions of the Pil-
grims had any direct bearing upon the problem of weal or woe
in a future life. They were religious institutions of a strictly
economic order. They were supposed and expected to influence
well-being in this present evil world, on the shores of Plymouth
Bay, A.D. 1621. No one can read the writings of the Winthrops,
Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, Bradford, and Samuel Sewall,
without seeing that in the belief of those founders of our Puritan
statecraft in New England the people of the colonies were es-
pecially chosen of God to play a leading role in the outworking
of the divine plan of salvation, and that to such end their
economy would be guided and furthered by the Almighty to just
the extent necessary to accomplish the divine purpose. Prac-
tically every event that happened every change in prosperity,
every famine or abounding harvest was explained as essentially
miraculous, and as following upon the piety or the wickedness of
the colonists, rather than upon their shrewdness, their energy or
their thrift. The title of Edward Johnson's famous treatise,
The Wonder-Working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New*
England, perfectly expresses the habitual attitude of the early
New England mind.
Is that attitude entirely a phenomenon of the past? Surely
no one will venture to say so. The public fasting and prayer
that were observed in the Middle West late in the nineteenth
century when locusts were moving in devastating march across
the great grain belt, might be repeated any day, and generations
will pass before the best people will cease to believe and to say
that the locusts disappeared immediately after and in consequence
of those acts of worship.
THE ECONOMIC AGES 53
Let me now recall my main contention that in any age the
system of economy then prevailing is a function not merely of
the relation of an individual to a purely physical environment,
but rather of the relation subsisting between a physical environ-
ment and a plural number of coexisting and resembling indi-
viduals, sub-social or social in their relations to one another.
Organic economy, I showed, was thus to a great extent a func-
tion of segregation that is to say, of certain groupings of
resembling organisms in one given place or region. Instinctive
economy, in like manner, I showed was largely a function of
gregarious relations among the lower animals. In a still higher
degree, it is certain, the luck economy, the magic economy and the
sacrificial economy, constituting the first three stages of the
rational economy of man, are functionally determined by the
social relations of men to one another in their slowly developing
communities. These three economies may be brought under the
inclusive term, Ceremonial Economy. In one and all the specific
conduct which is expected to bring economic well-being is the
performance of a ceremonial act. Labor to some extent of course
is necessary. Cooperation and the division of labor to some
extent may be found, but these purely practical and materialistic
factors in and of themselves would be absolutely unavailing, in
the belief of primitive or of barbarian man. Far more thought
does he bestow upon the exact performance of one or another
rite than upon the exact performance of his labor. Far more
time and wealth does he bestow upon sacrifice than upon the
accumulation of a fund of capital.
But ceremony, it is quite unnecessary to argue, is purely a
social phenomenon. It is developed by imitation and handed on
by tradition. Equally unnecessary is it to argue that the suc-
cessive developments of reason, from the conjectural stage,
which goes with and produces the luck economy, through the
imaginative and analogy-loving stage, which produces the magic
economy, into the deductive stage, which produces the sacrificial
economy, are also a product of social relations and could nowise
be accounted for by the direct relationship of the individual to
his physical environment. Reasoning presupposes conceptual
54 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
thinking, and conceptual thinking presupposes language. 1 Cere-
monial economy is, then, from first to last, a function of the social
relation.
Now at length I come to a consideration of those stages of
economic evolution to which, and to which only, the modern
science of economics can be said to have an explanatory rela-
tion. It is not until social phenomena have become complicated
in a high degree that the phenomena which admit of explanation
in terms of modern economic concepts come into existence. The
phenomena of organic economy and of instinctive economy can
be and must be explained in terms of the useful potentialities of
the environment, complicated by segregation, grouping, and the
pluralistic behavior of gregariousness. The phenomena of the
first three stages of rational economy must be explained in terms
of the same facts, further complicated by that developing reason
which will presently evolve notions of subjective utility and of
value. These notions appear at the dawn of civilization or pos-
sibly just before. They certainly do not exist at a much earlier
time. The luck economy is roughly coincident with that stage of
evolution which I have elsewhere called anthropogenic associa-
tion. 2 Magic economy is roughly coincident with the earlier half
of ethnogenic association. Sacrificial economy is roughly coinci-
dent with the later half of ethnogenic association. Only with
demogenic or civic association does ceremonial economy in all its
forms slowly begin to give place to the business economy of the
modern man, the subject-matter of the studies of the political
economist.
Coincident with the beginning of this change is the attainment
of inductive reasoning which, thenceforth, is a potent factor in
further change. In the third stage of reasoning, as we have
seen, man has become logical. No longer satisfied with mere
analogy, much less with conjecture, he reasons deductively from
1 A clear perception of this truth has led Payne, in his admirable History
of the New World Called America, to break in upon his clear exposition
of the economic history of the civilizations of Mexico and Peru, and to
devote a large part of his second volume to an account of the nature
and evolution of the American languages.
' Principles of Sociology.
THE ECONOMIC AGES 55
accepted premises to "necessary" conclusions. The fatal weak-
ness of his procedure lies in the usual indifference of his mind
to the validity of his premises. He has not yet learned to subject
them to a searching criticism, and he does not learn to do so
until, little by little, his mind becomes in a measure inductive.
Now induction, strange as it may seem, is in a certain sense a
return to analogy. Systematic induction begins with observing
the resemblances of things that are alike and the differences of
things that are unlike, and, on the basis of resemblances and dif-
ferences, sorting things into classes. Strictly speaking, the great
difference between the analogical reasoner and the inductive
reasoner is the difference between a thorough, exact worker and
a superficial, inexact worker. Deductive reasoning, in like man-
ner, is a development of the conjectural or guesswork state of
mind. It is the careful drawing out by exact logical steps of
whatever may be contained in a premise taken for granted that
is, in nine cases out of ten, conjectured. A few pages back I
gave qualified assent to Frazer's proposition that magic was the
beginning of a natural philosophy. I may now add that belief
in luck was just as truly the beginning of supernaturalism. The
doctrine of magic was the product of minds reasoning by analogy
and capable, in course of time, of developing into minds inductive
and scientific. Belief in luck, in like manner, was the product of
minds reasoning conjecturally, and sure in time to develop into
speculative philosophers and dogmatists.
Only when the human mind had become to some extent sys-
tematically inductive and critically observant of premises could
the real relations of cause and effect in nature be discovered ; and
only then could man understand that his prosperity must depend
chiefly upon his systematic industry, his invention, his skillful
organization of association in short, upon the development of
his business habits, rather than of his ceremonial punctiliousness.
Then, and only then, could begin the later economic ages, namely :
the age of Slave Economy, or of the systematic exploitation of
servile labor; the age of Trade Economy, or of the exploitation of
situation ; and the age of Capitalistic Economy, or of the ex-
ploitation of the powers of nature.
Such a change in man's habits of reasoning probably could not
56 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
have occurred apart from the commingling of kinsmen and
strangers, of native born and foreign born, which engendered a
dijuos ( a people) in distinction from an Wvos (a wide kindred).
Demogenic association brought about comparisons of traditions,
and of experiences, in the course of which long accepted beliefs
were for the first time questioned. From such a shock dogmatism
could not wholly recover. New categories of things and of
thoughts were inductively formed.
Reacting upon one another and together reacting upon tra-
ditional culture, demogenic association and inductive thinking
converted an ethnic society into a civil social order, and created
civilization. Successive steps of the process can be made out.
The consorting of ethnically heterogeneous elements assimilates
practices; incidental discussion correlates ideas. Consorting and
discussion assimilate standards of living, and thereby standardize
consumption. A standardized consumption and a verified knowl-
edge that accumulates and permeates, further assimilate. Sur-
vivals of the luck, the magic, and the sacrificial economies are
resistant to attrition, but they lose prestige.
CHAPTER IV
THE QUALITY OF CIVILIZATION
ACCORDING to varying ratios in which the factors of civiliza-
tion just now named and others are combined, civilization de-
velops varying qualities. Process and product are disclosed by
the earliest civilizations and, as well and on a larger scale, by
the turbulent civilization of our own time. Having dwelt so
long upon primitive thoughts and doings I shall now, partly for
change of scene, and partly for perspective, take many of my
facts from American life. .
From early times men have seen a significant association be-
tween ethnic and social solidarity. They have associated the
jostling of ill-assorted elements in urban multitudes with a relative
failure of collective achievement. Both Greek and Roman
writers turned this popular wisdom to literary and to philosoph-
ical account. In a well-known writing, addressed to his mother
Helvia, Seneca, prime minister to the Emperor Nero, has de-
scribed the social population of Rome and incidentally has be-
trayed his own personal estimate of the civilization which he
loyally, if sometimes discreetly, served.
Behold this multitude [he exclaims] to which the habitations of a city
scarce suffice! It is mainly composed of people not born at Rome.
From country towns, from colonies, from the whole wide world, they
flow hither as a river. Some are spurred by ambition, others come to
fulfil public functions. Debauchees seek here a place where every vice
may be indulged. Some among us have come to satisfy their taste
for letters and the arts, others their craving for spectacular shows. People
flock hither in the wake of friends, to display their talents on a wider
stage. Some are here to sell their beauty, others to sell their eloquence.
In short, the human race foregathers here, in a city where virtues and
vices alike are paid at higher rates than elsewhere in the world. 1
The traits of Roman civilization are every day discovered in the
life of modern nations a circumstance explainable in part by the
1 Seneca, Consolation? ad Helviam, 6.
57
58 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
facts, in part by the unconcealed historical scholarship of our
public men and predictions are freely made that America, in
particular, fs destined to repeat the story of imperial decline and
fall. Contrasting with this light readiness to interpret ourselves
in terms of Roman experience, is our silent admission that we are
not reproducing civilizations to which Rome, even as their con-
queror, paid the tribute of respect.
No historian has proclaimed resemblance between any modern
people and the creators of a civilization which for four thou-
sands years endured in the Valley of the Nile. Splendid and
imperishable, Egypt stands supreme and apart. Protected by
desert frontiers from recurrent invasion, and from immigration
on the great scale, her people, more homogeneous than any other
considerable population of which we have record, developed a
community of mind which enabled them without the harsher fea-
tures of despotism to combine their efforts in an amazing col-
lective efficiency. Intellectual and economic power, religious and
artistic sincerity, expressing themselves through the perfect co-
operation of men who spontaneously felt alike and thought alike,
produced an unrivaled unity and stability which stamped the
quality of incomparable dignity upon Egyptian civilization.
There is no other land like Egypt, and so it has happened that
regions bountiful enough to support dense populations have
attracted a multitude of ill-assorted elements. And with what
result? The confusion of tongues at Babylon was typical of the
incapacity of mixed multitudes for great cooperation, except as
they have been organized by external authority, or have them-
selves evolved the imperator. If their territory has been
exposed to invasion, they have fallen under the yoke of a con-
queror, or war has hammered them into a more or less mechan-
ical cohesion. In either case, they have developed a militaristic
empire which commonly has displayed the qualities of power and
splendor, but at the cost of freedom.
In regions not favorable to large military operations, like the
Aegean Islands, or the diversified coasts of mainland Greece,
mixed populations, maintaining their local liberties, have created
civilizations marked by intellectual expansion, but riot safe-
guarded by political cohesion. Too frail to hold their own in
THE QUALITY OF CIVILIZATION 59
the struggle for existence, they have left their treasures of
thought and art a heritage to ruder but sturdier folk.
So in contrast to the strong but not inhumanly despotic, the
vigorously creative but not ideally free civilization of homoge-
neous Egypt, two original and distinct types of civilization appear
to have been created in the early days by mixed populations ; the
one harshly despotic but effective, the product of incessant war;
the other free and differentiated, intellectually and morally dy-
namic, but unstable, the product of an exuberant community life
under conditions of local security.
Rome, militaristic for purposes of expansion chiefly, and not
compelled to fight incessantly for her life with enemies nearly as
strong as herself, created a civilization of compromise. Imperially
strong, she often respected and safeguarded the local liberties of
her component parts, and usually protected the personal liberties
of her citizens. Under these conditions an individualism arose
which submitted itself at least conventionally to the imperial will,
but displayed little sense of obligation to the collective welfare.
It is the compromise civilization of Rome which survives in our
world today.
The resources of a new continent have drawn to America a
population as variegated as that which crowded the Euphrates
valley and more miscellaneous than that by the Tiber. Pro-
tected by ocean barriers against military invasion, and not com-
pelled, as Rome was, to conquer room for free expansion, the
American population has been working out an experiment largely
new. With a minimum of foreign war, and without militarism,
it has created a more than imperial political solidarity with rela-
tively little restraint until now of local or personal liberty. It
has created, too, an individual enterprise without parallel, but it
has yet to achieve the diversified and finer results of collective
efficiency.
For sectarian liberty and local independence the colonists of
New England sacrificed most other things that men have cared
for. In extreme contrast, it was not community life of any
kind, but an untrammeled individualism that fixed the ideas and
formed the habits of pioneer adventurers who conquered the wil-
derness beyond the Appalachian ranges and traversed the plains
60 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
of the West. And in those environments for two generations the
opportunities for individual achievement were limitless and in-
toxicating. It is therefore not strange that men of obscure
origin have wielded in America a power greater than that of
old-world kings, not occasionally, as from time to time has hap-
pened in other lands, but in so many hundreds of instances that
no' one can recall them all. By sheer individual effort and indi-
vidually controlled organization, Americans have created in less
than three hundred years the greatest aggregation ever seen, of
industry and graft, of capital and wreckage, of toil and luxury,
of comfort and misery, of sanctification and crime.
In the domain of collective achievement we have attained no
corresponding eminence, although we have accomplished much
that has been worth while. On the executive side our central
government has been strong and our state governments have been
vigorous, because they have been products of a party system built
up by machine methods under boss leadership, which always, in
the last resort, is the unifying political agency in mixed popula-
tions. In matters of administrative detail, it is generally ac-
knowledged, we have been wasteful and incompetent, while on
the legislative side of political endeavor, we have conspicuously
shown the ineffectiveness of unlike-minded men in cooperative
undertakings. Our legislation has been discontinuous and un-
coordinated, a product largely of shameless bargaining among
conflicting interests.
And indisputably we have not by any happy combination of
public activity with individual enterprise achieved certain results
of collective effort which are commonly held to be distinctive of
genuine, not to say high, civilization. We have not effectively
protected life against criminal attack or against industrial acci-
dent, certainly not in the measure which experiment has shown
to be attainable. We have not as a general thing made our
towns safe against the elemental risk of fire, or beautiful to look
upon, or satisfying to the mind.
We have, however, developed national feeling and patriotism.
Notwithstanding the heterogeneity of our population, we ac-
knowledge a certain solidarity of sentiment, and it appears to be
THE QUALITY OF CIVILIZATION 61
fortified and possibly is more or less guided by an increasing
solidarity of opinion.
We have been in the habit of attributing this measure of agree-
ment to example and suggestion. We have thought of it as both
an unconscious influence and a conscious teaching proceeding
from a hitherto dominant Anglo-Saxon stock. We explain so
much solidarity of mind and heart as now prevails as a product
largely of assimilation, and our faith in the American future rests
chiefly in our ability further to assimilate the differing minds
and wills of our citizens of foreign birth.
It is worth while, therefore, to ask what assimilative forces
have chiefly been effective so far in American life, and are likely
further to strengthen such community of spirit as may yet give
to our civilization the qualities of unity, effectiveness, and dignity,
without restraint of freedom.
First among these forces I think we must name a standardized
consumption. The immigrant discards the costume of his native
land and adopts American clothing. With it he demands for his
house and table the products that "everybody" has. This phrase
almost literally describes the economic satisfactions of our well-
to-do population. We have only to call to mind such articles of
universal use as the carpet or rug, wall-paper, table linen, piano
or phonograph, expensive clothing and jewelry, and to reflect
upon the aggregate investment in such costly comforts as the
automobile, by classes that were supposed to be unable to
afford them, to realize how tremendous has become the stand-
ardizing influence of example and imitation in this field of eco-
nomic consumption. As consumers of wealth we exhibit mental
and moral solidarity. We want the same things. We have the
same tastes. So far as this part at least of our life is concerned
we have the basis and the fact of a highly general consciousness
of kind.
On this fact rests the pertinent rejoinder to social theories
which allege that neither the consciousness of kind itself nor any
underlying community of thought and feeling, can henceforth be
the ground of social solidarity or the characteristic phenomenon
of the social mind. The economic operations of modern times are
62 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
carried on through specialization, and the industrial system, as we
frankly recognize, is more and more becoming a correlation of
differences in a working organization. Therefore, it is contended
for example by Emile Durkheim that it is only the primitive
undifferentiated group that is held together by a consciousness of
kind. The modern complex group is an economic fact, and the
social consciousness, as Cooley explains it, is the recog-
nition quite as much of complementary differences as of mental
and moral similarities.
What actually has happened, however, in the economic evolu-
tion of modern populations has been, on the side of production a
marvelous differentiation and development of the division of
labor and, on the side of consumption, an equally marvelous
standardizing and assimilation. In the primitive community and
in the undeveloped rural community now, every family produces
many things, and each individual is to some extent a Jack-of-all-
trades. At the same time each individual as a consumer asserts
his individuality. He wears his hair long or short, according to
his whim, and never tires of declaiming against the manners and
the morals of city folk who must follow fashion at any cost. In
the urban community, by contrast, consumption is ruled by the
mode, while in the productive realm the Jack-of -all-trades and
master of none is ever out of a job.
Moreover, if our accepted economic philosophy is sound, it is
because of the standardization of consumption that we are en-
abled continually to differentiate the processes of production, and
to specialize abilities. For while, as Adam Smith demonstrated,
the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market, the
extent of the market, as perhaps Smith did not quite so clearly
see, is ultimately determined by the standardization of con-
sumption.
Therefore it seems a safe assumption that the characteristic
economic evolution of modern times, while producing differen-
tiated ability as an incident of production, is also inevitably pro-
ducing a remarkable uniformity of mind and habit in respect of
consumption, and therefore an ever-increasing consciousness of
kind to balance and control the consciousness of difference.
A second assimilating force is the scientific view of nature,
THE QUALITY OF CIVILIZATION 63
which all mankind is being forced to adopt because of our modern
methods of getting a living.
For ten thousand years or more, as was shown, the human
race lived by belief; it will live henceforth by knowledge. Its
belief has been nine-tenths credulity, to one part of reasonable
and sustaining faith in the possibilities of life. It has believed in
luck and magic, in miracle and providential aid. By luck it has
subsisted on fish and game ; by magic it has sustained the fertility
of its fields ; by miracle and providential aid it has harvested its
crops and brought its ships to port.
The religions of luck and miracle have been a multitude of
faiths that no man could number. Each has united a band, a sect,
or a greater body of devotees, but each of these bodies has dis-
trusted and anathematized all others. And so long as religious
differences have played a vital part in life, thoroughgoing assim-
ilation and a universal consciousness of kind have been impossible.
But henceforth, in our own land at least, the people will not
get their bread by luck, nor yet by miracle. Not only our manu-
facturing industries and our mining operations, but also our
commerce and our agriculture, rest today firmly and broadly upon
the scientific interpretation of nature. On every farm the boy
learns something of chemistry and of biology, as in every shop
he learns something of mechanics, of thermodynamics, and of
electricity. And so it is coming about that millions of human
beings can no longer be mentally diverse in quite the same old
fashion. They can no longer swear by quite so many strange and
jealous gods. They must think and they will think the same
thoughts. They must view nature in the same way, and look
forth upon life from the same point of observation, not because
they have been converted by any proselyter, but because only so,
under modern conditions, can they obtain their daily bread.
It may be optimistic to say, but probably it is true, that democ-
racy, crude as it is and disappointing, is subtly an assimilating
influence, as it is blatantly a leveling force.
Perhaps the most remarkable and probably the most hopeful
development in present day political life is an increasing attention
to things, over against an undue attention to persons. Repre-
sentative government has been, all in all, the best kind of
64 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
government that men have been able to get results by, and it
remains indispensable, even where we have also much direct
democracy. No one claims perfection for representation, how-
ever, and its chief shortcoming is betrayed by an unfortunate
psychological reaction. It permits men indolently to give over
to delegated agents the consideration of concrete questions of
public policy with the result, all too apparent, that political ac-
tivity is resolved into a struggle over candidates while we neglect
to grapple earnestly with questions. Direct democracy, in con-
trast, breaks down when it attempts to take over all legislative and
administrative functions ; yet it has merits, chief of which is its
educative efficacy. It stimulates the citizen to think, with such
intellectual power as he possesses, upon questions, the issues
themselves. It was this virtue that made the New England town
meeting the greatest school of political science and art that has
existed among men. Through experiments in direct democracy,
some of which work out well while many go wrong, entire peoples
are learning now in a large way as the New England folk gener-
ations ago in a small way learned to think about things as well as
to care about candidates ; and this thinking assimilates.
If it be contended that the quality of a civilization is most
affected by the physical vigor and the intellectual power of the
population concerned, it will be admitted, I suppose, that assimi-
lation is the factor significant in next degree. Assimilation, like
indifferent nature mechanically, and like the conscious intelligence
of man creatively, selects and combines. It rejects attitudes and
habits that do not "fit in" ; it modifies and combines those that do
fit in. So it creates a type, as imitation creates a style ; and style
and type are things of quality. The most conscious selection of
color values by a painter, of notes and bars by a composer, does
not more surely produce distinction (or vulgarity) than a select-
ing and converting assimilation produces a quality of behavior.
Much depends upon the amount of assimilative work to be
done. A population may be too heterogeneous to be civilized
(appreciably) by assimilation (or otherwise) until natural se-
lection has weeded out unassimilable elements. What is to hap-
pen in the Americas, North and South, prudent prophets do not
prophesy too confidently. The confusion of tongues has not
THE QUALITY OF CIVILIZATION 65
abated in any nation of these continents, and in the United States
(whatever is happening elsewhere) the clamor of conflicting
purposes does not suBside. We are reckless and unprepared, but
noisily determined to be redoubtable. We are self-indulgent and
lawless, but resolved to make ourselves good by law. We are
sentimental and irresponsible, but set on efficiency. We buy
editions, but do not diligently read. We live "handsomely," but
not carefully, nor always self-respectingly. While these condi-
tions prevail our civilization cannot "settle"; it cannot clarify;
and until it runs more limpid than now it cannot temper zeal with
dignity, or chasten power with graciousness.
CHAPTER V
A THEORY OF HISTORY
THERE may have been theories of history before The Book of
the Dead was compiled. The title itself of that cheerful Nilitic
document suggests that there were. Perhaps there will be
theories of history after the Adams family has been forgotten,
although this is more doubtful. That there will be comprehensive
(and plausible) philosophies of history after the intellectual re-
mains of Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx have been cremated, is
highly probable.
Speculation is here piquant and more or less alluring, but
profitless. Turning, therefore, to the record of occurrence, one
remarks that the historical theories of history are nearly as
numerous as historians. Paradoxically, however, their histor-
icity lies almost wholly in the circumstance that they are facts
of record. So far as intellectual content goes they are phil-
osophy rather than history, and the outstanding ones have been
evolved by philosophers, not brought forth by historians. The
reason, of course, is simple. History primarily is factual de-
tail, and altogether concrete. Secondarily it ventures, timor-
ously, upon generalization. It depicts "situations," "general as-
pects," and "trends." In so doing it becomes, in modest measure,
philosophy or (sadly or gladly) sociology!
No fault can be found, therefore, with sociologists of the
shameless sort if, to conserve energy, they generalize further and
examine the theories of history not individually, in every instance,
but usually by kinds or types.
From Plato to Comte and from Comte to the Adams brothers
one encounters five distinct type groups of theories of history.
The first group comprises the predestinational philosophies of
the metaphysicians, theological and other. In the second group
fall the philosophies of social self-determination. Plato's view,
66
A THEORY OF HISTORY 67
by his own account of it, was a hybrid. In part the gods arrange
human affairs, in part men freely plan and freely achieve. A
third group of interpretations goes back to geographical or "en-
vironmental" influence. The writings of Montesquieu remain
the classical example, but the painstaking researches of present-
day workers like Ellen C. Semple and Ellsworth Huntington are
building a more substantial structure.
Theories of the fourth group explain history in terms of
heritage (not heredity). Heritage is the total product (and
by-product) of human activity hitherto which we now enjoy. It
includes our acquired habits (in distinction from our original
instinctive nature), our arts, our knowledge and our property.
Piling up and distributing heritage, history cuts its own tortuous
channel, as a river does when it scours mud and gravel from one
bank to contribute it to the other. In their several and unlike ways
Comte, Buckle and Karl Marx interpret history in terms of
heritage. Comte sees mankind moving from a theological through
a metaphysical into a positive or scientific intellectual habit.
Buckle corrects naive resolutions of history into geography and
climate by calling in a secondary or cultural environment, ante-
cedent or contemporaneous. The Marxian "materialistic"
interpretation, notwithstanding the mistaken and extravagant
claims that have been made for it, is materialistic in a moral
sense of the word only. It is an attempt to account for all that
has happened or can happen to socially organized mankind by the
aggregation and functioning of property.
The working hypotheses that make up our fifth, and for the
time being last, group of philosophies of history, are modern.
They are chapters out of the book of cosmic dynamics. They
account for the stream of human experience as the solar system
or a thunder storm is accounted for, as a case of equilibration.
Herbert Spencer and Brooks Adams, leaving nothing to imagina-
tion, resolve it into a degradation of physical energy. Individual
biologists and bio-anthropologists, taking the degradation of
energy for granted, see history as heredity and natural selection.
Taking physics and biology both for granted, I am writing these
pages to intimate, and perhaps gently to argue, that human
history is a psychological, or behavioristic, equilibration.
68 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
The premise merely, or datum, from which this intimation
and this argument must proceed is not new. Modern fashion
denies it and sneers at it. The premise is that men are not born
equal, and from the beginning of time never have been. Or, in
the language of dynamics, it is that just as heat energy is not
uniformly distributed in space, and therefore radiates from mole-
cules in lively motion upon molecules in sluggish motion ; and just
as physiological vitality is not uniformly distributed among stocks
and races, and therefore some stocks are either driven to the wall
or are kept alive by such as bear the infirmities of the weak ; so
behavioristic reaction to stimulation, whether it is an instinctive
or a rational reaction, impulsive or forecasting, is more alert and
more tireless, more ranging and more varied, more modifiable
and more adaptive, better correlated and better coordinated on
the part of some aggregations of men than it is on the part of
other aggregations; and, therefore, practical activity spills over
from alert populations, alert component groups and alert con-
stituent classes, upon sluggish populations, sluggish component
groups and sluggish classes. When the overflow began history
began, when it ceases history will end.
Whether a theory exploitive of this premise will prove to be,
as pure science, more illuminating or more clarifying than other
theories of history have been, I am not sure ; I hope it may. But
if it is true, or as far as it is true, it has a pragmatic value that
should obtain for it a patient hearing. The whole world at
present is intellectually muddled and morally bedevilled. It is
trying to reconstruct society upon a hypothetical equality of all
mankind. If it succeeds, it will destroy historic achievement
from the beginning, and will send mankind to perdition.
My venture, therefore, is an adventure; but before I and such
as will go with me set forth upon it let us linger self -indulgently
a moment (for it is a pleasurable thing to do) upon history in its
concreteness, as it appeals to imagination and our love of mere
narration.
History is a scenario and a play, a swiftly moving film and a
drama in which every human passion contends with every other,
brutally or intellectually, upon the stage of life. More than this,
A THEORY OF HISTORY 69
history is also a prodigious creative effort, tremendous beyond our
power to conceive it, and an achievement overwhelming to our
finite ability to appraise. And always, whether as scenario or as
play or yet as achievement, history is a story, holding in every
generation the interest of childhood and of age.
Like all good stories it begins in medias res, that is to say,
when men have lived long enough and have learned enough to
leave written records of their doings. It begins, as far as our
present knowledge goes, in Egypt and in Sumer.
But also, like all good stories, when history has introduced
its characters it goes back, and more or less accounts for them,
telling us something of their previous occupations and experi-
ences, their interests, their associations and peregrinations, and
how they happened to arrive in the situation where we have
encountered them. This chapter in the story of history is now-
a-days called prehistory, and because we have no written records
to extract it from, it is essentially a film of scenes rather than a
play, in the truer sense of the word. The materials for it have
.been obtained from geology and biology, anthropology and
archaeology.
As the reel begins to move we see sluggish rivers, and tropical
trees alive with monkeys that have learned how to throw things
and so, from safe distance, to beat off dangerous enemies that
would make short work of them in the close-up fighting of bodily
contact. Then we see apes, bigger and possibly more clever than
the gorillas and chimpanzees that survive in our menageries.
They can stand almost erect and fight with clubs as well as throw
stones. They can build of sticks rough habitations for their young
and are not afraid to shuffle about on the ground. Their bones
are found all the way from Farther India to Southwestern
Europe. Presently, in tertiary Java, we see Pithecanthropus
Erectus, a brute so like an ape and yet so like a man that com-
parative anatomists hesitate to say for certain whether he is a
primate only or truly homo sapiens. In any case he is a "link,"
no longer "missing," between man and his progenitors, and so
we leave him.
Now on the screen come bones only bones but they stimulate
70 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
imagination. The Heidelberg jaw, the Piltdown skull, the
Neanderthal skull these are remains of man. Of this there is
no doubt, and as a series they exhibit our kind progressively los-
ing simian traits and, throughout one hundred thousand years
after another, becoming the human species to which we ourselves
belong.
From this point on we see things that early man makes, his
artifacts: weapons, tools and utensils, and the places where he
makes them and leaves them. At first, with his mate and chil-
dren, his sisters and brothers, and their mates and children, he
lives in the woods, along river margins, as numerous little sav-
age hordes of the lowest type live today in! the Andaman
Islands, in tropical Africa and in Brazil ; or they wander off in
the bush, as Australians and Bushmen do. They hunt and fish
and build habitations of boughs not much better than the gorilla's.
Arrowheads and spearheads they make by roughly chipping
flints. They weave mats of shredded bark and rude baskets of
osiers and reeds.
They are widely dispersed, some of them in far northern
parts of Asia and of Europe. With subtropical animals they
made their way there, we guess, in the mild weather of inter-
glacial time. Now the ice of a new glaciation creeping south-
ward overtakes them. They retreat before it. Multitudes of
them perish. Only the hardy and the resourceful survive. In
the great caverns of Southern Europe they find shelter. There
through thousands of years they dwell, learning to flake by pres-
sure the flints that before they chipped. They make axes and
hammers of stone, awls and needles of bone. They clothe them-
selves with skins. They carve ivory. They learn to draw and
to paint and cover the walls of their caves with realistic (and
beautiful) pictures of the cave bear, the sabre-toothed tiger and
the mastodon which they dread, and of the reindeer on which
they subsist. These are the greatest of the paleolithic people, the
remarkable men of the Old Stone Age.
Elsewhere, in Northern Africa and in Southwestern Asia,
paleolithic men become neolithic. They grind and polish their
stone implements. Experimenting with clay they fashion pottery
A THEORY OF HISTORY 71
on which they work geometrical designs, possibly symbolic, by
incising lines into which they rub gypsum. Generations pass.
By hand labor they till patches Of ground in which they have
planted seeds or roots. They cut trees into logs and fashion logs
into posts, piles, beams and boards. They build houses to dwell
in, and platforms, supported by posts driven into the ground or
by piles driven in water, on which they enact ceremonies and
afterwards build houses. They make canoes and boats. Again
generations pass. On the grass-lands of Africa and Arabia,
of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, we see restless groups of
kinsmen caring for herds of goats and sheep and for larger herds
of cattle. In the oases of Africa and of Arabia and of Central
Asia east of the Caspian Sea we see villages built of various
materials, wood and stone and sunbaked clay. We see shelters for
cattle, ditches and moats filled with water, cisterns of water and
wells, storehouses of grain, fires carefully kept alive, altars and
secret places where ceremonies are observed.
More generations come and go. Throughout Northern Africa,
throughout Central and Southern Asia, throughout Central and
Southern Europe, men are living in villages and in little towns.
These are strung' like beads along the Euphrates and the Nile.
Against druidic backgrounds of ancient oaks and pines they hide
in quiet valleys among the foot-hills of mountain ranges. With
their backs to walls of rock they defy the storms of wind-swept
uplands. On platforms supported by piles, they are built above
the waters of Swiss and Italian lakes; or, on dry land, with
moats around them terramare they strangely imitate the lake
constructions. In all of these various situations the inhabitants
keep pigs and goats and cattle, and raise crops. A division of
status and of work is seen. The people of a community are no
longer in every instance of one kindred. Often the "place" is
in fact not one village but two adjacent villages. In the superior
one live kinsmen, who possess and rule the land round about. In
the lowlier one live "aliens," a miscellaneous assemblage of "kin
wrecked" folk, ruined by war or driven forth as offenders from
the clans of their birth. They have been taken in. They are
harbored and defended and allotted land to use on condition that
72 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
they render prescribed services. These are the "village com-
munities" that economic historians used to picture as "free,"
idyllic, communistic democracies!
Near every settlement is a burial place, a "long barrow" or a
"round barrow" of earth, or, now and then, a hollow cairn built
of stones, perhaps in imitation of the caves where paleolithic dead
were laid : two unhewn shafts supporting a heavy lintel above
are the portal. Here and there also, at intervals from the Persian
Gulf to Southwestern England, are more impressive megalithic
monuments : avenues of giant shafts or great circular enclosures
like Stonehenge. Presumably they have to do with festival pro-
cessions and athletic events. 1
With one more scene the film of prehistory ends. In moun-
tain gulches men dig copper, and elsewhere tin. A glare against
the sky by night betrays the places where they mix and smelt
them, in rude crucibles of clay. They are making bronze !
The human species now has overspread the earth, and racial
varieties of it, both major and minor, are identified with broad
geographical habitats. An Australian-African major division is
black, kinky-haired, prognathic and usually dolichocephalic. An
Asian- American major division is yellow in Asia and copper-
hued in America, straight-haired and usually brachycephalic. A
European-Polynesian major division is white in Europe and in
Northern Asia, including Northern Japan, and brown in North-
ern Africa, in Southern Asia and in the South Pacific islands ; it
is usually wavy-haired and orthognathic, but in skull shape it is
anything possible, dolichocephalic, mesocephalic or brachycephalic.
The European whites, who by early differentiation (in Europe
or elsewhere) were of three varieties, namely, dolichocephalic
Mediterraneans, dolichocephalic Baltics 2 and brachycephalic
Caspians (a relatively late arrival), are now of four varieties, by
reason of the crossbreeding of Caspians with Mediterraneans
south of the Alpine ranges and with Baltics north of them. The
Mediterraneans, not tall but well built, are brunette, with black
breasted, Ancient Times, p. 28.
*The name "Nordic," now in fashion, should be given to the entire
northern blond half of the brown-white orthognathic race, whether found
in Europe, in Siberia or in Japan. The Baltics are a sufficiently dis-
tinctive (and distinguished) variety to have a name of their own.
A THEORY OF HISTORY 73
hair and dark eyes. The Baltics, tall and angular, are blond,
with light hair and blue eyes. The Alpines, a Caspian-Mediter-
ranean hybrid, are brachycephalic, thick set and in coloring
variable, but usually lighter than Mediterraneans. The Danu-
beans, a Caspian-Baltic hybrid, are brachycephalic, tall and pow-
erfully built, prevailingly ruddy, with red beards and hair and
gray eyes. 1
The prevailing languages of the white peoples have become
inflectional. An Aryan tongue is spoken throughout the Asian-
European grass-lands. Among all peoples there are reactions
of excitement, including terrified avoidances or fearsome con-
tacts, toward innumerable natural objects, in particular, springs,
pools, rivers, cliffs, trees, reptiles and birds, and, in the grass-
lands, bulls.
After prehistory, history; intense, tumultuous, short, its mil-
lenniums, compared to prehistory's eons, are a dynamic instant of
time. Yet (such is the relativity of things) the perspective of
history is atmospheric, if we keep our distance. Its scenes are
geographically spacious, if the eye sweeps boldly. So we must
view them now, inattentive to detail.
At the delta of the Nile and far up its course, at the head of
the Persian Gulf and far up the Euphrates River, dense popula-
tions are distributed. There is no longer pretense that any one
of these is a close-knit kindred. Aliens commingle with the
native born, and many languages are heard. Agriculture is sys-
tematically followed. Industries are differentiated and special-
ized. Artisans of amazing skill make useful things of bronze,
perfect of their kind, and fashion silver and gold and precious
stones in patterns of beauty. Engineers build dams and reser-
voirs and a network of canals, to control and distribute the over-
1 The confusion of Danubeans with Alpines in current anthropological
literature is peculiarly annoying to the historian. The Romans discrimi-
nated. Caesar's Aquitani were Mediterraneans, his Celts were Alpines,
his Belgae were Danubeans, his Germans were Baltics. The fair-haired
Achaeans of Homer and the Hellenes generally were Danubeans. The
Picts of the British islands were Mediterraneans, the Goidelic Celts were
Alpines, and the Brythonic Celts were Danubeans, whose dialects now,
by one of the curious paradoxes of history, are spoken by brunette Welsh,
Cornishmen and Bretons.
74 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
flow of the rivers. Architects of commanding genius build pal-
aces for the great, temples for the gods and the multitudes, and
tombs for the venerated dead. Boats ply up and down the rivers.
Where were towns there now are cities, turbulent with human
life. Merchants import and export goods by caravans that cross
deserts to foreign parts. Slaves breed in hovels, toil in quarries
and in brick yards, and die. Scribes write down dates and taxes,
and keep the record of dynasties. These urbanized peoples of the
river valleys of the Southeastern Mediterranean area are creating
civilization. Colonists, exiles and merchants will bear it to the
farthest East; merchants and armies to the frontiers of the West.
On the island of Crete, Knossos, already old, unfortified but
defiant, commands the Aegean Sea. Beneath it lie strata of
debris, as priceless as pearls, left there by neolithic makers of
hand-burnished pottery and by "early," "middle" and "late" Mino-
ans. Round about it are lesser towns, but rich and powerful,
which it controls. On the Aegean islands are its countless petty
ports, and on the coasts of Greece its colonies: Tiryns on the
Gulf of Argos, and Mycenae, marvelous for wealth and splendor,
at the mountain pass as the trail runs from Tiryns to Corinth.
The fabulous wealth of this maritime power, its treasures of
bronze and gold, have been paid for by a distinctive and highly
perfected art and by trade with Egypt and Asia and the coasts of
Western Africa and of Europe. Its ships of commerce are safe-
guarded as they traverse the sea, and at every port, by ships of
war the first sea power. 1 Against this unique resplendent civi-
lization of the Mid-East Mediterranean area the armies of Egypt
and of Asia do not aggress.
Between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, between the
Taurus mountains and the Caucasus, between the Zagros moun-
tains and the Caspian Sea, stretch the table lands of Cappadocia
and Armenia, of Media and Elam, eastward to Persia and be-
yond. The armies of Egypt and of the Tigris-Euphrates basin
invade them, following caravan routes, up water courses, through
canons and mountain passes. Overflowing from Elam and Media
1 Egypt may first have navigated the eastern Mediterranean, though
strict proof is lacking; but the argument that Egypt was ever a naval
power is not yet convincing.
A THEORY OF HISTORY 75
and presently from Persia, an Aryan stock repels them and swiftly
extends its empire. In Cappadocia and throughout Eastern Asia
Minor, a non-Aryan stock, the origins of which we do not see, ap-
pears as a military power. The Persian conquers the Euphratic,
and the Hittite conquers a part of the Egyptian imperial domain.
Each creates a civilization, in part derivative, in part original and
distinctive. These civilizations of the West-Asian Uplands are
stark and lean, but outreaching. Persia drives an Aryan influence
into Northwestern India. The Hittite power transmits Sumerian
and Semitic achievement to the Aryans of the West.
Enclosing the Aegean and Adriatic Seas three peninsulas thrust
into the northern waters of the Mediterranean : Asia Minor in its
western extension, Peloponnesian and Central Greece, and Italy.
Northeast, north, and northwest of them are the mystery-haunted
lands of the Aryan dispersion. Mountains and rugged hills hide
lonely valleys or guard aUuvial plains, open to the sea. On the
lower slopes are olive trees and grapes, and above them chestnut
trees and oaks. The coasts are irregular. Gulfs and deep bays
cut into them, but also there are long straight reaches where no
harbor can be found, and dangerous by reason of conflicting
tides. Between Greece and Asia Minor Aegean islands can be
seen off shore. The sea, impressionistically (since Agamemnon),
is purple. On hills and plains the sun at noon is white, but even-
ing and morning lights are violet. Beauty has taken these parts
for her own. And hardy men, unafraid of loneliness or of the
sea, sensitive to beauty and loving freedom ; shepherds, herdsmen
and plowmen, fisher folk and sailors ; and presently artisans and
merchants have taken them for their own. By comparison with
the peoples of the River Valleys they are a sparse population and
poor. Their cities, except possibly Troy, the oldest of them,
which in its day has rivaled Mycenae, are less splendid, and their
buildings are less majestic than those of Thebes and Babylon, but
are infinitely more appealing to intelligence. Their statues and
their paintings, for the first time in human achievement, attain
truth through freedom restrained only by mastery of modeling
and line. Racially they are a mixture of primitive Mediter-
raneans, Danubean invaders and Alpines, but slavery has limited
hybridizing, and (it appears) more strictly in democratic Athens
76 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
than in aristocratic Sparta. 1 Their armies are small and local
but valorous. The Athenian navy is a formidable arm. The
East fails to invade European Greece ; Carthage invades Italy but
is expelled. These are visible features (we are not heeding now
the processes) of the Peninsular Civilization of the North Medi-
terranean area. Athens tries to make it imperial but is unsuc-
cessful. Macedon succeeds, but her empire is short-lived. Rome
builds an empire geographically coextensive with Europe south
of the Rhine and the Danube, with Northeastern Africa and with
Asia Minor. In more than a figurative sense it is "built." Ex-
cellent roads provide a means of internal mobilization and com-
munication never before equaled. The possibilities of the arch
are developed in bridge building and in the construction of aque-
ducts, by which for the first time town dwellers are supplied with
an abundance of pure water. This empire endures nearly half a
millennium.
Rome and the Romanized populations of her provinces, a partly
hybridized commingling of Mediterraneans, Danubeans and Al-
pines, are overrun by European Nordics, principally Baltics.
Most of them are inlanders of the forests. They build boldly of
timber but not of stone, and know nothing of engineering or of
the finer arts. As invaders they burn and raze. Establishing
themselves in overlordship, they roughly reorganize an existing
serfdom, extending it and increasing the severity of obligatory
services. Taught and aided by artisans of the old order, now
under duress and robbed of all but traditions and skill, they build
strongholds and presently castles of stone, from which they wage
wars of pillage upon one another. Converted to Romanized
Christianity, they build monastic houses and churches. About
churches and castles villages of craftsmen and laborers grow up,
but merchants are few, and imported goods all but unknown :
1 Greek democracy was infra- not inter-eihnic, and the argument of the
indiscriminatists that panmixia in Athens begot the most brilliant race of
men in history suffers from the militating circumstance that the premise
is not true. LaRue Van Hook has shown in The Classical Journal, May,
1919, that Athenian democracy was more than the internal equality (and
clique warfare) of a social "four hundred"; nevertheless, Galton's guess
that Greek genius was a product of early and prolonged inbreeding by
aristocratic clans is probably the best one ever made. In Sparta, by all
accounts, there was panmixia, the details of which may be left to feminist
literature.
A THEORY OF HISTORY 77
orderly trade has been destroyed. Almost the only contacts with
the East are through missionaries from Rome and pilgrims to
Jerusalem. Nevertheless, in ecclesiastical establishments and in
guilds of artisans reminiscences of Latin civilization survive and
presently ameliorate somewhat the struggle for existence and the
manners of the time. So arises an isolated civilization of Inland
Western Europe, a grotesque reaction of barbarism to the Medi-
terranean heritage. For centuries it is politically incoherent and
intellectually barren until, alarmed by Saracen intrusion, it rallies
about Charles Martel and the way is opened for Charlemagne.
Horizons now are widened. The Mediterranean resurges upon
the Baltic, and when, at length, the daring of the North and the
intelligence of the South are mingled, their product is the match-
less beauty, the wonder and the glory of Gothic art.
Looking back for a moment upon the migrations from which
this unique civilization dates, we note that not literally all of
the participants are inlanders. A fringe of them, dwelling upon
dismal northwestern coasts, fog-hidden and forbidding, are fisher-
men and sailors. They can fashion keels as well as rafters.
They, too, feel the wanderlust, but from Denmark they turn their
faces west. The tempestuous North Sea calls them. They voy-
age to Iceland and the British coasts. They conquer Britain and
possess it. Kindred Norsemen voyage to the coasts of Gaul,
there to become Normans and in their turn to conquer an incom-
pletely Anglicized Britain. In the Mediterranean, also, sea-faring
traditions persist, and in the ports of Italy, of Southern France
and of Spain the race of sailor men is not extinct. Communica-
tion between East and West is slowly reestablished. The knowl-
edge of geography, of mathematics and of navigation, that Egyp-
tians, Cretans, Greeks and Romans possessed, is recovered, and
is disseminated among seafarers of the West. Trade with the
East is unsettled, its ways are changing and its possibilities are
multiplying. Christian crusaders take Jerusalem from the Infidel
but are unable to hold it, and fail to break through to the East.
An ocean way may be found. Voyages become longer and more
daring. Canaries and Azores are left behind. The Cape of Good
Hope is rounded. Dutch and English, French, Portuguese and
Spaniards become maritime peoples and discoverers. The At-
78 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
lantic Ocean is crossed by an Italian backed by Spanish royal
power and money. The Pacific Ocean is discovered from the
West. The earth is circumnavigated. Europe explores and
colonizes a Western Hemisphere. Ocean-fronting Nations, de-
limiting their boundaries and organizing themselves politically,
create by ocean-borne commerce a civilization of the world.
In the play of History the dramatis persona are not only in-
dividuals ; they are also groups of individuals and* multitudes.
These act as units, and as characters they have moral and intel-
lectual unity. Yet always they are groups and multitudes.
Again, more often than not a scene in history is repeated in
various places and with variations before the next scene in
dramatic order is enacted; and always an entire act is repeated.
Act two (mediaeval history) is a repetition of act one (ancient
history), with variations. Act three (modern history) is a repe-
tition of act two, again with variations. This is the basis of fact
for the saying that "history repeats itself."
At Memphis a company of priests marches solemnly in pro-
cessional. They proclaim themselves Masters of Mysteries and
Men of Vision. They have been instructed in the wisdom of
the past; they foresee the future. They know what signs pres-
age abundance and famine, what conduct of man pollutes and
what cleanses the sources and streams of life. Now they warn
the people of impending peril. Boatmen from the south, con-
firming rumors that for months have passed from lip to lip,
have reported abominations. Dwellers up the river, corrupted
by too much contact with heathens beyond the Cataracts, have
adopted strange rites, not to be described. They have defiled
sacred places and killed sacred animals. Warnings have multi-
plied. Thousands of ibexes have died. Dead crocodiles float
by. The river itself has an unusual and sinister look; many
persons have observed it. Already, perhaps, the Valley, and
the Delta too, lie under a curse. Pestilences and more dreadful
plagues may stalk the streets tomorrow.
The people clamor for action. The King has had dreams and
is impressed. Soldiers are assembled and mobilized. A defensive-
offensive expedition sets forth. The land must be purified.
A THEORY OF HISTORY
79
Skirmishes become battles and battles wars, which recur.
The curtain falls on United Egypt; but the priests are not
as happy as they were. The army has become arrogant. The
people never tire of cheering it, and sometimes the King defers
to it, instead of to the priests. 1
A later scene, perhaps a variant of this one, or it may be a
second, is set in Sumer.
Caravans from the Crescent bring disquieting tidings. Suc-
cessive droughts have parched the oases and dried wells never
before known to fail. Even in the wadys of the West-Arabian
mountains crops have failed, and cattle by thousands have died.
Tribes of Semites, apparently migrating, have been seen moving
eastward, a fierce and uncouth rabble. Companies of armed
strangers, a vanguard perhaps, have been in the Plain of Shinar
but have disappeared. They were thought to be from the desert.
The older camel men, however, recall that Semitic nomads have
been herding in Mesopotamia time out of mind, "always," some
say, but others deny this, asserting that all Semites were oasis
men once, or, more likely, wady men. Either way, they have been
rovers apart in petty groups, and beyond stealing cattle or looting
a village now and then, harmless enough. Yet nobody knows
how many of them could come together in a round-up, or what
might happen if the devil got into them.
It happens. That pillar of dust on the western sky was not
caravan dirt this time; but the warning was too short. Wave
upon wave, countless, tumultuous, the Semites come, spearmen
and swordsmen, frenzied as charging cattle, and as resistless. Ur
is theirs. Eridu falls before them. Nippur will be theirs, and
Babylon.
Now let us drop the figure of the play and more simply sum-
marize action, from this point on.
Two tremendous movements surge upon each other while
sweeping onward together. One is the group struggle for do-
minion and subsistence. The other is the class struggle for
1 The certified records on which I should have been glad to base my
reconstruction of this scene have unfortunately not been found ! Never-
theless, historical friends will grant, I hope, that my imagination has not
run quite wild in the suggested explanation of rudimentary political
integration and the beginnings of class struggle.
8o STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
ascendancy and revenue. These two movements begin with
history. They are the action of history.
Climatic crises, 1 exhaustion of resources, diminishing returns
and other circumstantial pressures cause migrations, in which
populations clash. The issue is life or death. Groups confed-
erate for defense; by conquest they are consolidated. They are
compounded and recompounded. They integrate and are in-
tegrated.
Military leaders, selected and developed by war, become pow-
erful politicians if war continues or often recurs, and army
officers become a class, as "class conscious" as the priesthood.
They contest the ascendancy of the priests. The struggle is
long and bitter. The priesthood is jealous and alarmed. The
army is envious and aggressive. The army has booty and land
to divide, but it wants to be assured of supernatural sanction.
Above all, being new, it wants to become respectable. The
priesthood has traditions and form. It can make things right
with unseen powers, or wrong. It can confer respectability, or
withhold it.
The possibilities of the situation are not obscure, and when
priests and soldiers both grow weary of strife, an understanding
is arrived at which royalty, properly instructed, consents to and
decrees. Distinguished priests are "let in" on the ground floor
of the New Privilege. They receive lands and revenues. Dis-
tinguished soldiers are vouched for as divinely guided, and get
invitations thenceforth to convocations. So (historically) are
begotten "lords temporal" and "lords spiritual," and both kinds
are landlords !
Old groups of land-owning kinsmen, and individual land own-
ers, if they are fortunate, become free tenants. An increasing
number of these, if the times favor, become merchants. Old
communities of dependents continue to be serfs. Artisans, if
fortunate, become free tenants and enjoy guild privileges. If
merchants prosper, they become class conscious (as the soldiers
1 Most fateful of all, short of a far-extending glaciation, has been "the
pulse of Asia," an alternating irrigation and dessication of regions east
of the Caspian Sea, as the snow-fall on the mountain systems is
rhythmically heavy and light; See Huntington, The Pulse of Asia,
A THEORY OF HISTORY 81
did), and intimations of a new class struggle between merchants
and landlords appear.
From the morning of history in Egypt and Sumer until Jus-
tinian's reign, group integration is almost continuous, and the
class struggle is taken up by successive classes. In the Medi-
terranean Island area, as in the river valleys of the Southeastern
area, in the West-Asian uplands and in the North 'Mediterranean
peninsulas chieftaincies become kingdoms, and kingdoms empires.
Priests yield to soldiers. Priests and military adventurers, in-
venting the "gentlemen's agreement," become landlords. Land-
lords lay field to field, but the merchants, amassing wealth, prepare
to contest ascendancy.
Then there is a break. The empire collapses. Act one of a
drama has closed. Ancient history ends, and mediaeval history
begins. The cycle of group and class struggle starts anew.
A new religion has arisen and a new priesthood. From the
death of Constantine in 337 its divine authority is conceded.
At the birth of Charlemagne in 742 its social ascendancy is
complete and unquestioned. But the northward thrust of the
Moors and their repulsion has set going changes that will com-
pel it to fight for its prestige. A new militarism grows pro-
digiously under Charlemagne and his successors. Unwittingly
the Church abets it by demanding that the Holy Land, be
"purified" from Islam. Crusading barons become more powerful
than titular princes, and their followers become armies. They
make their own terms with bishops. The Holy Roman Empire
and the Bishops of Rome both assert "sovereignty," but in the
end the inevitable bargain is struck. A new and overpowering
landlordism is created. Bishops and barons become "peers."
The ablest of them, William of Normandy, with the intellectual
and ecclesiastical aid of Lanfranc (whom William, after quar-
reling with for opposing the ducal marriage to Matilda, has made
Archbishop of Canterbury), creates out of English chaos the first
politically sovereign western nation, by reorganizing the relations
between feudal society and monarchy and putting monarchy in-
disputably on top. Under his incompetent successors the barons
get on top and resolve society into anarchy. Henry II, instituting
scutage and the assize of arms and thereby making royal revenues
82 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
and the army semi-independent of baronial favor, and subordinat-
ing ecclesiastical to civil courts, lifts monarchy from personal rule
to trusteeship for a nation. So begins a struggle as sharp and
distinctive as any struggle between group and group or between
class and class; a struggle, namely, between an integral group
the nation and whatever class is ascendant. The first clash is
disastrous, for again the barons get on top, and society disin-
tegrates. Group and class struggles revert to beginnings, and
mediaeval history ends.
Mediterranean Christianity came to birth among humble folk
inclined to communism, and was adopted by the great when they
saw its stupendous possibilities as an agency of social control.
The more carefully the origins of Northwestern Christianity,
otherwise Protestantism, are studied, the more nearly certain it
appears that these are not so much a vision or a hope of the
miserable, whether docile or rebellious, as an assertion of per-
sonal independence by men self-reliant and self-respecting, al-
though poor. Therefore, while in substance of theology this
religion of the individual conscience is not new, and as rebellion
against authority is schism, as reaction to life it is a new faith,
engendered by new actualities of the struggle for existence. That
fourteenth-century "Poor Richard," William Langland, the per-
sistent Wyclif and the fiery Huss are all, in their different ways,
true exponents of its spirit. And this is why, notwithstanding
the doings at Constance and at Basle, its ministry does not become
a priesthood.
Nevertheless, with this spirit, with this new faith and its min-
istry, modern history begins in the fourteenth century. The
group and the class struggles of ancient and of mediaeval history
are recapitulated, but, as always, with variations. A new mili-
tarism, developed by the Hundred Years War, uses gunpowder.
A new landlordism is sustained by money rents instead of by
feudal services, and this time the part played by religion in the
class struggle is new. The Protestant ministry is not yet socially
ascendant, and not strong enough to exact privileges. Moreover,
it has been recruited chiefly from commoners and the lesser gentry,
and its individualism is "middle-class." Therefore it allies itself
with the merchants and becomes a factor in the incipient class
A THEORY OF HISTORY 83
struggle between them and the landlords. The major alliance,
accordingly, is between landlordism and the older ecclesiasticism,
and the major intra-group struggle is between this combination
and the nationalistic monarchy. It ends (except for brief re-
crudescence under Mary and again under the Stuarts) in the firm
establishment of nationalism and the ascendancy of Protestantism
under Henry VIII.
Now, at last, class struggle between merchants and landlords
assumes full proportions and (without violence, however) in-
tensity. Voyages of discovery open new and unprecedented
opportunities, and merchant adventurers become men of power.
But, like the soldiery of earlier times, they crave and demand
full social recognition. They can make terms, and the bargain
is struck. Great merchants are admitted to the peerage, and
by marriage (and otherwise) peers in need of revenue acquire
wealth. A capitalist class is created.
So modern history arrives at noon. Capitalism exploits in-
vention and revolutionizes industry. A wage-earning proleta-
riat, descended from emancipated serfs, becomes in its turn
"class conscious," and Karl Marx makes the epochal discovery
that class struggle impends in history !
The creative efforts of history are concentrated upon one com-
prehensive achievement, which is, attainment of a preferred way
of living. The means of attainment are culture and a social
order. Culture includes taste, a standard of living, knowledge
and skill. A social order is a system of pluralistic habits, rela-
tionships and policies. Prehistory gropes, perceives, tries, learns
and with infinite patience practices. It creates the elements of
culture and primitive social systems. History scrutinizes, criti-
cizes, rejects, selects, conserves, changes, adds, combines, reforms,
revolutionizes and reconstructs. 1
The history of culture no less than the history of action, is a
story of strife. The New has fought with the Old for its life.
Instinct, habit, taste, sentiment and vested interests have rallied
1 The study of history as achievement (history as scenario, play and
story being presupposed) is the study of the History of Civilization, a
specialist's task, demanding among other qualifications a sociologist's
knowledge of social systems.
about the Old. Experimental drive, cleanliness, convenience,
comfort, health, enterprise, prosperity have been identified with
the New.
The Old has not been content to conserve its own : it has tried
to strangle the New at birth. Therefore the conflict between the
two has been a war for the right of achievement to survive; to
live on as the Old, to be born and to carry on as the New. Civi-
lization exists because neither the Old nor the New has been able
to do its instinctive or its premeditated worst against the other.
More than those things that constitute heritage (of which
mention was made) has been at stake. Heredity has been at
stake. The intellectualized variety of man (irrespective of race)
has been subjected to an artificial selection as fateful as natural
selection. Where innovation is not permitted, experimental in-
tellect cannot leave posterity.
Our knowledge of the origin, structure and functioning, and
of the transformation of social systems, is largely a scientific in-
duction.
There are surviving examples of social systems that never
have produced and that will not leave a written history. They
have been much observed, fortunately, by ethnologists; and pos-
sibly they may so far be neglected by powerful peoples bent on
cleaning up dirty neighbors that they can be studied a generation
or so longer. Social systems now extinct were observed and
described in antiquity, not, indeed, with scientific precision, but
often shrewdly and with approximate accuracy. The social
systems of prehistoric men we imperfectly reconstruct from
archaeological and philological fragments, supplemented by folk
ways and folk lore that survived into historical days. This evi-
dence, as far as it goes, is often worth more than chronicles, since
it is without bias, and came into existence without conscious in-
tent to impress posterity. All of these systems, extinct and sur-
viving, that did not and do not leave written annals, we describe
collectively as primitive social systems.
By comparison with the highly complex social systems that we
know today primitive social systems are almost incredibly simple ;
but some of them are less simple than others. There is a sue-
A THEORY OF HISTORY 85
cession of types, each of which is associated with a characteristic
situation or habitat.
First in time and simplest in structure is a social system of
the forest habitat and the bush. In its rudimentary form it is a
small horde or camp or a cluster of neighboring and more or less
communicating hordes, in none of which more than twenty to
fifty individuals, men, women and children, can be counted. This
group knows nothing of blood relationships, or it ignores them;
it coheres by instinct and habit.
Within it, however, arise ideas of mysterious influences and
relationships. Various things and kinds of things are believed
to have an uncanny power to harm or to benefit. "It," for so
more often than not the mysterious power is referred to, can
cause good or bad luck ; it can pollute ; it can cause sickness, and
it can kill, or it can cleanse and heal; it is contagious, passing
from object to object or from person to person by contact. It is
"mana" or "virtue"; it is demoniac power. Whatever holds
or imparts purifying and healing mana is sacred ; whatever holds
or imparts defiling and evil mana is accursed. There are ways of
banning evil mana and of conserving good mana. These rituals
as much as habits of camping and wandering together, are group
ways ; they are modes of pluralistic behavior in distinction from
individual behavior. In each group they are more or less peculiar.
They are, therefore, a collective interest and bond supplementing
mere animal gregariousness, including its reactions to cries and
calls. They are a distinctly human interest and bond.
Out of these ideas and practices totemism emerges, and pres-
ently appear more complicated relationships identified with it.
These get mixed up with natural relationships, which thereby
become distorted and conventionalized. There results a social
system of inclusions and exclusions, based on a recognition of
descent in one line only. A matrilineal and matronymic system
is in general more primitive than a patrilineal and patronymic
system. How far the cavern people of the Reindeer Age had
advanced in these matters we do not know.
The social system of the grass-lands has become or is becoming
patrilineal ; but it carries along many survivals of totemism and of
86 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
matrilineal relationship. 1 Ideas of ghosts and ghost worship have
appeared, and out of them ancestor worship develops. Paternal
power and authority have superseded the authority that maternal
uncles exercised in matrilineal society, and the family group,
cohering for more than one generation, often becomes a patri-
archal kindred. Whether this happens or not, the patrilineal
system has the great advantage that the fighting men of any con-
siderable aggregation are of one conventional kindred, instead of
being, as in matrilineal society, of as many different conventional
kindreds as they have totemic or clan mothers.
On the grass-lands appears also in the course of time a new
social system as distinctive as systems based on conventionalized
kinship are, or as the earliest ritualistic system was by comparison
with an animal herd. It is based on an understanding between a
luckless individual needing protection and a man powerful enough
to protect him. In primitive society men get "kin wrecked" in
many ways. Because of their own misdeeds they are banished
from clan or village, or the groups in which they were born are
plundered and broken in war. Other men, a smaller number,
become powerful as successful leaders in war or when, in recog-
nition of one or another service to the group, they are permitted
to possess an exceptionally large share of booty or otherwise to
become rich. 2 In the grass-lands ruined men take service and
receive protection as cowboys under cattle owners strong and
self-assertive enough to break folkway rules and override the
rights of fellow tribesmen. In the Brehon Laws of Ireland, where
the grass-land life survived until comparatively late times, we have
the picture of a society organized partly as a holdover tribal
system and partly as allegiance and service rendered to a pro-
tecting chieftain. 3
The social system of primitive agricultural communities is a
medley and compromise of survivals rather than a new type.
1 Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.
' The evidences brought together by Robert Lowie in Primitive Society
that private property and inequalities of private property exist in primitive
societies of every cultural grade and in every part of the world have
disposed of a long controversy, to the lasting discomfiture of propagandist
vendors of primitive communism.
1 Henry Sumner Maine, Lectures on the Early History of Institutions.
A THEORY OF HISTORY 87
Kinship is cognatic as far as recognition of relationship by both
mother and father goes, but is usually patronymic. A kindred
may cohere as a local group and hold land as an undivided pos-
session for four generations, and, as was mentioned on a fore-
going page, it may stand in the relation of protector to a hetero-
geneous group of dependents. Within the kindred itself inequali-
ties of rank and of condition exist and are recognized; among
the dependents they are not permitted. 1
Survivals of all primitive systems, namely, those based on re-
ligious solidarity and ritual, those based on a conventionalized
kinship and those based on beneficium et commendatio, are numer-
ous in present-day societies. The most interesting ones, perhaps,
are found in such laws of nationality as the jus sanguinis and the
sacramentum fidelitatis, whereby a claim to citizenship rests, in
one case, on the citizenship of a parent, and, in another case, on
an oath of allegiance to a sovereign.
All the social systems of civilized peoples, whether ancient or
modern, are variants of a fourth general type. Indeed, in the
strict etymological meaning of the word, civilization is the super-
seding of tribal by civil society. Within the city aliens congregate
and prosper until it becomes necessary to admit them to privileges
and to impose upon them such fundamental obligations as tax
paying and military service. After much experimenting they are
naturalized, that is to say, by a legal fiction they are made of one
kindred with the older stock. 2 The basis of this system is mutu-
ality of opportunity and of obligation.
The historical variates of this general type are familiar and
need not detain us longer than is necessary to make essential
discriminations and to point out their relation to group and class
struggles.
Society is an aristocracy as long as opportunity, although
shared, is not equalized, and control is retained by a privileged
class, qualified by ability and experience to govern in the ad-
ministrative sense of the word, but not by unselfishness to rule
1 Frederic Seebohm, The Tribal System in Wales; and Hugh Seebohm,
The Structure of Greek Tribal Society.
2 The Constitution of Athens , discovered by Dr. Budge and by him
attributed to Aristotle.
88 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
arbitrarily over fellow men. Society is a plutocracy as long as
opportunity, although shared, is not equalized, and control is
held by a capitalist class. Society is a kakistocracy as long as
opportunity, although proclaimed to all, is not equalized in fact,
and control is exercised by a dictating minority, undisciplined and
ignorant, that has seized power by revolutionary violence. So-
ciety is a democracy if opportunity is equalized and control,
although not equalized (a thing impossible), is shared. Democ-
racy is communistic if property is equalized and occupation is
prescribed. Democracy is socialistic if property in major part is
held collectively and occupation is prescribed. Democracy is
individualistic if property in major part is held individually but
is subject to prescribed obligations and limitations, and if occupa-
tion is freely chosen by individuals but, like property, is subject
to prescribed obligations and limitations. The distinction be-
tween democracy and all other social systems is radical. In a
democracy control is participated in although never equally exer-
cised by all members of society instead of being monopolized by
any group or calling, and, consequently, integral society dominates
over all its component groups, constituent classes, callings, fac-
tions, parties and miscellaneous minorities.
Without specialized callings and segregations, differentially
functioning, society is primitive and negligible; it can achieve
nothing; and yet from the moment that differentiation of a popu-
lation into variously functioning callings or segregations begins,
class struggle rages. A dominant minority or majority rules as
nearly absolutely as it can. Revolution overthrows it, destroying
in its leveling violence so much of the functioning social organiza-
tion that prosperity cannot return, or achievement proceed, until
differentially functioning fractions, specialized and unequal, are
recreated. Democracy is an attempt to equilibrate energies in a
less costly way. Communistic and socialistic democracies err by
equalizing too much and restraining too much. Anarchistic in-
dividualism errs by permitting excessive inequalities and restrain-
ing too little. Between these extremes are possibilities of a more
delicate equilibration in a Socialized Individualism acting through
unstable majorities subject at every instant to possible disintegra-
tion and reformation.
A THEORY OF HISTORY 89
It is time to get back to theory. I promised to intimate and
perhaps gently to argue an interpretative hypothesis or, if the
phrase is not presumptuous, a scientific explanation of history.
If any reader has followed me so far, he has already received
and apprehended the intimation. My argument will be a gen-
eralization (without contention) from the materials that have
been exhibited.
Here let me anticipate and answer a question. Are these
materials history? No and yes. Quantitatively they are in-
finitesimal, but qualitatively they are bits picked out of history
by a scientific test, namely, significance. They have indicative
quality and therefore scientific value. They are signatures of
history.
More and more our inductive science accumulates priceless
knowledge of things (and events) in themselves inaccessible, by
examining their marks or signatures. The astronomer knows
the chemical composition of suns unimaginably distant because
they have made their "mark" in lines of the spectrum. No
physicist has seen an atom, but every physicist reads in atomic
signatures that it is composed of positive and negative electrons,
and that the electrical charge of a positive electron may be numeri-
cally equal to the electrical charge of a negative electron, al-
though its mass is nearly two thousand times greater while its
diameter is only one two thousandths as great. 1 The materials
from which I am generalizing now are finger-prints of history
on the smoked glass of time.
The geographical theory of history is true, as far as it goes.
Civilization arose in regions that could sustain and energize dense
populations. It has never made headway except in regions that
could sustain and energize urban populations. Throughout the
first nine-tenths or more of total historical time the action of
history was confined to the Mediterranean Basin. That basin
is made up of characteristic areas. In each a distinctive civiliza-
tion arose. In each the action and the achievements of history
have been distinctive. So long, however, as physical environment
has remained stafic nothing has happened. Only when environ-
mental change has created a circumstantial pressure of calamities,
1 MacMillan, Science, July 23, 1920.
90 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
hardships, contacts, conflicts and rivalries, has there been col-
lective human action and with it integrations, differentiations,
cultural progress and social evolution.
The biological theory of history is true, as far as it goes. The
historical peoples have been stocks capable of persistent multipli-
cation and at the same time of variation and longevity. In other
words, they have been dynamic stocks. In a struggle for exis-
tence that has been terrible and remorseless they have held their
own by vitality and by adaptability. Also, to an extent not ade-
quately apprehended, they have been, unconsciously, eugenic
breeders. By taboos and conventions, by pride and arrogance
born of success, and by the social exclusiveness of dominant
classes, they have restricted hybridization and effectually pre-
vented that miscellaneous and general amalgamation which the
biologists call panmixia. Natural selection, therefore, has had
not only individuals but also relatively pure stirps to work on,
with the inevitable consequence that, through an elimination of
biologically inferior stirps as such, energy, character and intelli-
gence have been conserved for generations. Whether a subse-
quent indiscriminateness has now and then caused national decline,
is a question more difficult to answer. The one certainty is that,
irrespective of theories, the instinct of persistently vigorous peo-
ples has been against it, as it is now in England, Canada, Aus-
tralia and the United States.
True also, as far as it goes, is a psychological theory of his-
tory that has never yet been well formulated. It is not well
described as a theory of collective self-determination, although
that phrase is not wholly inaccurate. The historical peoples
have been capable of imagination and of persistent exaltation.
They have seen visions and dreamed dreams. They have been
aroused by enthusiasms. Much that they have seen has been
hallucination, and often their enthusiasm has gotten out of hand,
but among their visions have been discoveries and inventions,
and among their exaltations have been heroic devotions. Su-
preme among these, as a factor in human achievement, has been
the devotion of a few peoples, of whom the Greeks were first in
time and in degree, to an intellectualized civilization.
An anthropological theory of history that of late has been a
A THEORY OF HISTORY 91
factor in world politics has most mischievously confounded bi-
ological, psychological and cultural facts. Baltic stocks have
displayed conquering energy and dominating will, but their culture
has been derivative. Wherever they have gone they have mingled
with populations of predominantly Mediterranean characteristics
and have assimilated a Mediterranean culture. It is preposterous
to argue that the predominant part which composite populations
so originating have played in history should or can be accounted
for by hybridizing or by Baltic culture or by Baltic domination.
It can be accounted for only as an exploitation of Mediterranean
culture by Baltic energy civilized by the Mediterranean culture.
Achievement is the historic work of races capable of ascendancy
through culture.
A sociological theory of history might be formulated but has
not been. The historical peoples most distinguished for achieve-
ment have somehow been able more successfully than others to
balance integral against partial interests, and individualism against
collectivism.
All of these theories of history are true, as far as they go,
but not one of them accounts for history! One and all they ac-
count for conditions that have shaped history, or, at best, have
made it possible. Not one of them tells us why it has been
actual.
For, when all is said, history is human behavior. It is a stream
of behavior, rising obscurely in time, making for itself a devious
channel, fed by countless tributaries of collective action, and
broadly flowing now into the mist that hides an unexplored
hereafter.
In part the historic behavior of men moving on together by
thousands and by millions has been blindly instinctive. In part
it has been a conscious but errant experimentation. Also in part
(and increasingly) it has been an attempted and often a successful
carrying-out of premeditated policies. These have been made by
no one man, and for this reason, rather than for any "determin-
istic" reason, the great-man theory of history breaks down. They
have arisen as visions in the minds of the men of vision and have
then been taken over, with or without acknowledgment, by men
of action. To convert them into collective behavior the men of
92 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
action have "interested" and enlisted effective members of
groups, classes, factions, parties, minorities and majorities, prom-
ising them substantial advantages. The combination has been a
dynamic plurel:* a "gang," "ring," or "junto" bent on "going
somewhere" or "doing something." Inasmuch as it has accom-
plished, first and last, infinitely more good than evil, let us give it
a dignified and suitable name. It has been a Composite Protago-
nist. To an appreciable extent it has "made" history, proceeding
deliberately, and by every art of persuasion, temptation, bullying
and coercion known to man. It has started wars and class strug-
gles. It has been self-renewing until supplanted by a rival,
destroyed by failure, subjected by conquest or deposed by revo-
lution.
As participants in the behavior that is history the instinctive
multitudes, the errant experimenters, the clear-eyed and far-
seeing protagonists of premeditated policies have had in com-
mon one trait besides their elemental human nature; or has it
veritably been their human nature itself ? Either way, they have
been of one inclusive kind. All have been adventurers. All
have felt an urge and responded to it. They have dared and
gone forth. They have listened to pipings and followed lures.
They have dug for pots of gold ; climbed purple mountains. They
have fared on pilgrimages "to meet with joy" in any "sweet
Jerusalem." They have trekked and voyaged; have fought, and
plundered and avenged. They have fashioned empires and dis-
membered them. With infinite toil they have created social order,
and in drunken deviltry have destroyed it. They have read the
stars and rent the atom.
History, then, is adventure, and the urge to adventure is the
cause of history. This proposition is the kernel of my theory.
Enfolding and sustaining it is the coefficient truth that some
men, the daimones of our race, react to the urge promptly, abun-
dantly, persistently, effectively, and in doing so pour or radiate a
secondary or converted urge upon more sluggish men until they
too react effectively. Paradoxically and amusingly this one
specific affirmation of inequality among men is not denied by
*Our English derivative from pluralis has in usage an adjective value
only. Needing a noun, I fall back upon this pleasing old French form.
A THEORY OF HISTORY 93
egalitarians. The wildest social lunatic has never imagined, or
liar for a holy cause averred, that as adventurers men are equal.
On the contrary, each is more sure than of anything else in life,
that he at least, is an adventurer of parts, destined at some time
to lead a multitude of small adventurers somewhere !
In sum, and to be severely scientific (as scientific as Mr. Adams
is) equilibration of the urge to adventure and of reaction to it is
the historically behavioristic mode of the degradation of energy.
As far as I can see there is one sufficient reason for being so
accurate, and abbreviate. It is the short way to get back to his-
tory as reality, concrete and alive. As reality history is theme
and story. The theme is actuality, the story what we make it.
Scholarship a kind of morality has corrected our story of
history in point of veracity, and (so all things work together for
good to such as love truth) amazingly enriched it. Science has
discovered and revealed actuality. Unspoiled by knowledge and
unharmed by understanding, actuality is what it was to Odysseus
and to Columbus; story is what it was to Herodotus and to
Froissart. As actuality history has been and is, Adventure; as
story it was and is, and to the end of time will be, the Great
Romance. 1
1 This chapter was in type for publication in The Political Science
Quarterly, before the publication of Mr. Wells's The Outline of History.
CHAPTER VI
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY
NEARLY two and a half thousand years ago Clinias the Cretan,
Megillus of Lacedaemon, and their Athenian friend, who, we
surmise, wrote The Republic and The Laws, sauntered along
the way that led from Knossos to the cavern temple of Zeus.
Loitering from time to time in the groves of cypress trees, they
discoursed upon the question whether from the gods, or from
the merely finite minds of mortal though gifted men, have pro-
ceeded chiefly those customs, rules, or laws which are the foun-
dations of moral order in the state. As their dialogue flowed on,
it revealed a sophisticated knowledge of affairs and a nicely
graduated caution in generalization which proclaimed each one
of the three to be that rarest and most excellent of beings, the
philosopher who is also a man of the world. The vulgar view
that laws are a gift from the gods they well understood ; and that
in a sense it could be accepted as true they acknowledged. The
not less vulgar view that the mortal lawgiver has on the whole
improved upon the lawmaking of the gods, they likewise under-
stood; and that this view also in a sense is true, they acknowl-
edged no less freely. But as they themselves viewed the compli-
cated relations of man to his fellowman, his passions and his
reasoned purposes, his manifold deeds of evil and of good, and
called to mind the varied plans of social organization which they
had observed in the city states of their own Grecian world, they
for themselves interpreted the divine lawgiving not as a proclama-
tion from the throne of Zeus, but rather as a certain objective
conditioning of individual and collective life by a thousand for-
tuitous forces to which man must accommodate his conduct.
And the lawmaking of man they viewed as essentially the art of
perfecting this accommodation of human conduct to objective
facts and relations.
94
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 95
Their phrasing of this naturalistic philosophy was simple and
straightforward, and admitted of no misunderstanding: "I was
about to say," remarked the Athenian, "that no man is ever a
legislator ; but that fortune and all kinds of accidents happening
in all kinds of ways, are our legislators. For either a war by
violence has overturned polities and changed laws, or the want
of means arising from severe poverty. Many innovations, too,
diseases compel men to make, through pestilences falling upon
them, and unfavorable seasons through many years. He, then,
who foresees all this, will be eager to exclaim, as I just now did,
that no mortal man was ever a legislator, but that nearly all
human affairs are accidents. . . . On the other hand, it is equally
possible for the person to speak correctly on these points who
says . . . that although a god, and, together with a god, fortune
and opportunity, govern all human affairs; nevertheless it is
necessary to admit that art, a somewhat milder power, follows
them." 1
Thus, in the land of the Gortynian law, where civilization
millenniums old had begun perhaps as early as in Egypt or on
the Babylonian plain, was stated the profoundest problem of
social philosophy may I not say of all philosophy the problem
of the interplay of human purpose with that external fate which
we moderns call the reign of natural law, the question how far the
collective life of man is inexorably determined by the one, how
far from time to time it may be shaped anew by his own clear-
seeing reason and indomitable will.
Before we take up the question how far the solution of this
problem which satisfied those men of Crete, of Athens, and of
Lacedsemon, can suffice for us, whose intellectual standards have
been both shattered and recreated by the new-born science of our
later world, let us linger yet a moment more on certain further
words in which they set their meaning forth. So strongly did
they hold that man by constructive reason may create institutions
potent to perfect his life, that they themselves were then devising
a body of laws for an ideal commonwealth. And yet they held
steadily before their minds the truth that their dreamed-of repub-
lic, if it were in fact to exist, must be composed of certain nat-
1 Plato, The Laws, IV, 4.
96 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
urally coherent elements, and must conform to unalterable objec-
tive requirements. Once more I quote, and again it is the Athe-
nian who speaks :
"For when a colony is of one race, and has the same language
and the same laws, it possesses a kind of friendship as being a
partaker in the same holy rites, and everything else of a similar
kind, nor does it easily endure other laws, and a polity foreign to
what it had at home. . . . But, on the other hand, a colony, com-
posed of all kinds of people flowing together to the same point,
will perhaps be more willingly obedient to certain new laws ; but
to conspire together, and, like a pair of horses, to froth together,
as the saying is, individually to the same point, is the work of a
long time and very difficult." 1
In no later writing that I know do we find in so few words
so many cardinal generalizations as these lines contain upon the
nature and behavior of human society. They tell us, first, that
of two familiar groupings of human beings, namely, groupings
of kindred, and groupings of "all kinds of people flowing together
to the same point," the second or miscellaneous grouping is no
less spontaneous, no less natural, than the first. Secondly, they
tell us that in the ethnically homogeneous group there is a psy-
chological as well as a physical unity, a sympathy and under-
standing not to be looked for in the heterogeneous group. Never-
theless, as thirdly, they aver, not only in the homogeneous but
also in the heterogeneous group, notwithstanding its defective
mental unity, there is a collective behavior, which, however,
and this is generalization fourth is more slowly and with greater
difficulty in the miscellaneous group raised to the practical work-
ing level of collective action for the attainment of a common end.
Fifthly, and finally, they declare that innovation any voluntary
breaking away from an old order of things to experiment with a
new is more likely to occur in the heterogeneous than in the
homogeneous group.
Two thousand years of so-called progress have enriched and
broadened knowledge. They also have multiplied the absolute
number, possibly the relative number, of well-informed persons.
They have multiplied, further, the relative as well as the absolute
1 Plato, The Laws, IV, 4.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 97
number of scientifically trained minds. That they have evolved
individual intellects of greater power or of higher quality than
were the best minds of Greece cannot be demonstrated. That
they have multiplied the absolute number of men of genius is
probable. That they have multiplied the relative number of gifted
intellects is possible, but not certain. The civilization of Greece,
in fine, was like some marvelous mutation in the realm of organic
life, the advent of a new and glorious creation. Modern civiliza-
tion is but the multiplication of its offspring. There has not yet
appeared a nobler type.
Our one undeniable superiority, then, is a fact not of inherent
quality, but of acquisition merely. It is our fuller and more ac-
curate knowledge and, underlying our knowledge, our more com-
plex, our more rigorous methods of investigation. It is, in a
word, our science.
In the light of our fuller knowledge it may be of interest now
to reexamine the Grecian conceptions of collective life, of the
nature, the origins and the uses of society, as the men of natural
science, on their part, have reexamined, corrected and restated
the Greek conceptions of the material world and of individual
living things. Applying our stricter canons of scientific method,
let us raise anew the questions of which Plato and his friends
discoursed.
The continuity of all phenomena, within the limits at least of
finite space and of finite time, is the master conception of our
modern thought. There is no drifting molecule of dust that does
not beat with impulse from solar systems very far away. There
is no living thing that is not related in bonds of kinship to every
other living thing. There is no conscious thought that has not a
history which, if told, would be the story of all existence from
eternity. There can be no theory, then, of any thing, or group of
things, of any change, or series of changes, which is not a coordi-
nate part of universal theory. Each science must not only be
compatible with every other science, but, inseparable from every
other, it must with them complete the unity of knowledge. More-
over, in every science the verdict of reason must accord with the
verdict of sense perception. This accord, indeed, is the very
98 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
substance of science, the innermost essence of verification.
Science cannot identify or measure truth by standards of utility.
It can only declare that this observation, or that generalization,
accords with, or stands in conflict with, other observations, other
generalizations. It may make for pleasure. We believe that in
the end it will. For the moment it may contribute only pain.
With either result the scientific man as such has no concern.
Accepting this conception of scientific knowledge as the basic
standard from which to judge the pretensions of any explanation
or theory of collective life, we expect to find, and we do in fact
find, that many sciences have something to contribute to the sys-
tematic analysis and interpretation of human society.
The natural groupings of human beings which are the bases of
their community life are in no important sense unique. From
botany and from zoology we learn that these groupings are com-
mon to all living things. The patches of lichen, the beds of moss,
the forests of pine or of oak, the swarms of bees, the hills of ants,
the shoals of fishes, the flocks of birds, the bands of squirrels,
the colonies of beavers, the villages of prairie dogs, the herds of
wild sheep, of antelope, of wild horses and wild cattle, the bands
of monkeys, the tribes and nations of men, form an unbroken
series of aggregations. In like manner, collective behavior is a
phenomenon not peculiar to the human species. Comparative
psychology assures us that from such simple beginnings as the
simultaneous reaction of protozoons to mechanical pressure, to
heat, to light, to electricity, or to chemical action, up through the
subinstinctive mutual aid of the ants, the sympathetically con-
certed action of pelicans in fishing or of wolves in hunting, to the
deliberate cooperation of Australian savages in corroboree, or of
Tammany braves in a political campaign, there is no point at
which we can draw a line and with certainty say : Here mere phys-
ical response of irritable matter to a stimulus passes into coopera-
tive instinct or here cooperative instinct, in its turn, passes over
into a reasoned cooperation.
The race of man, however, is more highly differentiated than
any other species of living things, and the wide range of human
variation, both physical and mental, which anthropology describes,
has determined a marvelous diversity of kind and of degree in the
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 99
social groupings of human beings. Between the feeble hordes
the shifting camp-fire groupings of primitive savagery, and those
great aggregations of men in the Mediterranean Basin who, with
infinite toil, laid the prehistoric foundations of civilization, archae-
ology reveals endless gradations, while the peoples who upon these
foundations have builded with political art the empires whose
story the historian repeats, have played the drama of collective
life with endless variations.
And throughout these gradations, this range of variation, there
is order the genetic order of evolutional change, the balanced
order of correlation. The presumption which biology establishes
that the reign of natural law extends to every realm of the world
of life is confirmed by the sciences of social phenomena. The
economist, the student of comparative jurisprudence, the investi-
gator of comparative politics, one and all assure us that the collec-
tive conduct of men is not fortuitous. The values of the market-
place rise and fall, the activities of commerce ebb and flow as the
tides of the sea. Law proceeds from law with the regularity of
a birthrate. Parties and policies arise, flourish, and are lost in
new issues with the sweep of a geometric curve.
There is, then, we must conclude, no branch of modern science
which does not contribute something to the theory of man's social
relations, and there is no aspect of these relations which may not
be illuminated by any scientific discovery. Obviously, it is not
only the structures and the functions of living things regarded as
individuals that have awakened scientific curiosity, but, as well,
the groupings of individuals and their collective behavior have
fixed the attention of observers in many domains of inquiry.
Under systematic scrutiny they have been revealed as legitimate
scientific data, admitting of examination by scientific methods.
Quite as certainly, however, the possibilities of the scientific
study of society have not been exhausted by any of the sciences
thus far named. Beyond the questions 4hat have been raised by
biologist and historian, by economist and student of politics, there
are fundamental ones that thrust themselves upon attention.
What, for example, is the process of group formation? What
are its conditions? What, if any, are its limits? What types or
kinds of groups or of groupings arise? Similar questions we are
loo STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
compelled to ask about pluralistic behavior. How does it begin ?
What are its causes? What types or kinds of pluralistic behavior
are there ? How does it develop into collective behavior and then
into concerted action for the achievement of a purpose? How
far, under given conditions, does it take the place of individual
action? To what extent does it become or does it create a con-
straining pressure upon the individual, in some degree controlling
him and setting bounds to his liberty?
Again, when combined or collective action is long continued
does it establish certain enduring relations among the individual
actors participating in it, and are these relations that complex
something which we call social organization? If so, what types
or kinds of social organization may we discriminate? What are
the stages of their genesis ? What are their respective limitations ?
Do they tend to become fixed or rigid, or may they remain plastic,
with a mobile and shifting membership?
Such questions provoke others. What consequences or re-
actions proceed from natural groupings and from collective be-
havior? It is commonly assumed that they create artificial con-
ditions of security and opportunity. What, then, is their effect
upon the process of evolutionary selection? What on the sur-
vival of any given race or stock? What upon the amplitude and
the richness of individual life? What upon the character of the
individual and of the race ? In a word, does the character of the
mass determine the character of the individual, or is individual
character fixed and determinative of the mass ? Or yet, perhaps,
within ascertainable limits, does each determine the other ?
Finally, there is a profound question of interpretation, the
ultimate question of causation. From the political sciences we
have derived conceptions of teleological causation. We have been
led to think of man as a creator, fashioning his social relations as
he would have them for the achievement of ends which he has
visualized. From biology we have derived the conception of an
ecological explanation. Life proceeds through an adaptation of
organism to environment. Environment moulds the organism,
provokes and directs its activities, and determines its fate. Is
social evolution, in like manner, an ecological adaptation ? Grant-
ing that it is, is it also an idealistic striving ? How far, then, may
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 101
our interpretation of social relations legitimately be idealistic, how
far must it be ecological ?
Under careful examination these radical inquiries about social
phenomena are seen to be closely clustered and correlated. Aris-
ing within a well-defined field of research, they are the problems
of a logically organized science. Presupposing general psychol-
ogy, presupposing also anthropology conceived as a special and
concrete psychology of the racial varieties of mankind, and
presupposing, finally, archaeology and history, sociology the
general science of society is the true scientific foundation
of such special sciences as political economy, jurisprudence and
politics. As such, it has little in common with that portentous
science of all social things, good and bad, but especially bad,
which has been invented for the sociologist by untethered intel-
lects that live by describing things which the non- journalistic eye
has not seen and defining things which have not entered into
the merely academic mind to conceive. The sociology with which
we are here concerned may be defined in the simple terms already
used and repeated as the science of the natural groupings and
the collective behavior of living things, including human beings.
Social philosophy grappled in its youth with its most difficult
questions, those, namely, of personal causation and of the action
of society upon the individual character. This was not because
systematic inquiry into the nature of society was a legacy from
anthropomorphic ages. On the contrary, it was because it arose
in that Grecian world where, for the first time, man had become
in the true sense of the word a citizen, and had experimentally
demonstrated that, through a free and plastic social organization,
he could in a measure control his own economic and moral destiny.
In Egypt and in Babylonia political integration, hastened and
hardened by empire-making militarism, had brought all the eastern
lands under a remorseless despotism. Peoples once free and
happy had been so crushed by exploitation that hope itself had
almost died within them. Despairing of redress at the hands of
any earthly power, and distrustful of themselves, they could only
create and embrace, according to their temperaments, the relig-
ions of resignation, or those of apocalyptic vision. In the Aegean
102 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Grecian world geography and race had conspired to prevent a too
rapid centralization of power. The city states were still free and
proud. Man still believed in himself and respected his fellow man.
Rejoicing in political as in artistic creation, loyal to the state which
his own thought had fashioned, he believed that he could make it
perfect, and thereby perfect himself. Therefore it is that the
first comprehensive work on the nature and possibilities of hu-
man society which has come down to us from the past was the
Utopian Republic of Plato.
The imperishable contribution which this work makes to our
reasoned knowledge of human society is found not in its com-
munistic plan of life, but rather in its analysis and its correlation
of moral and social forces ; above all, in its actual solution of the
problem of social reaction upon individual character. Assuming
that man as a personal cause can in fact mould the commonwealth
to his will, assuming also that the final end of endeavor is the
attainment of a good life which should consist substantially of
those kinds and degrees of pleasurable activity that reason can
approve of The Republic demonstrates that the "good life,"
so conceived, after all depends upon a certain objective condition
which reason and the human will may create, and which is called
"justice." Moreover, reason and will cannot create justice directly.
They can establish it only through the fine adjustments of a social
order. Thus, in the thought of Plato, the "good life" is a func-
tion of "justice," and to maintain justice is the function of social
organization.
It was but too obvious, however, to the men of Athens in its
Periclean Age, as it is to us to-day, that not all society establishes
justice, and that not all so-called justice yields the fruitage of
good life. It was inevitable to ask whether the failure is wholly
attributable to man's fault or weakness, or is caused in part by
those vicissitudes of fortune which, as Plato himself admitted,
finally govern all human affairs. It is to this problem that
Aristotle turns in The Politics, in some respects the most mas-
terful treatise upon human relations that has yet proceeded from
either the ancient or the modern mind. Based upon an inductive
study of one hundred and fifty-eight Grecian constitutions, it
analyzes the nature and functions of the state, it classifies and
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 103
critically compares the forms of government, it exposes both the
inherent and the adventitious limitations of each, and reveals the
causes of political change, including revolution, that lie deep in
human nature, in historical experience, in geography, climate and
soil, and in other circumstances of external fact. Thus, while
fully recognizing the creative part of conscious purpose, Aristotle
carries explanation back to impersonal causation. He lays the
foundation for an ecological interpretation. Inductive also in
his method, where Plato is speculative only, his work is more
strictly a scientific study of society.
While Plato was interested chiefly in problems of the social
welfare, and Aristotle chiefly in the antecedent problems of social
organization, they did not quite neglect a multitude of facts that
are dynamically antecedent to association, as organization is
functionally antecedent to welfare. Aristotle, especially, was
curious about the nature of those bonds of feeling and purpose
which hold men together in agreeable or useful organization, and
in his chapters on Friendship, in the Nicomachean Ethics, he
recognizes the importance of that sense of similarity, which, long
before his day, had been expressed in the proverb that "birds of a
feather flock together," and by Empedocles in the saying that
"like desires like." Perceiving that this social sense is instinctive,
he built the argument of The Politics upon the postulate that
man is a political animal.
This simple theory of the social mind was both broadened and
deepened by the disciples of Zeno. Alexander's conquests brought
into one political system Thracian and Athenian, Asiatic and
Egyptian. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Macedonian
Empire the brotherhood of man became for the first time a prac-
tically important fact, and stoic philosophy, reflecting upon the
moral consciousness common to barbarian and Greek, explained
it as the conformity of human reason to a universal reason imma-
nent in nature. This interpretation goes to the bottom of things,
for it is equivalent to the proposition that resemblances and sym-
pathies have their origins in like adaptations of otherwise differ-
ing men to the same objective fact or universal law.
With cosmopolitanism, however, came individualism, and with
it the final word of Greek philosophy upon the social relations.
104 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Epicureanism, with its emphasis upon individual initiative and
individual happiness, contended that the society is best which
imposes minimum restraints upon the individual will. From this
doctrine as a premise, the conclusion was inevitably reached that
social and legal relations rest wholly upon individual self-interest,
and the desire of each to secure himself against injury. The true
origin of society was therefore to be sought in contract or consent.
So the teaching of Plato and of Aristotle was turned about. The
assumption that society creates and moulds the individual became
the dogma that individuals, for individualistic ends, create society.
In the further development of social philosophy from these
Greek beginnings, the historical evolution of society itself con-
tinued to be the chief formative cause. To the Roman mind, with
its genius for political organization, the problems of organization
in general made strong appeal. But the great achievement of
Roman intellect was its analysis and correlation of the facts from
which organization proceeds. The conflicts of mind provoked by
conflicts of interest, the meeting or concert of minds, the emer-
gence therefrom of contract, and the ultimate expression in law
of the collective reason and final decision of the community
these phenomena were more completely understood and more
accurately described by the Roman legal writers than by the
Greek philosophers. While The Republic and The Laws of
Plato tell us what laws ought to be, The Republic and The
Laws of Cicero tell us what laws are and how they came to be.
The Romans, moreover, by their conquest, incorporation and
assimilation of many diverse peoples, acquired a knowledge never
before attained of the ethnic composition and other physical
phenomena of a social population that are determinative of the
social mind, and to this day there are no better descriptive studies
of some aspects of ethnic character and influence than Caesar's
Gallic War and the Germania of Tacitus.
The rise of the Christian Church and the extension of its
authority from Rome to the remotest frontier of the secular
empire offered to contemplation a new and magnificent social
order. It presented new ideals of human well-being and a com-
prehensive organization. Claiming to be in truth that City of
God which Augustine portrayed, it demanded recognition from.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 105
kings no less than from people as a universal society within which
the secular state must henceforth take a subordinate place. To
vindicate not only the historical, but also the rational claim of
the secular empire over the ecclesiastical power, was the purpose
of Dante's De Monarchic*.
It was not chiefly by argument, however, that the conflicting
claims of secular and ecclesiastical authority were adjusted. The
secular state established its dominion by force, and thereby
brought again into the foreground of consciousness the questions
of social psychology. For political force is something more than
the vis viva of a physical body. It is the conquering power of a
political body, the cohesion and self-directing quality of which are
not accounted for by instinct and sympathy only. It is a com-
manding because it is a commanded group. A chieftain speaks
and followers obey. A prince rules and subjects render service.
With amazing precision, Nicolo Machiavelli analyzed the psychol-
ogy of this relation as it had never been analyzed before. The
leader obtains obedience through his power to browbeat lesser
men, to inspire and to awe. He is feared and revered not so
much for his physical strength alone, as for his nerve, his re-
sourcefulness and craft; because he is the fearless man in the
midst of men who fear. Collectively they could make an end of
him, but that is the last thing they would wish to do. For, deeper
and more overmastering than their fear of him is their fear of a
hostile world environing them and forever threatening their ex-
istence, and they have discovered that their man of iron is able
to make that outer world fear him as they also fear. Loyally and
without question obeying him, they are safe. They conquer and
make their way, they build the state and extend its domain. The
alternative is servitude or extermination. Therefore, the supreme
duty of the prince is to maintain his authority. The supreme duty
of the state, whether principality or republic, is to maintain its
dominion and its vital quality of growth. Greek civilization was
overwhelmed because the Greek ideal was a static perfection.
Rome, expanding, became mistress of the world. Consequently,
to the conduct of the prince and to the policy of the state, pro-
founder standards than those of ordinary morals apply. Self-
preservation through adequate power and ceaseless growth, is the
106 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
supreme law. The social order may not rightfully be permitted,
for moral reasons, to disintegrate, as the Queen of Siam was left
to drown because it would have been sacrilege to lay hands upon
her sacred person. Machiavelli did not see in the struggle for
existence all that Darwin was to discover in it, but he did grasp
the tremendous truth that out of it springs social life, to be for-
ever conditioned by it, and that no system of state-craft or of
ethics which is constructed in lofty disregard of it can be other
than childish.
After Machiavelli, it was easy for the political theorists, Bodin
and Althusius, to construct their concepts of sovereignty and the
state. Society, as Bodin taught, arises from instinct and is devel-
oped by experiences of the pleasure and utility of association.
Within the bosom of society the state is created by force, and
sovereignty is supreme political power "over citizens and subjects
unrestricted by the laws." This conception was more simple than
the facts, some of which Althusius more clearly perceived. De-
fining sovereignty as the supereminent power of doing what per-
tains to the spiritual and bodily welfare of the members of the
state, Althusius argued that it inheres in the totality of the people
and cannot be alienated or delegated. So conceived, sovereignty
is the supreme form and expression of a social will, and as such
it is the focal phenomenon of the social mind.
Demonstration, finally, that society and the state, a social will,
rightful authority, and political power, have all one common and
inevitable origin, was the achievement that Thomas Hobbes es-
sayed. Writing in an age when royal absolutism was striving to
maintain itself against popular revolt, Hobbes derived both society
and sovereignty from a covenant whereby men in a state of nature
escape from intolerable ills. Freely and gladly yielding their
individual wills, men alienate their natural sovereignty, and the
monarch or the parliament so obtaining authority rightfully rules
absolutely, wielding force to any necessary extent. If any one
has refused to join in the covenant, he has elected to remain in a
state of nature which is a state of war. He therefore cannot com-
plain if force is used against him. If, however, the titular sover-
eign fails to maintain his authority, society is resolved back into
anarchy, and the social covenant must be re-made. Therefore
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 107
the revolution that succeeds is right. There is probably not in
all literature, outside of the exact sciences, so complete an ex-
ample of remorseless logic as De Corpore Politico is.
Its one vulnerable point, namely the premise, was perceived by
Locke. Denying that the state of nature is one of war, or for any
reason intolerable, since men of one blood and kindly disposed
spontaneously aid one another, Locke contends that the people
never alienate their natural sovereignty. A natural society, they
forever are the state, the source and real wielder of power, al-
though artificially by covenant creating institutions for utilitarian
ends and delegating a limited authority to governments.
Like history, social theory had now repeated itself. From new
Utopias and the doctrine that the scope and character of social
organization determine the quality of individual life, it had re-
turned to the conclusion of Epicurus that individuals in a purely
rationalistic way create society for individualistic ends.
Throughout this long development and in all the various phases
that it had assumed from Plato to Locke, social theory, while not
neglecting observation or ignoring external cause, had been on
the whole speculative, or, to use Karl Pearson's word, "ideologi-
cal," and its interpretations had been chiefly in terms of subjective
causes, namely, motives and reasons. But from ideological be-
ginnings, science, as Pearson contends, becomes in the second
stage of its evolution observational, and, finally, in a third stage,
metrical or quantitative and in a strict sense of the word
inductive.
In Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois the speculative methods
of the social philosophers are frankly abandoned. The work is
descriptive and its conclusions stand or fall with the accuracy and
sufficiency of concrete facts, from which the conclusions are
derived by generalization. That this work, as judged by modern
standards, is elementary and crude should not prevent our recog-
nition of the service it rendered in turning attention to inductive
method, in awakening interest in purely objective interpretations
of social phenomena, and in stimulating by suggestion and ex-
ample those researches which have accumulated for the use of
scholars today an enormous mass of ethnographic and other
io8 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
descriptive sociological material. Montesquieu converted social
philosophy into descriptive social science.
Meanwhile, the beginnings of quantitative investigation had
been made. Ancient states enumerated their populations for
purposes of taxation and military service. The Roman census
was taken at five-year intervals, and there were probably at least
seventy such enumerations. The mediaeval church kept records
of marriages, births and deaths, primarily for the purpose of de-
ciding disputed cases of kinship-degree barring sacramental mar-
riage. The Domesday survey of England, ordered by William of
Normandy, is an admirable document of descriptive sociology.
Manorial records in many instances are accurate and detailed de-
scriptions of local communities.
Masses of figures, as such, however, are descriptive only. They
may be profoundly significant, but they yield their meaning only
to interpretative analyses that involve the use of somewhat refined
mathematical methods. The first step in this direction was taken
by the astronomer, Edmund Halley, in 1693. John Graunt had
compiled interesting tables of mortality, but had not derived from
them any important induction. Halley drew up a life table from
observations in Dresden, from which he demonstrated what pro-
portion of all persons born in any given year would die or survive
in each succeeding year. This was the first true inductive gen-
eralization of law in the realm of social phenomena. To the in-
fluence of another great mathematician and astronomer, Laplace,
the subsequent developments of quantitative method in sociological
research must in large measure be attributed. Laplace's marvel-
ous mind ranged over the whole field of human knowledge. He
drew about him the original and interesting men of his time.
Among these was the younger mathematician, Jean Baptiste
Fourier, whose monographic studies of the city of Paris revealed
the possibilities of scientific inference from statistics of aggrega-
tion, of births and deaths, and of distributions of population by
age and sex. The Belgian statistician, Quetelet, whose Physique
sociale and Sur I'Homme were the first serious attempts to
extend statistical methods to a study of the mental and moral
phenomena of society, acknowledged his indebtedness to Fourier
and through him to Laplace.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 109
It is well to linger a moment upon the specific and important
contribution that Quetelet made to a quantitative method in social
science. It consisted in certain applications of the theory of
probability. Things that happen by chance reveal in their group-
ing or arrangement a remarkable uniformity. When a cartload of
bricks is dropped upon the ground, the individual bricks scatter
in every direction, but more of them fall closely about a central
point than elsewhere, and the aggregate is a roughly rounded pile.
If hundreds of bushels of wheat comprising millions of individual
grains fall from a shute to a floor below, the rounded pile presents
an exceedingly accurate symmetry. This means that the greater
the number of chance distributions of any given kind, the more
precise is the regularity of their distribution. Mathematically it
is represented by a curve, known as the probability curve, or- the
curve of error.
This term, "curve of error," has also an interesting significance.
If a hundred different men should measure the distance between
two points, their results, however carefully they did their work,
would not precisely agree. The measuring rod or line might
undergo slight changes, and men differ in manual dexterity and
in accuracy of sight. Assuming that there is a true value or
measure of distance, actual measurements differ from it by cer-
tain "errors" or "deviations." If these errors have been made
by chance only, their distribution corresponds to the probability
curve. If, however, they have been subject to a disturbing cause
or bias, their curve is unlike the probability curve. Here, then,
is a principle which can be and has long been used to determine
the accuracy of scientific observation and measurement, both for
theoretical purposes, as in astronomy, and for practical purposes,
as in engineering.
But, obviously, the principle has a more profound meaning also.
Any distribution of a great many numerical items which notice-
ably differs from the curve of probability reveals specific causa-
tion. It tells us at once that we have to look for a cause which
is creating effects different from those that might happen by
chance, and by its form it may give us some hint of what the cause
is or where to look for it.
And even this meaning is not quite all. The curve of proba-
1 10 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
bility gives us the only precise meaning of the term "scientific
knowledge." We have seen that human observations and meas-
urements are never precisely accurate. Generalizations, in like
manner, are never precisely true. The formulation of a law of
nature can never be made absolutely exact. Scientific knowledge,
therefore, is not that absolutely exact and certain knowledge
which the popular mind assumes it to be. It is certainty or exact-
ness within a range of error, and to diminish that range is the
object of scientific endeavor. When, therefore, we are told that
recent work in astronomy demonstrates that the Newtonian laws
of motion and the law of gravitation, as Newton formulated it,
have been corrected by a decimal or two, we are not told that these
laws are invalid and that science, after making a splurge in the
world, has arrived at bankruptcy, as M. Brunetiere dogmatically
proclaimed ; we are told only what any modest scientific gentleman
of fair mathematical attainments could very positively have
foretold.
That the ideas and the methods of Laplace greatly influenced
the thought of Auguste Comte, we have abundant evidence. Al-
though he was a teacher of mathematics, Comte did not develop
his own generalizations by mathematical methods. But he did
grasp and exploit the notion that science differs from speculative
philosophy in virture of its limited range no less than by reason
of its practice of verification. Science can tell us how things are
distributed in orderly coexistence and in orderly sequence, and it
can discover with what other distributions any given distribution
is most closely correlated. The various sciences themselves,
Comte contended, are related to one another in a sequence at once
genetic and logical, and to the complete body of knowledge which
they collectively present he gave the name Philosophic positive.
In his hierarchy, mathematics is the initial, the most abstract,
and the most general science. The science of society is most
concrete and special, and it is the final science to which all sciences
that go before it are tributary. To distinguish the comprehensive
social science from all fragmentary studies of society, dealing in
their various ways with more or less definite divisions of social
phenomena, and to mark it off as a body of pure knowledge from
all programs of social reform, he called the social science "La
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY in
Sociologie." As Comte conceived it, sociology should exclude
theological and metaphysical explanations, and keep itself distinct
from ethical applications. Above all, it should keep itself free
from the revolutionary spirit. In his youth Comte had been a
disciple of Saint Simon, but he had wearied of revolutionary
reform, and had come to believe that enduring social reconstruc-
tion must stand on firm and broad foundations of scientific
knowledge.
Comte predicted sociology; he did not himself create it. The
first strictly sociological treatise was the Social Statics of Her-
bert Spencer, published in 1850. Without either accepting or
rejecting that comparison of Spencer to the great intellects of
Greece, which his more ardent disciples have made, it may at
once be acknowledged that the Social Statics challenges com-
parison to an extent that perhaps no other writing does, with both
The Republic of Plato and The Politics of Aristotle. It
propounds the same problems which they discuss, and it offers
solutions which, though not identical with theirs, are closely
parallel to them. The object of human effort for Spencer is hap-
piness : and as he conceives of happiness, it does not greatly differ
from the joy of rational activity which was the "good life" for
Plato. Happiness depends upon external conditions, which are,
namely, liberty and justice. Justice, however, for Mr. Spencer,
is that limitation of liberty which equalizes it among men, whereas
for Plato it was that specialization of work and opportunity which
enables every man to do what he can do best, and to be what he
can be perfectly. Both writers agree that to establish justice is
the proximate purpose, or function, of society.
So far there is nothing essentially new in the Social Statics.
But at the end of the book there is a discussion of the dynamics
of society, the originality of which no well-informed critic has
ventured to call in question. Society obviously is not at present
in the perfect equilibrium of equalized liberty. Are social tensions
and pressures, then, tending, Mr. Spencer asks, toward equilib-
rium ? Have they been tending toward it from the beginning, and
if so, to what causes may the progressive recomposition of forces
be attributed?
Mr. Spencer resolves these questions into the problem of human
ii2 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
nature. 1 No mere social mechanism will ever maintain the justice
of equalized liberty in a community of men whose supreme desire
is to exploit the imperfections of the law. The equilibrium of
conflicting interests must be established in the human heart, as
in outward relations. The assumption of political science, as of
theology, had been that human nature is unchanging until con-
verted by supernatural agency. Political science, influenced and
colored by theology, had pictured unchanging human nature as
essentially evil, self-seeking and ruthless. The eighteenth century,
reviving Epicurean individualism, reaffirmed also the doctrine
that human nature is essentially good. The apparently inter-
mediate position of Platonism and of Stoicism that man as a
composite being is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, and that
he is modifiable by adjustment to an objective law or condition,
had reappeared in the teaching of Montesquieu and of Condorcet
which culminated in the historical philosophy of Buckle that
the human mind is directly or indirectly moulded by the topog-
raphy, soil and climate of its physical environment. These writ-
ers, however, did not go so far as to assume that "inner moral
nature" or "basic personality" which theology proclaims sinful,
is regenerated by material causes. They argued only that man's
temperament and dominant emotions, his ideas and beliefs, his
superstition and his rationalism, are affected by physical condi-
tions. The proposition that human nature at the beginning of a
long evolutionary process was wicked, and that, under the action
of natural causes which can be identified and formulated, it tends
to become good, is Spencerian, and is new.
Accepting as he did the generalization, which Lamarck had
made familiar in biology, that living things are ceaselessly trans-
1 1 use this phrase and I think we should continue to use it as it has
been employed for generations to denote the concrete synthesis of "origi-
nal nature" and "second nature." "Original nature" (Thorndike's phrase)
is hereditary. It is made up of instincts. "Second nature" is not heredi-
tary, and therefore is not truly "nature" at all. It is made up of "recon-
ditionings" of instincts (by education and otherwise) and of habits.
Discrimination of these two natures followed upon the general acceptance
of Weismann's contention that "acquired" traits are not hereditary. To
"original nature" Spencer's argument does not apply unless in five thousand
generations or so instincts have been modified by mutation and selection.
They have not been modified by use and disuse. To "second nature" the
argument applies in full force.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 113
formed through a continuing adaptation of organism to environ-
ment, Mr. Spencer perceived an overlooked significance of
political integration. At the beginning of human progress, small
social groups were so situated in relation to a common food sup-
ply that they were almost continuously engaged in warfare, but
when, through successive conquests, small groups had been united
in great states or national federations it became possible for a
majority of men to give up military pursuits and to devote them-
selves to arts of peace. Herein, as Mr. Spencer argued, lay not
only the possibility, but also the certainty, that primitive human
nature, a product of the adaptation of primitive man to the condi-
tions of his existence, must be as brutal and cruel and treacherous
as theology had pictured the unregenerate human soul, but that
developed man, under widely different conditions must necessarily
be transformed into the kindly and helpful being who can live on
good terms with his neighbors, and in cooperation with all man-
kind.
In this thesis of the concluding pages of Social Statics we
have the germ of Mr. Spencer's rounded doctrine of evolution.
Explicitly, or by implication, it contains all the cardinal proposi-
tions of the Synthetic Philosophy: that equilibration is the
primary cosmic process; that integration and differentiation are
necessary consequences ; that life is a correspondence of internal
to external changes ; that mental evolution is the extension of ad-
justment in space and in time; that social evolution is progress
from militarism to industrialism; that moral evolution is the
conciliation of egoistic and altruistic impulses.
Mr. Spencer's sociological books are many and voluminous.
We nowhere find in them a compact and logical summary of his
sociological system. The following scheme of propositions was
not made by him, but it received his endorsement :*
Societies are organisms, or they are super-organic aggregates.
Between societies and environing bodies, as between other finite
aggregates in nature, there is an equilibration of energy. There
is equilibration between society and society, between one social
group and another, between one social class and another.
Equilibration between society and society, between societies
1 In a letter to the author, December 7, 1900.
H4 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
and their environment, takes the form of a struggle for existence
among societies. Conflict becomes an habitual activity of society.
In this struggle for existence fear of the living and of the dead
arises. Fear of the living, supplementing conflict, becomes the
root of political control. Fear of the dead becomes the root of
religious control.
Organized and directed by political and religious control, ha-
bitual conflict becomes militarism. Militarism moulds character
and conduct and social organization into fitness for habitual
warfare.
Militarism combines small social groups into larger ones, these
into larger and yet larger ones. It achieves social integration.
This process widens the area within which an increasingly large
proportion of the population is habitually at peace and industrially
employed.
Habitual peace and industry mould character, conduct and social
organization into fitness for peaceful, friendly, sympathetic life.
In the peaceful type of society coercion diminishes, spontaneity
and individual initiative increase. Social organization becomes
plastic, and individuals moving freely from place to place change
their social relations without destroying social cohesion, the ele-
ments of which are sympathy and knowledge in place of primitive
force.
The change from militarism to industrialism depends upon the
extent of the equilibration of energy between any given society
and its neighboring societies, between the societies of any given
race and those of other races, between society in general and its
physical environment. Peaceful industrialism cannot finally be
established until the equilibrium of nations and of races is estab-
lished.
In society, as in other finite aggregates, the extent of differen-
tiation and the total complexity of all the evolutionary processes
depend upon the rate at which integration proceeds. The slower
the rate the more complete and satisfactory is the evolution.
Mr. Spencer organized sociology as a science, and he demon-
strated principles which must always hold a central place in
sociological theory, whatever its further development may be. But
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 115
his analyses are by no means always exhaustive, and he raised
many questions which he left unanswered.
The most fundamental question that his exposition left open,
and over which dispute soon arose, is that of the true nature of
the social aggregate. Is it, strictly speaking, an organism, or is it
more accurately described by Spencer's alternative phrase a
super-organic aggregate? The notion propounded by Spencer
that a typical society, consisting of individuals both dwelling and
working together, is as truly an organism as is the animal or the
vegetal body composed of cells and differentiated into mutually
dependent tissues and organs, was exploited by Schaffle, 1 and
Spencer himself took it seriously enough to draw from it the
classifications followed in his Descriptive Sociology. Nothing
came of it, however, and the alternative conception has prevailed.
Herd habit, social sentiment and society are psychological phe-
nomena. They are products of behavior, and social bonds no less
than collective performances are common activities and inter-
activities of individual minds.
When this assumption is made, the further question arises:
What definite mode of mental action or of behavior is the ele-
mentary social fact ? There are four possibilities, namely, reason,
impression, imitation, and pluralistic response to common stimu-
lation.
The Platonic and the social contract theories assume that men
perceive the utility of association and with conscious purpose
endeavor to perfect it. The social bond, therefore, is reason.
Machiavelli and the writers on sovereignty discovered the social
role of that mental phenomenon which modern psychologists call
impression, the power, namely, of the strong personality to awe
or inspire the many, the power of the mass to overawe the indi-
vidual. Durkheim with great ability maintained that this phe-
nomenon is the distinctly social or society-creating activity of the
mind. In // Convito, Dante descriptively analyzes the familiar
fact of imitation. The passage is of curious interest, because it
pictures imitations as subject to refraction by media the copy not
being quite like the example as spreading in a geometrical pro-
1 Bau und Leben des sodden Korpers.
n6 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
gression, and as setting up contradictions or duels among them-
selves. There is no evidence that Gabriel Tarde derived the
theses of his brilliant Les Lois de limitation from // Convito,
but it would not matter if he did. Nor does it matter whether M.
Tarde derived much or little from the acute discussion of imita-
tion by Walter Bagehot in the Physics and Politics. Tarde
examined imitation and all that can be shown to proceed from it
with thoroughness and penetration. He gave to the word a pre-
cise and characteristic meaning, that of the action at a distance
of one mind upon another, whether consciously willed or not
willed, passive or active. If it were possible to demonstrate that
society is but a tissue of imitations defined as intermental actions,
it would be difficult to add much of interest or value to Tarde's
argument.
It is demonstrable, however, that neither imitation nor impres-
sion is the most elementary social fact. It long ago became un-
necessary to argue that reason is not. When an audience springs
to its feet at the cry of fire, its initial action is not imitation.
Example and imitation enter as complicating factors the instant
that movement toward the doors begins. The power of impres-
sion of a cool and fearless man to overawe and quell may
then, by some rare good fortune, intervene to prevent panic, until
reason can direct an orderly dispersion. The initial action is
merely a pluralistic response (i.e. a reaction by more than one
individual) to a common stimulation. In terms of like or of
unlike, of prompt or of slow, of persistent or of intermittent
response, all the phenomena of natural grouping and of collective
behavior can be stated and interpreted. Intermental action is
interstimulation and response. Like-response, complicated by
intermental action, may become competition or may become con-
certed volition. It may become solidarity. Unlike-response dif-
ferentiates and individualizes; it may disintegrate.
If some such explanation of the social process is tenable, it goes
far to resolve the difficulties that are presented by an apparent
dualism of social causation. The regional environment of a
population sustains and energizes it, constrains and depletes it,
and with infinite variety of provocation stimulates it. Through a
medium of circumstances, including happenings of every descrip-
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 117
tion, environmental influence affects behavior. These are the
original causes of society and of social evolution. The products
of response, including personal influence, conscious motives and
ideas, and the historical tradition, reacting as secondary stimuli,
are real and immediate, although in a strict sense secondary, causes
of social change. Both groups of causes, the primary and the
secondary, act upon brain and nerve cells in the same way, by
constraint and by provocation.
By means of this conception of social causation, the present
correlation and coordination of sociological problems is effected.
To environmental influence and circumstantial pressure response
is pluralistic. Animals dwell together in swarms and in herds,
and in regional aggregations. Men dwell together in wandering
bands or in populations. The struggle for existence becomes a
collective as well as an individual affair. From areas where the
struggle is most severe or becoming intolerable men and animals
move, if they can, to more favorable regions. Out of the rivalries
and conflicts of migrating or colonizing aggregations develop new
circumstantial pressures and new stimulations.
Under the action of these forces, populations assume varying
degrees of density and of composition. According to their density
and composition they react with more or less unity to a multiply-
ing number of common stimuli, thereby becoming more or less
alike in behavior, more or less homogeneous in feeling, thought
and purpose. Through ever increasing intermental activity, they
become increasingly conscious of their differences and resem-
blances. A consciousness of behavioristic kinds, combining with
and supplementing like-response to stimulation, converts instinc-
tive consorting and consorting by unthinking habit into a con-
sciously preferential association, and thereby converts a herd into
society. Also, combining with and supplementing like-response
to stimulation, the consciousness of kind converts a merely in-
stinctive cooperation into concerted action.
Concerted action modifies the relation of organism to environ-
ment and enhances well-being. It shields or removes individuals
from destructive environmental influences. It multiplies contacts
with stimuli. Above all, it so extensively recombines natural ele-
ments and forces, and so effectively directs their discharge through
1 1 8 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
new channels, that the environment itself, as far as its specific
relation to man is concerned, is profoundly altered. Its adverse
pressure upon him is diminished, its positive contribution to him
and its stimulation of him are increased.
Individual differences of opinion and of ability may raise co-
operation to a maximum effectiveness, while certain differences
of attitude or of conduct may diminish its effectiveness or even
destroy it. Human societies, perceiving these complications, be-
come sensitive to the practical bearing of ethnic unity and of
moral solidarity. Differences of blood and of speech, of creed and
of conduct arrest attention and awaken distrust. Unconsciously in
part, but consciously also in a measure, a great deal of collective
action is directed upon the task of stamping out various differ-
ences among men. Such collective action is a true social pressure,
a constraining power of the social mass upon the social units.
Its understood purpose and its actual function are to increase the
practical effectiveness of society as an instrumentality for the pro-
tection and improvement of life. Exterminating or restraining
the anti-social, it selects for survival and encouragement the sym-
pathetic, the intelligent, and the self-controlled, thereby converting
the biological survival of the fit into a survival of the better for
human purposes. Nevertheless, being repressive and destructive,
social pressure curtails variation ; it limits differentiation ; it checks
spontaneity; it sets bounds to individuality, and tends to create
rigidity of social organization. It is of maximum utility, there-
fore, when it is just strong enough to control and to eliminate the
elements that obstruct cooperation, without limiting the free activ-
ity of elements that already are adapted to social life. The social
pressure that exceeds this degree is injurious and is justifiable only
when it is the substitution of a less repression from within for a
greater threatened repression from without. That society best
fulfils its purpose which maintains a highly organized and effective
cooperation with the least social pressure.
That social pressure tends to increase when circumstantial pres-
sure increases, is a conclusion suggested by history and by current
observation. Not only does the struggle of the nations to obtain
room for their multiplying millions create coercive policies, as Mr.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 119
Spencer explained, but so also do impending dangers and insuffer-
able disorders.
To the extent that society protects man and, multiplying the
stimuli that act upon him positively, enables him to improve and
enrich himself, it converts a generic evolution into the specific
thing progress. Integration and differentiation, correlation and
coordination, fill out the formula of evolution, but they are not
necessarily a betterment of conscious existence. Evolution is also
progress when each unit of the integrated mass or group becomes
an end as well as a means. In the evolution of vegetal and of
animal life there has been much ruthless sacrificing of the in-
dividual to the race. In human evolution the race has been main-
tained and differentiated at a diminishing cost to the Individual.
This has been accomplished by and through society. In the higher
types of civilization, individual freedom and well-being are con-
tinually increased without necessary injury to the race. Race
maintenance and evolution with diminishing cost of individual life,
with increasing freedom, power and happiness of the individual
person, is progress.
So far, sociology at its best has been a logically organized body
of observations and categorical inferences. Through an increas-
ing use of statistical methods, it may take on the quantitative char-
acter.
To make the possibility clear, it is necessary to call attention to
the significance which that very simple numerical term, the arith-
metic average, has come to have in the theory of evolution.
If there is a struggle for existence in which certain organisms
perish, while others survive, it is plain that the survivors tend,
under given environmental conditions, to become alike, since all
must possess those structural peculiarities and those habits which
give advantage over competitors. The more specific the condi-
tions and fierce the struggle, the more surely is an individual
marked for destruction if he varies greatly from the successful
type or norm. Now most peculiarities of organic structure and
activity admit of measuring like height, or of counting like the
number of veins in a leaf. The measures or other numbers relat-
ing to thousands of individuals may be brought together in col-
izo STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
umns or tables. Their averages may be obtained, and the differ-
ence between each number and the average of all numbers of the
same class may be found. Then, if the numbers, as shown by
their deviations, have a wide dispersion from the average, we
know that the individuals to which they relate have not for a long
time been subjected to a relatively intense struggle for existence.
It has been possible for them to vary within wide limits, and yet
to survive. If, on the other hand, the numbers cluster closely
about their average, we know that the individuals to which they
refer have been subjected to a severe unifying pressure. They
have ceased to vary because such as strayed from type lost their
hold on life.
Applications of this principle developed by Galton, Karl Pear-
son, and others, have proved to be of great value in biology, in
psychology, and in anthropology. There is reason to believe that
in sociology they will be not less valuable, especially as in all
statistical operations the possibilities of error diminish as the
number of numerical items of any given class, and happening to
be available for analysis, increases. Sociology will preeminently
enjoy this advantage.
The first attempt to make a statistical statement of the greatest
possible number of sociological problems, and to indicate their
statistical solutions, we owe to Mayo-Smith. It was possible
when he wrote to give precision to statistical studies of population
at one end of the series of social phenomena, to studies of or-
ganization and welfare at the other end. The intermediate and
crucial problems of mental type and variability, of selective social
choice, and of social pressure could not then be handled by statisti-
cal methods. It is becoming possible now to state and solve them
quantitatively by employing various new methodical devices. For
example, Rodolfo Benini, of Pavia, 1 has demonstrated that it is
a comparatively simple matter to measure a phenomenon seem-
ingly so elusive as the consciousness of kind. Tabulating the
Italian statistics of marriage, he ascertains how many bachelors
would marry maidens, how many widowers would marry widows,
how many men of a given age class would marry women of the
same age class, how many men of a given nationality would marry
*Principii di Demografia.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 121
women of the same nationality, how many Catholics would marry
Catholics, how many men following a given occupation would
marry women whose fathers followed the same occupation, if
all of these combinations happened strictly by chance. Compar-
ing the probable numbers with the actual selections, he obtains
index numbers of selective choice or preference, thereby deter-
mining the intensity with which, as Empedocles remarked, "like
desires like." This method is applicable to a wide range of social
choices.
By a procedure not very different we could measure social
pressure. In modern times social pressure is definitely distributed
through provisions of statute law, and these admit of tabulations
from which index numbers could be obtained. By mears of vary-
ing index numbers, therefore, we could measure the varying
degrees of social pressure as we measure changes in the purchas-
ing power of gold. It is hardly too much to say that all of the
chief theorems of sociology probably admit of quantitative state-
ment, solution and correlation.
In this all too hasty survey of sociological problems and meth-
ods, certain provisional conclusions have been indicated. But for
the moment they seem to involve us in new difficulties. Ap-
parently, they present curious contradictions. Mr. Spencer tells
us that in society, as in aggregates of inorganic things, the char-
acter of the units determines the character of the mass, and daily
observation affords many seeming confirmations of this view.
The collective behavior and the agreeing purpose of a thousand
German-born, or Italian-born Americans, are not altogether like
the collective behavior and the agreeing purpose of an equal num-
ber of descendants of New England Puritans under like circum-
stances and in the same environment. On the other hand, Plato
and a long line of later philosophers assumed without question
that the character of the mass determines the quality and the
conduct of its component units. This assumption is borne out by
the biological conclusion that environment moulds the organism,
and it is the postulate of both our educational policy and our
legislation. That each proposition is true within limits we may
perhaps infer from parallel phenomena in the physical world.
122 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
The geologist tells us that rock which is so highly crystalline that
it inexorably determines the character of any structure built of
it, may, nevertheless, become wax-like under pressure. In like
manner, the harshly individualistic character of the frontiersman
determines the scope and the quality of the elementary social rela-
tions which are sufficient for his need; while in the dense human
mass of a great metropolis, with its traditions and conventions,
its municipal ordinances and its highly organized police power, the
individual becomes plastic and conformable. Some traits of in-
dividuality are lost, and the traits of a type, or class, appear.
The causation is obvious. As social evolution transforms the
frontier into villages and towns, and draws population from these
to the metropolis, it converts circumstantial into social pressure,
which compels the human units of the community to conform
their characters and their lives to a social norm. But now another
antinomy appears. Sociology confirms the teaching of biology
that individuation is a function of liberty, of freedom and occa-
sion to vary from type ; and society constrains. Yet society, not-
withstanding its constraining power, on the whole diminishes the
sacrifice of the individual to the race, enlarges liberty and height-
ens individual life.
The problem again is one of limits, but in this case it is one of
new factors also. While circumstantial pressure tends always to
increase social pressure, the relation is not unvarying. The physi-
cal and the mental composition of the population affect the ratio.
Homogeneous communities are normally democratic. Highly
heterogeneous communities, until they attain a very high level of
moral and intellectual development, normally evolve coercive
authority. The Quaker congregation needs not even a priest.
The Roman Catholic communion, embracing all sorts and condi-
tions of men, is governed by the Hierarchy. The New England
town can manage its affairs in town meeting. New York City
is ruled by Tammany Hall.
In this relation of demotic composition to social pressure lies
the real importance of those practical questions pertaining to
immigration and its restriction which now interest the American
people. Homogeneity need not disappear, and social pressure
need not increase to the point of despotism if assimilation rapidly
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY 123
transforms the heterogeneous invaders. Liberty can be preserved
and extended even under an increasing circumstantial pressure,
as long as society continues to be creative not only of social pres-
sure, but also of its strictly characteristic product a people in
the sociological sense of the word.
As the sociologist views it, a people is not merely a middle class,
or a lower class, in an economic stratification of the population.
Much less is it that rabble of the ignorant and the lawless which
bulks in the aristocrat's imagination. A people is a psychological
middle class between the arrogant and self-sufficient at one ex-
treme, the rude and vulgar at the other extreme. A people is
composed of the considerate, which is to say, of those who have
both manners and ideas. It is that part of a population which
can lay some claim to mental and moral unity, which can do things
collectively, which has, in a word, common purposes backed by
social instincts and habits. Cicero defined it perfectly. By a
people, we are to understand, he said, "not every group of human
beings, however brought together, but a multitude united by a
common sense of right and by a community of interest." 1
We are not at the end, however, of complications and of seem-
ing contradiction. The nation that should adopt the policy of
absolute exclusion of alien elements might lose thereby more than
it could gain. We have observed that stimuli are multiplied by
social contacts. Who would venture to estimate the amount of
well-being that has come to this American nation by reason of
that broadened outlook upon the world, that swift play of mind
upon mind, and that true understanding of man by man which
are ours because our gates have been held open to our kindred
of all lands?
Once more, then, our problem is seen to be one of limits, within
which a given effect of social forces may be anticipated. And
because this is the nature also of those practical problems with
which statecraft has to do, we discover the possible practical
value of theoretical sociology as a scientific criticism of public
policy. Sociology has been ridiculed as a science which formu-
lates in forbidding terminology the obvious conclusions of com-
mon sense. The jibe is an old one, and each science in its day has
*De Republica, I, 25,
124 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
inherited it. By common sense men could build a bridge that
would sustain a given load, but they would waste material. Com-
mon sense does not tell the engineer what cross-section his girders
must have both to carry the load desired and to insure his reten-
tion as a fit adviser to an economical corporation. Under the
pressure of external forces, either military or economic, nations
adopt policies of unification, which often are extreme and unneces-
sarily costly in many ways. Reacting from these, they relax the
social pressure not only on the socialized and self-controlled, but
also on the unscrupulous exploiter and the predatory criminal. It
will be possible to subject these empirical policies to a rational
criticism when sociology has provided us with approximately ac-
curate measures of social forces, and of the correlation between
social pressure and both the concentration and the composition
of the population. Upon the success or failure of our attempt to
obtain these will depend the possibility of knowing certainly what
policies under given conditions further human progress, and what
retard.
PART II
ANALYTICAL
CHAPTER VII
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY
To the scientific mind the universe is order; to the practical
mind it is possibility. Both minds, however, know that order and
possibility are compatible ; it is only the mind that is neither prac-
tical nor scientific which imagines that they are not. Therefore,
the scientific mind is under logical obligation to show hov order
accommodates possibility, and the practical mind, if wise, will
wish to know what bounds are set to possibility by order. These
intellectual requirements bear particularly upon those specialized
investigators who undertake to find an order, admitting of descrip-
tion in categories of cause and law, in the practical activities them-
selves of all sorts and conditions of men. If they proclaim a
science of society they must themselves understand, and they must
make clear to others, what they mean by "cause" when they talk
about social causation, and what they mean by "law" when they
set forth sociological laws. They must know what "order" is and
what "possibility" is.
At the general session of the German Association of Naturalists
and Physicians, held at Vienna in September, 1894, an Austrian
physicist, Ernst Mach, delivered an address which every scientific
inquirer should know. It was entitled, "On the Principle of Com-
parison in Physics." In substance it was a lucid analysis of the
nature of scientific thought, and incidentally of the true nature
of science itself. Dr. Mach began by recalling a definition of
mechanics which had been given twenty years before by Kirch-
hoff. Mechanics, Kirchhoff had said, is "the description, in com-
plete and very simple terms, of the motions occurring in nature."
This definition had agitated scientific circles. It contained no
mention of explanation or of prediction as functions of science, no
allusion to universal or cosmic law, no hint of any search for
127
128 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
first principles or causes. The scientific mind was perturbed.
Was science, the supreme achievement of the nineteenth century,
about to abandon its chief pretensions? Mechanics is of all
sciences the most exact and the most advanced. If, then, me-
chanics is nothing but description, no other branch of knowledge
can claim to be more. To demonstrate that this is the simple and
practically helpful truth was the task that Dr. Mach essayed.
I shall not attempt to repeat the demonstration in detail. It
consisted in showing that description is a putting together of facts
in a coherent system or continuum, which accurately corresponds
to the coherent system or continuum of reality ; and that explana-
tion, prediction, the formulation of laws, are nothing more and
nothing less. When, for example, the physicist formulates the
law of gravitation, as an attraction of bodies for one another
which varies directly with their masses, and inversely with the
squares of their distances, and predicts that an unsupported body
will fall toward or rise away from the surface of the earth ac-
cording as its specific gravity is greater or less -than that of the
atmospheric envelope, he merely puts together, in a single con-
densed expression, a large number of observed coherences of
fact.
What, however, are observed facts ? Is the "attraction" which
the formula alleges one of them? Yes or no, according to our
definition of the word. Shall we say that it is the "pull" of a
"force"? Has any human being ever seen, handled, or otherwise
perceived a force ? Certainly not. And what, moreover, does any
human being know of a "pull" ? Nothing whatever beyond cer-
tain sensations of muscular tension or of political fatigue. All,
then, that can actually be observed of attraction is a certain num-
ber of changes in the successive positions of material objects, and
a certain number of changes in the degrees of rapidity with which
the changes of position take place. All that we can really experi-
ment with is a number of volumes, densities, positions, distances,
accelerations, and retardations. And our formula or law, there-
fore, is nothing more than an accurate description of the way in
which these observed facts cohere in an objective series or system
of reality. The object of science is to extend description, in this
sense of the word, until it includes all knowable facts of matter,
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 129
life, mind, and society, and places each fact in its proper place
in the complete system.
This conception of science, the only one which a critical exami-
nation of the nature of our knowledge permits us to entertain,
discloses practical values. As science approaches perfection, the
description of the cosmos becomes continuous. We discover that
every known fact has, in coexistence and in sequence, points of
contact with other known facts. The lines and colors in our
chart of the universe are not drawn or splashed at random ; they
lie before the mental vision in an order of gradations, proportions,
series, and systems. Facts in any part of the chart are seen to be
related to all facts in every other part. So we arrive at the con-
ception of nature as a system of interdependent facts. This con-
ception once reached, we perceive what really we mean when we
say that science enables us to predict combinations of facts not
hitherto observed. Convinced by what we already know, that
further description of nature will not derange the system already
apparent, we expect that further knowledge will continue the
curves already partly drawn, without changing their equations,
fill in unknown terms of series without changing their formulas,
and supply shades of color that will not disturb the scheme al-
ready apparent. In this way science enables us to anticipate facts
not yet actually observed. If, then, we admit that science is de-
scription, and that description both reveals and presupposes the
interdependence of the descriptive elements, we can accept the
theoretical and practical conclusion at which Dr. Mach arrives,
that science completes in thought facts that are only partly given.
So understood, scientific description, it is plain, is both concrete
and abstract. It not only depicts, pictorially, in colors, shapes,
and perspectives as we perceive them, but also it factorizes, re-
solving concretes into sorts, sizes, positions, sequences, arrange-
ments, proportions, correlations and coordinations, as we conceive
them.
Therefore after all, science does explain, in a certain logical,
non-mystical, sense of the word. Resolving perceived or concrete
wholes into conceptual or abstract factors which, in turn, forecast
new concrete wholes that when looked for at the right time and
place will be perceivable, scientific description discovers the pos-
130 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
sibilities of interchangeability between perceptions and concep-
tions. 1
Now to forecast from abstract factors or concepts (organized
into a theory) new concrete wholes that turn out to be perceivable,
is to predict ; and to perceive new concrete wholes that have been
predicted is to verify the conceptual theory. Precisely this is
what the scientific man means by explanation. Whatever else
passes for explanation is either a pretense, falling short of ex-
planation or missing it, or it is a metaphysical leap into the un-
known, and is unverifiable.
So it comes to this, that scientific explanation is description in
conceptual terms carried to the limits within which verification by
perception is possible, and that conceptual description verifiable
and verified by perception, is explanation.
The notion "causation'' like the notion "explanation" has had
a past of which the less said the better. It has kept company with
metaphysics. But that is no reason why it should not usefully be
employed in science, under a watchful eye. If we talk about
"explanation," we must talk about "causation" because, as will
appear, explanation is a discovery of causation.
Observe what happens. When we explain a thing or happening
we factorize it. The process goes on in our minds. The thing
or happening itself is an object outside of the mental process of
explaining it. Whether or not it is also outside of our minds or
of any and all minds is another question. Objectively it is the
perfect integration of its factors. If any factor be lacking the
thing does not exist, or the happening does not happen. There-
fore the perfect integration of its factors is the cause (in any
possible scientific meaning of the word) of the thing or happen-
ing. Factorizing brings to light the integration, and explanation
by factorizing, consequently, is a discovery of causation.
Loosely we speak of a dominant factor (outranging guns, over-
whelming numbers), or of a last contributed factor (the lighted
match applied to the fuel), or to a factor to which responsibility
attaches (a casting vote) as a cause, or as the cause of something.
This is rhetoric only, but it is harmless and convenient. 2
'On this subject compare Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science,
and Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic.
' The conception of causation as the integration of factors is substan-
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 131
As the scientific description which is also explanation is a dis-
covery of causation, so also is it a discovery and formulation of
law. Any persisting relation (correlation, superordination, co-
ordination, or subordination) of factors is a reality which is or
may be formulated as a scientific generalization or as a scientific
law. 1
It is now necessary to observe that while law and cause are
categories of order to which science undertakes to reduce the
description of its results, they are not, as a rule, the categories
used in obtaining results.
Research begins, as the unconscious acquisition of knowledge
begins, with the simplicities of discrimination and counting; and
the categories, therefore, that we first use in factorizing are num-
ber (count of discriminated items) ; qualitative difference and
qualitative resemblance ; and quantitative difference, or inequality.
After these, the categories chiefly available in discovery are corre-
lation (comprising all degrees of association, concurrence and con-
tingency) ; composition ; coordination (together with superordina-
tion and subordination) ; and mechanistic reaction.
tially identical with the more loosely defined conceptions of Mill's Logic
and Jevons's Principles of Science, long accepted as the last word on
the subject. The "necessary antecedent" of an effect, which Mill called
a "condition," is simply any one factor ; and the "sufficient antecedent,"
which he tagged as "cause," is the integration of all factors, and cannot
conceivably be anything else.
1 When it is worth while to be precise we must discriminate between
a constant relation of a static phenomenon to a static, and a constant
relation of a kinetic phenomenon to a kinetic. It is therefore convenient
to associate the word "generalization" with the one, and the word "law"
with the other.
"A generalization, in the scientific sense of the word, is an affirmation
that a constant relation exists between an unvarying class of facts and
some unvarying fact not in the class, or between one unvarying class of
facts and some other unvarying class. . . . Kepler's law ... is a gen-
eralization."
"A law, in the scientific sense of the word, is an affirmation of a
constant relation between a fact of variation and some other fact of
variation, or between a fact of variation and a class of variations, or
between a class of variations and some other class of variations. . . . The
law of gravitation. . . ."
"A class, in the scientific sense of the word, is a plural number of
facts that resemble one another in some given point or number of points."
"A fact, in the scientific sense of the word, is the close agreement of
many observations or measurements of the same phenomenon." Giddings,
Inductive Sociology, pp. 13, 14.
132 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Of correlation, two great subcategories are recognized for
practical purposes, namely, perfect correlation, or "one to one
correspondence," and imperfect correlation. Mathematically they
are merely differences of degree.
Within the limits of our experience a designated thing or hap-
pening may invariably be associated with another designated thing
or happening, and the ratio of one to the other throughout any
succession of quantitative changes may so nearly be constant that
our best instruments of precision do not enable us to detect a
deviation which philosophical or mathematical theories of rela-
tivity presume to be possible. The acceleration of a falling body
in a unit of time, the pressure of a gas at a given temperature, the
ratio of a degree of heat to a gravitational foot pound, are ex-
amples. In finite experience these are substantially one to one
correspondences : there is always so much of one to so much of
the other, point by point. They are one hundred per cent, or
"perfect," correlations. They are the so-called "immutable" laws
of nature. Conceivable deviations from them, if there are such,
are infinitesimal, and for human purposes negligible.
Correlations of the other subcategory are imperfect. A desig-
nated thing or happening is associated or is concurrent with an-
other designated thing or happening in less than one hundred
percent of all cases known or taken, or the ratio of one to the
other is variable. If, however, variation is within assignable
limits, and the percentage number of instances of association
whether large or small is constant, we have in the phenomena an
order on which we can rely. Indeed, for the purposes of every-
day life we rely on it as confidently as on one to one correspon-
dences. We sow expecting to reap. We plan journeys expecting
that trains and boats will run by time tables and predetermined
dates. We make business and professional engagements expect-
ing that parties of the other part will keep appointments. We buy
and sell commodities and securities expecting that price fluctua-
tions will range within familiar limits. We bring up and educate
children knowing that they have an ascertainable "expectation"
of life.
Perfect correlations are "certainties" in a finite meaning of the
word. Imperfect correlations are "probabilities" ; either positive,
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 133
ranging from o to I, or negative, ranging from o to I. To
the extent that a science measures "chances" above or below
"fifty-fifty," it is a science of probability. If it discovers and
demonstrates one to one correspondences it is, so far, exact. Me-
chanics, thermo-dynamics, and chemistry, are exact sciences.
Biology, psychology, and sociology, are sciences of probability in
the main, but exact in detail here and there.
Perfect correlation while it persists sets limits to possibility and
makes it determinate. Imperfect correlation leaves it indetermi-
nate. The crop may fail or be "a bumper," stocks may go down
or go up, beyond precedent.
And as a concrete phenomenon a particular correlation whether
perfect or imperfect, is not necessarily persistent : when a falling
body hits the ground the correlation of acceleration wuh time
ceases as far as this instance is concerned. The happening, or
the evolution, or the making of correlations determines possi-
bility; the termination of correlations removes or sets back
bounds, and restores indeterminateness.
In attending to associations of things, or of happenings, that
are liable to dissociation and recombination we pass from simple
correlation to multiple correlation, or composition. Here also
possibility is determined and limited at any given time by an ex-
isting order ; nevertheless, it is unimaginably great. The items of
which the universe consists are combined, and the combinations
are compounded: electrons in atoms, atoms in molecules, inor-
ganic molecules in inorganic masses, protoplasmic molecules in
organic cells, cells in complex living bodies, and these in groups or
populations; reactions in acts, acts in complex behavior, and be-
havior in competitions and cooperations, customs and institutions,
movements and policies that constitute society and history.
Some of these compounds are homogeneous, their component
items are of one kind ; others are heterogeneous, their component
items are of various kinds. Some of them, atoms above all, are
stable and long enduring; others, the nitrogenous compounds con-
spicuously, are unstable, easily, and often quickly, broken up ; yet
others, organic bodies, simultaneously break up and build up, by
continually eliminating outworn components and replacing them
with new. The relation of possibility to composition turns upon
134 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
these differences. The greater its heterogeneity, the greater its
instability, the more rapid its metabolism, the quicker its reaction
of release or of inhibition, the more indeterminate is possibility:
the greater is the number of possible happenings constructive or
destructive, good or bad, to, in or by a composite body : the greater
is what the untutored man and the philosopher (without col-
lusion) call its "freedom" or its "liberty," or, perhaps, its "self-
determination."
Component bodies may not only be different in kind but also be
unequal, in age, size, energy, attribute or condition. If numerous,
some of them may be equal among themselves, while superior or
inferior to others. Equals are said to be coordinate, superiors
to be superordinate (a super order) and inferiors subordinate (a
sub order). Planets are approximately coordinate; suns by com-
parison with planets are superordinate, and satellites, by com-
parison with planets are subordinate. These distinctions may be
categorical only, or they may appear in a concrete arrangement,
a hierarchy of ranks. The solar system is such an arrangement,
so is the hierarchy of living bodies, from bacteria to man. For
brevity, hierarchical arrangement is called "coordination," super-
ordination and subordination being assumed. In human society
throughout history coordination has been a phenomenon of com-
manding importance. Hierarchies of priests, bishops, and arch-
bishops; of private soldiers, officers and commanders; of serfs,
freemen and nobles; of wage earners, capitalists and magnates,
have ordered and determined human life.
The sciences, as Comte discerned and contended, are hierarchi-
cally related. The progress of knowledge, however, has neces-
sitated a revision of the order that he set down, and new designa-
tions. The series as it now stands is: mechanics, electro-physics
and electro-chemistry, chemistry, thermo-dynamics, astronomy
and geology (these two are complexes of the preceding four),
biology, psychology, anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, history,
and sociology.
It is unnecessary to offer evidence that coordination determines
and limits possibility. The proposition is obvious, and vivid to
human experience.
So far we have looked at static order, and its determination of
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 135
possibility. When we turn to observe the happening that we call
mechanistic reaction, we concern ourselves with kinetic order.
Every reaction that can be identified and measured by organs
of sense is mechanistic. If anywhere in the material universe
there is a going on, or creative evolution, that is not mechanistic,
it belongs to a realm of things not seen except through Alice's (or
other philosophers') looking-glass. Conceding the perspicacity of
Alice, and' admitting that explanation of brain functioning, or
even of digestion, in mechanistic terms has not yet been achieved
completely, the scientific inquirer asks people who make them-
selves responsible for theories of human behavior not to pro-
nounce achievement impossible and not to accept the revelations
of the speculative glass until they have taken the trouble to learn
what "mechanistic terms" are (and are not) and whether the
explanatory possibilities of mechanistic hypothesis have been
exhausted.
To begin then with terms, or conceptions, what is the order
that we call mechanistic? Concisely, it is a system of equivalent
sensible changes. And what is it not, or not necessarily or al-
ways ? Concisely, a mechanistic phenomenon is never a change of
nothing into something or of something into nothing; and a mech-
anistic system is not necessarily or always machinistic; more
often than not it is merely ballistic.
A sensible change is a change that we become aware of through
any one of our organs of sense, or through any combination of
them. It is more tangible than a change of mind. Sensible
change is motion, and every motion is equivalent to motion out
of which it came, and to motion into which it goes. The changing
modes or kinds of motion may be different or various ; electronic,
atomic, molecular, molar, but the rule of equivalence holds. The
mechanistic order of the material universe therefore is a system
of equivalent motions.
This proposition means the same thing that the so-called New-
tonian laws of motion mean, namely that reaction is equal to
action and opposite to it in direction; that a body (or particle)
at rest remains at rest, and a body (or particle) in motion con-
tinues in motion until impelled, drawn or impeded from without ;
and that a body in motion moves in a straight line until deflected
136 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
from without. The proposition is equivalent therefore to Spen-
cer's affirmation of the persistence of force. It is equivalent also
to the law of the so-called degradation of energy, of which more
will be said presently.
But it does not follow from the laws of motion that all motion
is machinistic, or that the mechanistic order of a material universe
is a machine. The billiard balls on a table where men are playing
are not a machine, and their motions, while strictly mechanistic,
are never machinistic. The material universe as a whole is not a
machine ; parts of it only are machines, other parts are in process
of becoming machines, and yet other parts remain wild turbu-
lences. Neglect or inability to apprehend the distinction here
made accounts, I am convinced, for most of the antagonism of
"vitalistic" biologists and "idealistic" or "spiritual" sociologists to
mechanistic explanations of the life processes and the behavior
of material organisms. A few further words of amplification
and illustration may, therefore, be helpful.
A machine is a system of parts so tied or linked together, or so
coupled or geared, or otherwise so correlated that their motions
are one to one correspondences, or correspondences within limits
of error that are negligible in prediction : they are definitely mech-
anistic. In contrast, a turbulence (for example a swirl of dust,
a tornado, or a torrent) is an assemblage of particles or larger
units that move freely in any direction : their motions are indefi-
nitely mechanistic. A solar system is a machine; a flaming gas
is a turbulence ; a nebula is a turbulence that is becoming or may
become, a machine. A germ cell, a brain, a politically organized
community, is half turbulence and half machine.
In a system that has become a machine possibility is limited
and determined ; in a turbulence it is indeterminate.
The extent to which mechanistic order limits possibility in
particular cases, and the ways or modes of determination, are of
cardinal importance to students of social theory. Much social
theorizing has been futile because of neglect to master them.
Pretentious social philosophies could be cited (they are taught
in colleges), the makers and builders of which unconsciously and
in all innocence postulate something from nothing or nothing
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 137
from something, because, appalled by the complexities, they will
not take the trouble to understand the simplicities of the degrada-
tion of energy.
This expression is an abbreviation for: the dynamic degrada-
tion of a concrete body of matter. It means that energy "does
something" (it "works") only when a delimited portion of the
"matter" that in final analysis perhaps is energy, or that "carries"
energy, or is charged with it, falls from a higher to a lower gravi-
tational level, like water from a dam ; or from a higher to a lower
tension, like an uncoiling watch spring; or from a higher to a
lower temperature, like expanding steam back of a piston head ;
or from a higher to a lower magnetic state, like the reacting arma-
ture of a dynamo; or from a more to a less unstable equilibrium,
like an exploding mixture.
The energy content of matter not yet dynamically degraded is
rightly called "potential." It is unexpended, and ready to do
something. Energy doing something is called kinetic. The por-
tion of matter that carried it is losing it, and so is undergoing
dynamic degradation. The energy content of matter that at pres-
ent can undergo no further dynamic degradation is wrongly called
"potential," apparently for no better reason than that it is not
kinetic. It has become, in fact, impotential.
It has become impotential, and the portion of matter now car-
rying it can undergo no further dynamic degradation, because the
energy content of that particular body of matter is now in equilib-
rium with the energy content of matter round about it. Equi-
librium is inertness.
So, it turns out, the degradation of energy is "the equilibration
of energy." This expression also is an abbreviation. It means:
the equilibration of the energy content of bodies of matter so
placed in relation to one another that energy (molar motion, or
molecular motion, or atomic motion, or electronic motion) can
and does flow from the more highly charged to the less highly
charged body.
Inasmuch as this process is finite and relative, it follows that
when we say of a delimited portion of matter a that it can un-
dergo no further dynamic degradation, we mean that a can suffer
no such further degradation under existing states of environing
i 3 8 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
matter b. If the energy content of b at any time suffers depletion,
a in contact with b can be further degraded, and its contained
energy will then become potential or kinetic. Furthermore, a
dynamically degraded material body or "closed system" of matter
can be recharged with potential energy from without, if energy
from supercharged bodies hitherto shut off from it can be trans-
mitted to it and suitably transformed. The mill can grind again
with water thai has passed if sun energy lifts it to the clouds to
fall in rain above the dam. The watch spring can be wound, and
the exhausted steam can be passed again through the boiler.
In this process, however, further rules of order are encoun-
tered which set new limits to possibility. In transformation and
transmission energy is lost, not out of the universe, but out of
concrete material bodies, the charging or supercharging of which
is work. The ratio of work to loss (i.e. to waste) increases up to
a point experimentally ascertained. It then diminishes until,
presently, waste increases faster than work. These differential
ratios of loss, waste, or "cost" to work accomplished, are en-
countered throughout natural phenomena and human industry,
and are known as laws of increasing and diminishing return.
They were first brought to attention by economists, and all scien-
tific economy is founded on them. Economists of the paradoxical
school who deny them do not know their elementary physics and
talk nonsense. Economists who acknowledge these laws but
teach that they are unimportant to "up-to-date" man' because
invention diminishes waste, and discovery from time to time finds
new sources of potential energy, never squarely face the real
dilemma, which is, that inventions which diminish waste and tap
hitherto unknown stores of potential energy call for the use of
very special substances, for example high grade steels, fine cop-
per, nickel, platinum, and so on to uranium and radium, all of
which as our present knowledge goes, are of limited supply, and
some of which are excessively rare.
Whether the future will bring reassurance no one can predict.
At present mankind is wastefully using up and wantonly de-
stroying available sources of potential energy : coal, oil, gas, for-
ests, and entire species of plant and animal life that are the con-
verters of sunlight and sun heat into foods on which the human
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 139
race can subsist. To conserve them is becoming the most im-
perative of obligations.
While the equilibration of energy limits possibility quantita-
tively, it also determines the modes and forms of possibility, and
this qualitative process is evolution.
When a delimited aggregation of matter (gaseous, liquid or
solid) is losing molecular motion (radiating heat into environing
matter of a lower temperature, as molten metal does in cooling),
it condenses or, using Mr. Spencer's term, it "integrates." At
the same time, different parts of it become unlike one another in
various ways, because radiation proceeds at unequal rates from
different surface areas and from the surface and the interior of
the mass ; and because different areas and interior parts are vari-
ously played upon by energies from without. The cooling metal
wrinkles, and may twist or crack. The influences that bring about
"differentiation" bring about also sortings and assimilations of
molecules and their compounds. Units of like weight and shape
get thrown together, as stones do in one place, pebbles in another
place and sand in another place along the roadside during a rain.
This assorting Mr. Spencer called "segregation." It is supple-
mented by a deeper change which he failed to name in his formula.
Just as units differently reacting to incidental energies become
increasingly different, so do units similarly reacting become in-
creasingly alike they are assimilated and this phase of the evo-
lutionary process is important in the phenomena of life and be-
havior. It is especially significant for the student of social
theory.
These four consequences of the equilibration of molecular
energy, namely integration, differentiation, segregation and as-
similation, make up mechanistic evolution in its simple or primary
phase. Mr. Spencer, who first apprehended and described it,
described also a secondary phase, or compound evolution, which
occurs when the integrating aggregate is taking in molecular mo-
tion from without while losing it from within, as the earth, for
example, gets heat from the sun while radiating it into space,
and as living bodies while expending their energies take in fresh
stores, in the foods on which they subsist. The total loss of
energy in these cases exceeds the total intake (when the ratio is
140 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
reversed dissolution begins) but evolution is slowed down, and
secondary differentiations and segregations are multiplied through
internal redistributions of energy.
All of these changes conform quantitatively to the laws of in-
creasing and diminishing return, which, therefore, in the strict
sense of the word are the laws, as distinguished from the general
description or formula, of mechanistic evolution. 1
Yet another phase of evolution not described, or named, by
Mr. Spencer, is even more important for biology, psychology and
sociology than assimilation is.
The equilibration of molecular motion with which mechanistic
evolution begins is an extra or an inter equilibration. It occurs,
as has been said, between a delimited aggregation of material
units and matter extraneous. There is also, however, from the
first, an infra equilibration: an equalizing of molecular motion
between each differentiated part and every other part, between
each group of segregated units and every other group, within the
aggregate.
Mr. Spencer saw and was at pains to explain the redistributions
of internal motion that go on step by step with the integration of
matter and the differentiation of its groupings, and the conse-
quent multiplication of effects ; and he insisted on the importance
of adequate time for the completion of redistribution as a factor
in the evolution of high types of structure and function. He did
not discover that among multiplying effects intra equilibration
creates a mechanism and sustains a process of internal control of
evolution, that is quite as important as external controls. In
living matter, in nervous systems, and in political society it is
often more important.
The equilibration of energy between the sun and the planets
more directly and more intensively than equilibration between the
solar system as a whole and whatever fills the spaces beyond it
has controlled the development of planetary surfaces, of hydro-
graphic and atmospheric changes, and the evolution of life.
Equilibration within the cell as much as equilibration between cell
and environment determines all that is characteristic of living
matter both in structure and in function. Equilibration between
1 Giddings, "The Laws of Evolution," Science, August 18, 1905.
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 141
the central nervous system and other organs and tissues creates
the characteristic controls of behavior. In the evolution of po-
litically organized nations extra and inter equilibrations take the
form of war and conquests, while intra equilibrations appear as
class struggles and revolutions. Governments and their functions
are products of equilibrations between a relatively small group of
alert and persistent men reacting to situations, and a relatively
large mass of men that are inert and ineffective.
Development of internal structures and controls in living bodies
produces numerous machines ; among which the articulated skele-
ton, the circulatory apparatus, and the central nervous system, are
outstanding examples that everybody in a measure understands.
Many of them, the organs of sense preeminently, are complicated
and delicate, but their performance is not often the precise one-
to-one correspondence that we look for in machines made by man.
The reason for deviation is highly significant. Organic machines
are automatically adaptable to changing conditions to a degree
that artificial machines do not attain.
The apparatus of heredity and of mutation is machine-like in
form but is ballistic in performance ; except in one particular, if
the non-inheritance of characters acquired after birth turns out
to be a one hundred per cent correlation. The Mendelian propor-
tions in which the traits of two ancestral lines are transmitted are
a high but not a perfect correlation. Mutation apparently is con-
tingent upon "cross overs" of chromosome halves, but these may
be brought about in more than one accidental way, as well as by
experimental predetermination. As a general proposition we can
say that heredity is a relatively strict determination and limitation
of biological possibility, while mutation is relatively indeterminate.
A similar general proposition holds true in the domain of be-
havioristic psychology. Behavior is a function of two variables,
namely, stimulation and the performance of a reaction apparatus.
Development of the reaction apparatus including internal controls,
limits and defines the possibilities of behavior. Stimulation is
indeterminate, and forever will be.
At this point it is interesting to inquire why mankind has always
more or less resented the proposition that life is mechanistic, and,
has clung to "free will" in the realm of conduct. The usual
142 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
answer, that we like to believe that we are "spiritual" beings and
"responsible," is more orthodox than informing. If the evolu-
tionist biology is substantially trustworthy the true answer, it
would seem, must be that this prejudice is a by-product of the
adjustment of life to a world in which luck plays its part against
certainty ; in which correlation is not always one hundred per cent ;
in which the mechanistic is as often ballistic as machinistic. As-
suming that such adjustment has been under way from the be-
ginning, it is not surprising that man likes it. He may flatter
himself that he likes it because he experiences exaltation (not to
mention self-esteem) when he freely chooses the true and the
good, but, notoriously, he likes it no less well when he chooses
the false and the bad.
In a famous passage Mr. Huxley said :
"I protest that if some great power would agree to make me always
think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned
into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of
bed, I should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care
about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready
to part with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me." *
Without abatement of respect for one of the clearest-headed
men that ever lived, I protest that Mr. Huxley did not think
what is true, in this instance. Man wants freedom both to do
right and to sin, to know and to guess wrong, as may happen, no
less than as he, in his self-determination may choose; and he
wants this large freedom (immeasurably wider than "moral"
freedom) because he is so made up and adapted that he craves,
with a modicum of certainty, a large measure of chance. He is
glad to know that summer will follow winter, an important matter
of course, but he is not less glad that when it does follow he again
will bet on the horse race, the stock market and the election.
Above all, he wants adventure, of thought, decision and experi-
ence. He swells with self-determination, relying on his own
apparatus of internal controls, but he could never again be happy
if he were deprived of his self-indetermination. He wants to
1 Essay On Descartes "Discourse Touching the ^ Method of Using One's
Reason Rightly and of Seeking Scientific Truth."
ORDER AND POSSIBILITY 143
change his mind when he wants to, and to go back for his um-
brella.
Well, he always will. He lives in a world in which, for all we
know, reaction mechanisms may become machines as perfect as
Huxley's hypothetical clock, except that they will have to be
played on by stimuli instead of wound, and that the stimuli will
swirl forever in turbulences, and play pranks.
CHAPTER VIII
A THEORY OF SOCIAL CAUSATION
USING the word "causation" in the stricter of the meanings
defended in Chapter VII, and assuming, in accordance with it,
that social causes are stimulations that call forth pluralistic reac-
tions of a particular kind or of various kinds, I shall attempt in
this chapter to examine the phenomena of social causation from
the standpoint of stimulation, and in Chapter IX to describe them
in terms of response. In the remaining chapters of this Part, I
shall look at stimulations and responses, actions and reactions, as
concretely inseparable in pluralistic behavior.
I have before me a pile of newspaper accounts of assemblings
of human beings, from small gatherings to great crowds. In one
hundred and thirty-one instances the occasions, circumstances,
situations or other stimulations which brought the participants
together have been stated by the reporters. These stimulations
are most various but fall into classification as follows: natural
resources of a geographical place or region, 4 ; drought, 2 ; storm,
i ; conflagration, 2 ; epidemic, i ; war, 8 ; insurrection, 10 ; minor
occurrences of human origin, 87; personal example, appeal, or
intimidation, 16.
Here, obviously, are two contrasted kinds of stimuli namely,
static situations consisting chiefly or perhaps wholly of regional
influences changing so slowly that change is negligible, and kinetic
situations consisting of regional changes disturbing to mankind,
and of other circumstantial influences. The circumstantial in-
fluences are divisible into a, those consisting of physical factors
only or chiefly (drought, storm, conflagration, epidemic), and b,
those consisting of human factors only or chiefly (war, insurrec-
tion, minor occurrences of human origin and personal example,
appeal and intimidation).
Also, obviously, the stimuli here classified are of two orders,
primary and secondary. The influences that consist wholly or
144
MS
chiefly of human factors are products of past responses to ante-
cedent stimulations. The numerical preponderance of these cases
in our data indicates that a major part of all pluralistic behavior
is provoked by secondary stimuli, and this we know (by every day
observation) to be true. The very arrangements under which we
live, the groupings and the doings of our fellow men, their ideas
and purposes, their laws and institutions, are ever present, ever
potent causes of continuing collective action. But back of all
secondary stimuli, products of past social life, are primary or
original stimuli presented to every mind by the multiplicity and
presence of fellow beings, by the events and the order of nature,
and by the concrete objects of nature. These collectively are the
environment, human and physical, and the human is determined
by the physical. As physical environments differ in fundamental
character and in complexity, so differ the original stimuli to
which the minds of men respond in pluralistic behavior, including
collective action.
Accepting the .distinctions that have been drawn between static
and kinetic situations, and between primary and secondary stimuli
we apprehend the prime requirement laid upon social theory. A
scientific theory of social causation must first give full recogni-
tion and weight to the facts (i) that regional influences of the
static sort usually stimulate behavior (when they do stimulate it)
through a medium of circumstance rather than immediately, and
(2) that all stimuli of the primary order, including regional
changes, usually stimulate behavior (when they do stimulate it)
through a social medium created by antecedent stimulation.
Theory must then determine what are the possibilities and limits
of response to primary stimulation, and, thereby, determine the
possibilities and limits of secondary stimulation.
In trying to formulate (at least tentatively) a theory scientific
according to these specifications, we necessarily begin with an at-
tempt to discover what features of the physical habitat of a
human population are significant, and through what channels
or groupings of concrete fact they exert their controlling influence.
The earlier theories of the relation of environment to national
life and character placed emphasis upon the direct influence of
soil, climate and topography upon mental and institutional life.
146 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Montesquieu hardly got beyond this simple view of the prob-
lem. He attributes a relatively great boldness to the inhabitants
of cold climates, and to boldness he attributes frankness and a
lack of suspicion and cunning. To the enervating influence of
great heat, and the deliciousness of rest in a hot climate, he at-
tributes the belief of the Hindoo that "repose and non-existence
are the foundation of all things, and the end in which they termi-
nate." From these temperamental effects of climate Montesquieu
thought that he could derive systems of laws and institutions. His
observations, nevertheless, were keen and significant, and doubt-
less much important scientific work is yet to be done in following
out the suggestions in which the Esprit des Lois abounds.
Buckle, perceiving that the action of environment upon national
life is more complex than Montesquieu represented it, laid em-
phasis upon those influences of nature that develop on the one hand
the emotional, on the other hand the intellectual habit. Regions
in which nature is uncertain, violent and destructive, especially
where earthquakes, volcanic catastrophies and tempests abound,
inspire terror and superstition, and thereby unfit the mind for
scientific research and for the systematic conquest of the external
world. Regions that are tractable, having seldom more startling
occurrences than the regular succession of seasons and the rela-
tively mild storms of the temperate zones, awaken an intellectual
interest; and by suggesting a constant order in nature, they lead
the mind on to scientific comprehension. Buckle also made the
distinction between primary and secondary civilizations, and drew
attention to the exceeding importance of the relation existing be-
tween any secondary civilization and that environment which is
human and historical rather than physical. So, clearly enough,
although without psychological analysis, Buckle discriminates be-
tween static regional influences and kinetic or circumstantial in-
fluences, and between primary and secondary stimulations.
Herbert Spencer, in the first volume of his Principles of So-
ciology, comprehensively reviews the influence of climates and
topographies upon the emotional and the intellectual natures of
men, and he calls especial attention to the relation of the flora and
the fauna to the possibilities of social evolution. He lays chief
stress, however, upon the human environment, since it is in the
A THEORY OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 14?
relation of a tribe or a nation to its stronger or weaker neighbors
that the causes determining its type of organization as military or
industrial, seem to him to be found.
In the writings of Ratzell and of Ellen Churchill Semple we
have expert studies extending and correcting our knowledge of
the influence of persisting geographical features including oceans
and seas, islands and continents, coastal plains, river basins and
mountain systems upon the distribution and the pursuits of
mankind. Ellsworth Huntington's studies of the profound and
varied effects of the major rhythms of heat and cold, rainfall and
dessication, upon the mutation, selective winnowing and migration
of the human species have laid foundations of scientific history.
In studies that have taken the form of an economic interpreta-
tion of history, it is an indirect rather than a direct action of the
environment that finds recognition. Situation and resources
mould the social organization ; first, by determining the character
of the predominant industries; and, secondly, by determining the
prevailing form of property, as real estate or free capital.
The theory that I submit here differs from all of these, but
more by addition or supplement than by disagreement. I suggest
that the really significant phenomenon is found in the relation of
the physical environment to the composition of its population.
My propositions are, first, that the character of the environment
determines the composition of a population as more or less
heterogeneous, more or less compound; and second, that the
composition of the population determines the character, the com-
plexity and the range, of its reactions to stimulation.
To develop these propositions, let us begin with a phenomenon
very simple, very obvious, yet very far-reaching in its conse-
quences. A physical environment has, or it has not, the power
to attract inhabitants to itself and to keep them. In America we
have witnessed the most remarkable example in human history of
this immediate relation of population to environment. By hun-
dreds of thousands men and women from the older lands have
been drawn here by the bounty of nature, underlying that varied
economic opportunity which this nation affords to its people.
Quite as striking as the mere numbers of immigrants to America,
however, is the varied composition of our foreign-born popula-
148 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
tion. Every nationality is included. But the geographical dis-
tribution of the foreign born has brought about a marked differ-
ence of one region from another in degree of compositeness. The
North Atlantic division is heterogeneous in the extreme. The
North Central division is relatively homogeneous, and the white
population of the South Atlantic and South Central divisions is
highly homogeneous.
Environments are of two fundamental types in respect of their
power to maintain society ; those that are so poorly endowed with
resources that they can maintain and attract only relatively small
numbers of inhabitants, and those that, being richly endowed,
support large populations of the native born, and tend to draw a
large immigration from elsewhere. Each of these types of en-
vironment, in turn, presents two well-marked subdivisions: the
isolated, or difficult of access or of egress; and the accessible, a
land of ports and open ways, through which the currents of
population may easily flow.
The composition of the population can by no possibility be the
same in these four types of environment. That which is charac-
teristic of one is unattainable in another.
In the environment that is both poor and isolated, population is
not only sparse, but it is relatively simple and homogeneous in
composition. The struggle for existence is severe and the death
rate of infancy and of age is high. A relatively large proportion
of the living, therefore, is found in the middle age frequencies.
The sexes are approximately equal numerically, unless female
infanticide prevails. This population is maintained only by its
birth rate, and it increases only if its birth rate is in excess of its
death rate. It is a genetic aggregation, and is ethnically of one
kind. Extreme examples of this environment and of the structure
of its population are afforded by the coasts of Greenland, the
Aleutian Islands, the southern extremity of South America, and
the interior regions of Australia.
In the environment that is poor but accessible, or, what in this
instance is more to the point, admits of easy egress, the population
again is a genetic aggregation. The attractions and inducements
are not sufficient to bring immigration. But neither are they suffi-
cient in all cases to keep the men born within its borders, and,
A THEORY OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 149
escape being relatively easy, many of the most energetic emigrate
to better lands, leaving not only unmarried women, but often also
young mothers and children, and old people of both sexes. Here,
in the concrete, the process of selection is seen going on through
reaction to stimulus. The resources of other environments in
some degree awaken the desire of all the inhabitants of the im-
poverished land, but only those that are relatively enterprising
and energetic are moved to better their condition. The result is a
gradual deterioration of the stock remaining in the land. It is
bred from the leavings that have been incapable of efficiently
responding to the stimulus of larger opportunities. The most
interesting modern examples of such environments are those ex-
tensive tracts of upland or hill country in the North Atlantic
states that once had prosperous farming populations, but-now are
inhabited only by unambitious families presenting the unmistak-
able marks of degeneration.
The third type of environment is that which is both rich in
resources and relatively isolated or inaccessible. Parts of
the Arabian peninsula, the Hawaiian Islands, the Samoan Islands,
and the islands of Tahiti, are good examples. So also are the
uplands of Mexico and Peru. Here again the population is a
great kinship, a genetic aggregation. It is relatively dense. The
birth rate is high, and every inequality of energy or ability counts
in the struggle for existence. The people alike respond to the
bounty of nature and develop those simple forms of economic
activity that often are sufficient to create a fair degree of pros-
perity. The isolation of such a population while it lasts deter-
mines the whole course of social evolution, but it is relative.
Sooner or later, or perhaps repeatedly at long intervals, it yields
to migration. An increasing pressure of the native born upon the
means of subsistence at length forces some of the more vigorous
elements to break through confining barriers, and as conquerors,
or otherwise, to seek distant homes ; or the natural resources and
the acquired prosperity enjoyed by the inhabitants become a
stimulus of sufficient power to tempt distant populations to in-
vade and exploit.
There remain environments of the fourth type, richly bountiful
in resources and so accessible that men may flock to them from all
ISO STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
quarters of the world. Such are the great river valleys of the
Nile and the Euphrates, seats of the most ancient civilizations ; of
the Po, the Danube and the Rhine, highways of the nations from
an immemorial past ; of the Seine and the Thames ; and, in our
own land, the Mississippi basin. Such also are many favored
coasts, abounding in inlets and sheltering ports. In all such en-
vironments population must sooner or later be composite, nor-
mally so in age and sex, and variedly so in blood, and the more so
if their resources are not only abundant, but also varied.
The" composition, however, is determined in the long run by
two cooperating processes. Aboriginal populations are overrun
by invaders, who come not as individuals, but as organized bands,
or armies equipped for conquest. Populations that have attained
a measure of economic advancement are now and again overrun
by hosts of ruder people that have been dwelling in relatively
unkindly habitats. Further conquests also may follow, after
civilization has been attained by both the invaders and the in-
vaded, if the civilization of the invaders is still of the military
type. When, however, industrial civilizations of the modern type
have been reached, further migration is a movement of in-
dividuals.
It happens, therefore, that with few, if any, exceptions the popu-
lations of the most favored environments are both compound and
composite; compound as being made up of successive strata of
conquered and conquerors, and composite, as being made up of
immigrant individuals scattered among the native-born. In time
all of these elements are in some degree amalgamated. The
amalgamation of invaded and invaders, however, is determined
largely by the physical characteristics of the region itself. If
they are such as to tempt the invaders to scatter themselves
throughout the land as local overlords, while at the same time
maintaining a general distribution of the invaded or conquered,
the possibilities of amalgamation are far greater than when for
any reason either stratum is geographically concentrated. This
seems to have been the history of the thorough-going amalgama-
tion of Celtic and Teutonic elements in the midland and western
counties of England.
When an immigration of individuals begins to bring important
A THEORY OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 151
additions to a compound population, the foreign-born element
itself may be more or less composite. And this circumstance
again is determined by the character of the physical environment.
If the natural resources, while great, are all of one kind, and
especially if they are predominantly agricultural, the inhabitants
are far more homogeneous than if the resources are in mineral
wealth, or, above all, if they are varied, including commercial and
manufacturing opportunities. Practically, however, an environ-
ment of homogeneous resources is usually but part of a larger
geographic unity that is occupied by one entire people, and that
in the aggregate includes resources of varied kinds. This in-
tegral geographic unity inevitably has a population that not only
is largely congregate, rather than genetic, in origin, but that also
is in a high degree composite.
All of these variegations of composition observable in human
populations are products of pluralistic reaction to stimulation.
How do they, in their turn, limit and determine the possibilities of
further reaction?
In the first place, they set the character of reaction as vigorous
and adaptive, or not.
The adolescent, and the mature who are yet in early middle
life, normally react quickly, and are capable of reacting strongly
and persistently; the old notoriously are not only slow but also
easily and frequently discouraged. The young respond to novelty
and delight in it : to the old, notoriously, it is one more weariness
to the flesh. Usually it is the new to which adaptation must be
made, and the population in which the young are relatively few
is therefore relatively non-adaptive. Because of these and other
influences, among which heredity is chief, regional populations are
unequally alert and unequally adaptive, and when emigrants from
them are merged in a heterogeneous population in process of ag-
gregation, the proportions in which they are combined determine
the quality of its reactions ; temporarily, as far as the effects of
age distribution go, permanently, as far as the influences of
heredity extend.
In the second place the ethnic composition of a population pre-
vents or it permits a relative complexity of total reaction.
152 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
A population homogeneous in blood is made up of individuals
who, in a general way, have undergone similar experiences and
have survived the same selective winnowings. Their reaction
mechanisms are alike. This means, not only that they react in
like manner to a common situation, but also that their reactions
are not complicated by necessities of adjustment to the different
reactions of neighbors and competitors. The total reaction is
simple, while, by contrast, the total reaction of a population made
up of differing nationalities or races is inevitably complex. The
reaction of each ethnic element is affected by this more or less
dissimilar reaction of each other element, not necessarily through
media of example and imitation, which may or may not play a
part, but always by necessities of adjustment. American life
abounds in examples, one of which will suffice. Reaction to an
epidemic, by a local population made up preponderantly of the
native born of native parents, is simple and straightforward. It
does or it does not proclaim and observe scientific precautions,
according as it is or is not enlightened. The reaction of a neigh-
boring population, composed of native "old settlers," immigrant
English, immigrant Irish, and immigrant Slavs or Italians is
complex and devious, not merely because the reactions are differ-
ent, but because efforts are made to work out adjustments.
In the third place, the degree to which a population is com-
posite determines the range of its total reaction.
No individual can react to all stimuli; but to stimuli to which
one is unresponsive, another, different, individual may be sensi-
tive. In like manner, indeed by consequence, one homogeneous
group, or population, may be incapable of reaction to situations
that provoke other groups to immediate and prolonged effort,
although each of them has its own incapabilities. Combined in
a heterogeneous population these groups contribute their various
potentialities to a large total. The more there are of them, the
more composite the population is in which they are merged, the
wider is its range of possible reaction to stimulation.
Finally, in a homogeneous population a majority of all indi-
viduals may respond with like behavior in nearly every one of
the relatively few situations to which they can respond at all, and
the stimuli are not necessarily powerful. The component groups
153
of a heterogeneous population can react with like behavior in
only a few of the many situations to which they can respond
variously and the stimulation must be strong. The kith and kin
of the New England town in which I was born fished alike, whit-
lied alike, chewed tobacco alike, pitched hay alike, talked politics
alike at the store, and sang psalm tunes alike at church. The
human millions, of all nations and races, that compose the stupen-
dous city in which I write now behave in every manner known
to man, and in the same manner only on election night or when
the prize fight is bulletined, or when the mercury goes above 90
degrees.
The consequences of these determinations of reaction by en-
vironment and circumstance and by the composition of the react-
ing population, must now be followed out.
CHAPTER IX
THE MIND OF THE MANY
THE phrase is a figure of speech. If we must be literal there is
no "Mind of the Many." Literally there is no "group mind" or
"social mind." However, when Henry Osborn Taylor writes a
book on The Medi&val Mind no one is made to believe that a
period of time has a mind in the same sense in which Mr. Taylor
has a mind. The mediaeval mind was a prevailing attitude and
a customary performance of European minds a thousand years
ago. The mind of the many at any time or anywhere is a pre-
vailing attitude and usual performance of enough minds then and
there alive to be called "many." And inasmuch as performance
or functioning is correlated with the make up (with the composi-
tion and the constitution) of the thing that functions, it is ac-
curate to say that the mind of the many is a kind of minds, react-
ing at a given time to a common situation or circumstance, and
perhaps inter-acting one with another.
A situation or circumstance, as has more than once been re-
marked on foregoing pages, is a lot or combination of stimuli to
psychological goings on. Reacting to it are "irritable" organisms.
The word quoted is technical in physiology: "irritability" is a
quality of living matter. If only one organism reacts, I call the
phenomenon "singularistic." If two or more organisms react to
the same stimulation at approximately the same time, I call the
phenomenon "pluralistic." Leaving plant organisms out of con-
sideration (for our present purposes) the two major kinds of re-
acting organisms are animals and human beings. Within each
major kind are minor kinds (species or varieties) ; and within
each minor kind there are gradations : that is, the organisms are
more or less highly organized, their reactions are more or less
complex.
The higher animals and man exhibit also "sensitivity." 1 Man
1 "Irritability" and "sensitivity" are often used interchangeably in psy-
chology, but they should not be.
154
THE MIND OF THE MANY 155
feels pain, and the higher animals appear to feel it. Man con-
sciously has sensations and memories, and the higher animals
seem to have them. Man consciously has ideas, and the higher
animals perhaps have a few simple ones.
All reactions of irritable matter to stimulation are physiological
behavior. All reactions of organisms as units (or individuals)
are psychological behavior. Sensitive (and conscious) organisms
may be described as mentalized organisms. For brevity we call
them minds. The behavior of reasoning minds we are in the habit
of calling conduct.
Every human being learns a good deal about himself as a mind
by consciously looking at and into his own mental processes, that
is to say, by introspection ; but he cannot by this method become
acquainted with the mind of his neighbor. All that we know
about the minds of fellowmen we learn from their conduct.
This is why there can be no other psychology of society than the
behavioristic. A subjective psychology of the individual is pos-
sible, but it is scientific and significant only as its facts are corre-
lated with behavior, both singularistic and pluralistic. This
means that we cannot explain society in terms of an individual-
istic psychology, but must, on the contrary, explain an individual-
ized mind (a person) as a product of society.
Viewed as reaction to stimulus all behavior, both animal and
human, unconscious and conscious, is mechanistic. Reflexes are
reactions of relatively simple nervous mechanisms. Instincts are
reaction tendencies, normally completed in reactions, of relatively
complex mechanisms. 1 Reflex and instinctive reactions are now
and then set going, however, by new stimuli (new to individual
experience) that have become associated with old ones ; they are
"reconditioned" ; 2 and reconditioning is the beginning of the
processes of learning. Reflexes and instincts are ready for
business at birth ; they are hereditary. Habits, on the contrary,
are sequences and other combinations of responses that have in
the first instance been learned by the fumbling called "trial and
1 Woodworth, Psychology, p. 109.
"I have used this word (Intellectual Consequences of the War, Trans-
actions of the Royal Canadian Institute, Vol. XII, Part I, May 1919, p.
108) and I use it here because, strictly speaking, the "conditioned reflex,"
(Pawlow) is reconditioned, and reconditioning is continually happening
in all mental processes, including memory, imagination, and reflection.
156 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
error." They can be taught to successive generations but are not
hereditary. Reasoning is a fumbling with ideas, an experimenting
in thought preliminary to experimenting in doing. It is an
enormous economizing of energy and averts countless disasters.
Rational conduct is the complex reaction of nerve and brain
mechanisms almost inconceivably complicated.
These elementary propositions are set down here only to sug-
gest the depth of the background from which the mind of the
many emerges. Consistently with them I shall assume that the
category, ''pluralistic behavior," is wider than the category, "the
mind of the many," and that the wider category includes the nar-
rower; and I shall use the word "mind" only in reference to
psychological goings on in which (at least occasionally) conscious-
ness is unmistakably manifested.
Antecedent, then, to the mind of the many are, first, that
pluralistic behavior of unicellular bodies which was first ade-
quately observed under experimental conditions and properly de-
scribed by Jennings, 1 and second, the gregariousness of the higher
animals, in which presumably the mind of the many has its be-
ginnings.
The behavior of the lowest organisms is subinstinctive : no
nervous mechanism is involved. Herd behavior is instinctive in
part; in part it is a phenomenon of habit. Here we encounter a
number of problems over which psychologists have fallen into
disagreement, and which are fundamental for social theory.
To say that herd behavior is instinctive is not equivalent to
saying that gregariousness is an instinct, and the second proposi-
tion does not follow from the first. If an instinct is the response
of a particular and definite nervous mechanism, as the seizing of
food is, as caterwauling is, as fighting is and as flight is, there is
no gregarious instinct. Yet it is equally certain that pursuit of
prey by a pack of wolves and a stampede of cattle are instinctive
behavior.
The bare factual truth so far seems to be that a great part of
gregariousness is nothing less and nothing more than pluralistic
instinctive reaction to common stimulation, and that no scientific
necessity drives us to assume a gregarious instinct distinct from
1 The Behavior of the Lower Organisms.
THE MIND OF THE MANY 157
and cooperating with the primitive instincts of food seizure and
flight.
This is not the whole case, however. The individual members
of a herd keep together or frequently get together. Often they
show distress or terror if separated. And their cohesion is be-
havioristic: no material connective tissue holds them together.
Is such behavior an instinct ? By strict definition, no : there is
no gregarious instinct-mechanism. Is it instinctive? Perhaps, or
perhaps it is subinstinctive. Possibly it is a multitude of re-
sponses even simpler than instinctive ones. I am convinced that
it is. Like the behavior of the lower organisms it is essentially
(there are adventitious complications) nothing more than reac-
tion by the motor mechanisms of the body along lines of least re-
sistance.
Every animal on countless occasions reacts to self-stimulation.
He is excited by his own play, his own yelping, leaping and run-
ning. There is no conscious attempt to beat his own record, or
to maintain it, such as human beings make, but the circle of
stimulation and response is complete and closed within the in-
dividual organism, in the one case as in the other.
Herd-fellows are highly similar. They look alike, smell alike,
bleat, bark and bellow alike, and they otherwise behave alike.
Therefore, the stimulation that herd-fellow A gets from herd-
fellow B is extraordinarily like the stimulation that he gets from
himself. It is familiar not only in the sense that he is used to it,
but also in the deeper sense that it has been familiar from the
beginning. Therefore again, and further, it is not repellant; it
does not ordinarily cause recoil or set going the instinct of flight.
In contrast, stimulation from animals not of the herd, and from
the outer world in general, does alarm, as often as not. There is
then recoil, and the adventurer is thrown back upon his herd.
But if these facts (of pluralistic instinctive response to com-
mon stimulation, and reaction on lines of least resistance to inter-
stimulation) sufficiently explain gregariousness, why, one may
ask, are not all animals gregarious? The question is pertinent
(we do not want our proofs of a theory to prove too much) but
the answer to it is rather obvious. The food of herbivorous ani-
mals does not take fright and run away when scores of them at a
158 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
time tramp and mill about "all over the place." The food of
carnivorous animals starts at a flicker, or the crack of a twig.
Dogs and wolves are able, nevertheless, to capture it because they
are swift of foot and can run incredible distances without exhaus-
tion. Dogs and wolves, therefore, can hunt in packs and they do,
but a considerable "drove" of tigers beating the jungle would
starve. Cubs of the stalking carnivora snuggle together in sleep
and play together when awake ; it is of necessity that they separate
when mature. The "herds" of lions now and then observed are
small.
That primitive man was a consorting beast a hunter in packs
is as nearly certain as any purely inferential fact can be. In
The Principles of Sociology published in 1896 I argued at
length that the human ancestor was not a solitary ape, but the
ape's gregarious relative. The relative was not swift like the dog,
but he had learned to use clubs and missiles, and with them to
attack game bigger and stronger than himself, but slow. If this
contention interested anybody very much I never heard of it,
but subsequently the idea occurred to others who thought it im-
portant. 1
Assuming that the human mind was developed in the hunting
pack of pre-savagery, but remembering that adaptations and ad-
justments are not hereditary, we may now observe the genesis
of the mind of the human many as it over and over occurs in
successive generations of men, and under most varied circum-
stances.
In one of the great halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
are grouped examples of the work of Rodin. Among them is
"The Hand of God." Before it the stream of visitors divides.
Many pass on, bestowing only a glance. Others stop, their at-
tention arrested. Of these, a number linger, fascinated. For a
time they are silent, they see only the hand. Then their glances
wander to one another. They quicken with sympathetic under-
standing. One speaks, and reserve breaks down. In a moment
all are talking. They know themselves to be, in appreciation of
this beautiful thing, of one kind. A psychological group has been
formed by pluralistic reaction to a common stimulation, by inter-
1 Compare Carveth Read, The Origins of Man and of his Superstitions.
THE MIND OF THE MANY 159
stimulation and responses thereto, and by awareness of a kinship
of minds, manifested in similarity of behavior. 1
The psychological group arising in mere like-response, may
collectively begin to do something. The doing may be instinctive,
or it may be premeditated. A purpose to do may be talked over
and become concerted volition. Agreeing decision may become
concerted action ; which may be repeated, and become a f olkway. 2
In the codes of ancient law that have come down to us from
peoples emerging from a tribal into a civic life, there are pictures
of pluralistic response becoming concerted action that, by reason
of their relative simplicity, enable us to see what happens more dis-
tinctly than we do when we observe the complex institutional ac-
tivity of our own time. Of such pictures none more clearly re-
veals the psychology of it all than do the triads of Dyvnwr.l Moel-
mud, which are included in the Ancient Laws of Wales. The
various occasions that draw men together in mote, or meeting are
described. Here are examples:
5. There are three motes of mutual protection : an outpouring mote ;
mast gathering; and co-tillage. Herein the hand of everyone is required
to assist according to his ability.
6. There are three horn motes : the assembling of the country by elders
and chiefs of kindreds ; the horn of harvest ; and the horn of battle and
war, against the molestation of a border country and strangers.
14. There are three motes of consociation : a convention of a country
and elders, arranging the laws and judgments of a common country;
bards as teachers of sciences, where they assemble in session ; and the
congress of a kindred, at a meeting for worship on the principal high
festivals.
15. There are three motes of imminent attack: the inroad of a border
country enemy; the cry, or the horn, of murder and waylaying; and a
hamlet on fire : for assistance is required from everybody.
16. There are three horns of joint mote: the horn of harvest; the horn
of pleadings; and the horn of worship.
17. There are three motes of commotion: the horn of the country;
ships from a strange country effecting a landing; and the non-return of
the messenger of a country and elders from a foreign country.
a For this luminous example I am indebted to my friend and colleague,
Mr. Frank A. Ross.
'A f olkway of superior grade, however. Simpler folkways not involv-
ing concurring decision after premeditation are mere like ways of behav-
ing which have become customary.
160 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
18. There are three motes of request: for tillage; festal games; and
burning of woods; for, upon a request, they are not to be impeded.
21. There are three motes of pursuit : after a wolf ; after thieves ; and
after a mad dog; and all who shall hear the cry are to assemble together.
22. There are three outpouring motes : the approach of strangers
without permission; the depredation of a border country; and a pack of
wolves.
26. There are three motes of banishment: for murder and waylaying;
treason against the state, or treachery to the country and kindred; and
irretrievable spoliation; for it is required of everybody, of every sex and
age within hearing of the horn, in the direction taken, to accompany
the progress of that exile; and keep up the barking of dogs, to the period
of putting to sea, and until the one banished shall have gone three score
hours out of sight.
Without attempting now a systematic or even a full description
of the mind of the many, I may hazard here a partially analytical
account of certain important details.
The irritability of all organisms from the lowest up to and
including man; the sensitivity of the higher animals (perhaps of
all animals) and of man; the power to experience conscious sensa-
tions which presumably exists in all creatures that have organs
of sense; the capacity for emotional feeling, the powers of con-
scious memory and of perception which men and the highest ani-
mals have; and the ability to reason which man enjoys these are
factors which, in combination constitute the natural ego : the
hereditary, or original, nature of man.
By reacting to hard knocks ; by fumbling and learning, by the
acquisition of habits, the natural ego becomes in his individual
lifetime and for its duration an adapted ego, better suited to his
environment than he was when he was born because after adapta-
tion he is in part a product of environment.
And this is but the beginning of reconditioning, of modification,
of remaking. Both biology and psychology have answered a
whimsical question propounded by Oliver Wendell Holmes :
"Should I be I, or should I be
One-tenth another and nine-tenths me?"
if my great-grandmother had married another suitor? Biologi-
cally it depends on who was which, or might have been which,
THE MIND OF THE MANY 161
among my ancestral dominants and recessives. Psychologically,
as Ribot, James and Baldwin a good while ago demonstrated,
every human individual is largely a product of mental intercourse
with other living individuals, and of memories (more or less
reflected upon) of the deeds and the thoughts of the dead. The
process substantially, as I see it, is this :
If the adapted ego and an alter, who also is an adapted ego, or
if many individuals each of whom is an adapted ego, are so far
alike in their reactions to fundamental stimulations that they
dwell in proximity, or frequent the same places, they repeatedly
knock up against one another. They stimulate one another and
respond to one another. In human populations these processes
are unimaginably more complicated than they are in subhuman
herds. Interstimulation among men takes forms not onlj of acci-
dental suggestion and example, but also of consciously intended
suggestion and example; not only of unconsciously made and
unanalyzed impression, but also of premeditated appeal and in-
tended intimidation. Response takes forms of conscious imitation,
of dramatization, of conversation, of discussion and of concerted
action. Dramatization and conversation are particularly impor-
tant. In the presence of a fellow being a conscious individual does
not do things artlessly. 1 He enacts them. Conversation, which
too often we think of as something other than behavior, is be-
havior in fact. It is objective, and states of consciousness peculiar
to A or peculiar to B (which as feeling cannot be shared by ego
and alter) when talked about by A and B become objects of
thought to each, and can thenceforth be correlated by each with
observed behavior. It is doubtful whether in the whole range of
facts germane to both psychology and sociology there is any
other thing more significant than the conversationalizing of con-
sciousness. Through it and by means of it we develop our
"ejective" interpretations of one another, which, without con-
versation, could not get far, or be other than vague. 2
*He may unconsciously or self-consciously do them so artfully as to
seem to do them artlessly.
"The term "eject" was first used by William Kingdon Clifford in a
remarkable article, "On the Nature of Things in Themselves," which
appeared in Mind, in January, 1878. Clifford's own definition of the word
as there given was as follows : "When I come to the conclusion that you
162 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
The play of minds upon one another is a give and take which
expands and enriches all : a "dialectic of personal growth," Mark
Baldwin called it. Also, little by little, stage by stage, and in the
long run it is an adjustment to one another made by mentalized
organisms reacting to common stimulations, having like wants,
and in like ways trying to satisfy them. Adjustment works out
as toleration, which, among herding animals, is little if anything
more than an equilibrium of fighting ability, but among men is
premeditated and consciously practiced. Also, among men, it
works out further in a formulation and observance of rights.
Through give and take with fellowmen and through adjustment
with them, the adapted ego becomes a complicit ego. 1
The account of the making of ego by alter which Baldwin gives
and from which I dissent, is both simpler than mine and different
from it. "The dialectic of personal growth," Baldwin says, may
be read thus : "My thought of self is in the main, as to its charac-
ter as a personal self, filled up with my thought of others, dis-
tributed variously as individuals; and my thought of others, as
persons, is mainly filled up with myself. In other words, but for
certain minor distinctions in the filling, and for certain compelling
distinctions between that which is immediate and that which is
objective, the ego and the alter are to our thought one and the
same thing."
To this I object first that it is inaccurate to say that "my thought
are conscious, and that there are objects in your consciousness similar
to those in mine, I am not inferring any actual or possible feelings of
my own, but your feelings, which are not, and cannot by any possibility
become, objects in my consciousness. . . . But the inferred existence of
your feelings, of objective groupings among them similar to those among
my feelings, and of a subjective order in many respects analogous to
my own, these inferred existences are in the very act of inference thrown
out of my consciousness, recognized as outside of it, as not being a part
of me. I propose, accordingly, to call these inferred existences ejects,
things thrown out of my consciousness, to distinguish them from objects,
things presented in my consciousness, phenomena."
1 1 am now closely following the argument of an article on "The
Psychology of Society," Science, January 6, 1899, in which I criticized
Baldwin's "Social and Ethical Interpretations," contending that he had
not made enough of that natural ego which is not a product of the
dialectic, that he had failed to perceive the dominating importance of
mental and moral relations with similars, and that in identifying the
"matter" or stuff of social organization with "all kinds of knowledges
and informations" (with "thoughts" in general) he was off the track
altogether.
THE MIND OF THE MANY 163
of self is, in the main, filled up with my thought of others," even
if we admit "minor distinctions in the filling" and "certain com-
pelling distinctions between that which is immediate and that
which is objective." What are these compelling distinctions of
the immediate? Obviously, they are those presentations in con-
sciousness which arise from organic conditions rather than from
mental intercourse with others. Hunger is a state of conscious-
ness which can subvert the entire product of the "dialectic of
personal growth" ; and it will not do to ignore the fact that when
men who have been amended and amplified by that dialectic are
confronted by starvation, they are liable to have thoughts of self
which can hardly be construed as filled up mainly with thoughts
of others, unless we are prepared to accept a cannibal's definition
of "others." Therefore we must continue to think of the indi-
vidual as being essentially a natural ego, and at all times more
natural and adapted than complicit.
A further and more important objection that I make to Bald-
win's analysis is that the give and take in which the ego engages
is not carried on indiscriminately or to equal extent with any
alter. From the beginning of conscious life a tendency is mani-
fest to discriminate between one alter and another, and develop-
ment of the complicit ego is conditioned by a state of awareness
which may be described as a consciousness of similars or of kind.
The rise of this consciousness marks a distinct stage in the evolu-
tion of the mind of the many. Also it converts mere gregarious-
ness into society; and it transforms further the already twice
amended and doubly amplified natural ego.
The consciousness of kind, it is necessary to observe, is not an
undecomposable or ultimate mental state. Sensations are the
foundation of it. Ideas and emotions are mingled, perhaps
blended, in it. Long before any discriminations of kind have
become possible, a preparation for them and a tendency toward
them is made in conscious experience. Of the sensations which
first arise in consciousness, some are received from the bodily
organism which the self inhabits ; some are received from similar
bodily organisms, and some are received from wholly unlike
objects in the external world. Now we know that many sensations
received from self are so nearly like sensations received from like
164 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
selves that, merely as sensations, they can be distinguished only
with difficulty. If, for example, I strike with my voice a certain
note of the musical scale, and another person a moment after
strikes the same note with his voice, my auditory sensations in the
two cases are nearly alike. If I cry out in pain, and then hear
another man like myself cry out in pain, my auditory sensations
are nearly alike; but if I hear a dog bark, the sensation is
different from that which I have received from my own voice. If
I walk with my friend down the street, and happen to notice the
motion of my feet as I take successive steps, and then to notice
the motion of my friend's feet, the visual sensations, in these two
cases, are closely alike ; but if I happen to notice the trotting of
a horse that is being driven by me, the visual sensation is dif-
ferent from that which I have received in observing my own steps.
If I stroke the back of my hand, and then stroke the back of
my friend's hand, I receive tactual sensations that are closely
alike ; but if I then stroke the fur of a cat or the mane of a horse,
or touch the paw of a cat or the hoof of a horse, I receive
sensations very different from those received from the back of
my hand. It therefore appears that before there is power to make
discriminations of any kind, even to think of differences of sen-
sation, sensations themselves fall into different groupings. At the
very beginning of conscious life, certain elements which are to
enter into a consciousness of kind begin to appear in experience.
They consist of like sensations received from self and from others
who resemble self.
On the basis of these experiences there are developed others
that call for investigation from the same point of view. When
suggestion begins to play an important part in mental life, are
suggestions from persons very unlike self equally efficacious with
suggestions from persons nearly like self? There is here a great
field for investigation. A thousand familiar observations strongly
indicate the superiority of suggestions that come from those whose
neural organization resembles that of the person affected. Why,
for example, does Maudsley venture to say, without offering the
slightest proof, that, while men are as liable as silly sheep to fall
into panic when they see panic among their fellows, they are not
similarly liable when they perceive panic among sheep? Obvi-
THE MIND OF THE MANY 165
ously, because facts of this general character are so familiar that
no one would think of questioning them. Phenomena like these,
of course, have thefr origin in a like responsiveness of like or-
ganisms to the same stimulus.
When power to make intellectual discriminations is attained, a
perception of resemblances and differences begins to create ob-
jective science, to react upon pluralistic behavior, and to bias the
intercourse of individuals. Objects of the external world are
sorted and classified. "Men," "animals," and "plants," are early
categories. In the folk lore of many lands the making and filling
of them is the first brain work spoken of. "Whatsoever Adam
called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And
Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to
every beast of the field." The first sortings are by obtruf ive fea-
tures of size, shape and color. Then actions arrest attention, and
men already sorted by size and color, 1 are sorted by speech and
behavior. Last of all they are classified with reference to feelings,
beliefs, tastes, sentiments, judgments and philosophies imputed to
them. In all this classifying every individual assigns himself (in
most instances with obvious satisfaction) to certain kinds, and,
thanking God that he is not as other men are, excluding himself
from their kinds.
These intellectual operations of discrimination and assignment
react upon the sensory sympathy (I have called it organic sym-
pathy) that has been described, and condition it by reflection. It
becomes the complex sympathy (partly feeling and partly idea)
that Adam Smith discoursed of in The Theory of Moral Senti-
ments. Even in the emotional madness of mob action the reac-
tion of the perception of kind may be seen. When, for example,
masses of men simultaneously respond to a party cry or symbol,
the action for the moment is merely a like responsiveness to the
same stimulus. An instant later, when each man perceives that, in
this respect, his fellow beings are resembling himself in feeling
and in action, his own emotion is enormously intensified. It is this
which gives to all symbols and shibboleths their tremendous practi-
cal importance.
1 Size and color are the peculiarities of white men first remarked upon
by brown men on first acquaintance.
1 66 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
From the moment when the individual becomes intellectually
aware of his kind (or kinds) he begins to pick and choose his
familiars. He is acutely conscious of likes and dislikes, and de-
velops countless prejudices. On the whole he likes best those
fellowmen whose ways are his ways, whose foibles are his
foibles, whose vices are his vices, whose virtues are his virtues,
whose tastes are his tastes, and whose beliefs are his beliefs. His
consorting becomes a preferential association, and this is the be-
ginning of society in distinction from the herd. Ever since the
derivatives of sociiis appeared in speech they have carried the
denotation or the connotation, preferential association. Gregari-
ousness began when plural offspring kept together instead of
separating. Society began when the consciousness of kind first
manifested itself in preferential association.
In association and through its exigencies, the ego takes on the
subtleties, of feeling, attitude, and demeanor, that make him a
comrade. Already a complicit ego, made so by gregariousness, he
now becomes a socialized ego, made so by preferential association,
a product of the consciousness of kind.
There are two further stages in the development of the ego
which I shall only mention, without describing them or further
accounting for them, in this place. Society becomes organized.
Through its mores spontaneous society exerts a social pressure
upon its component human units. Through its governments and
laws organized society exerts a legal pressure. Reacting to these
pressures the individual becomes a societized, or, to use a less
accurate but more familiar word, a civilized ego. Organized
society ameliorates the struggle for existence, thereby making
possible a survival of human variates from type (if they are soci-
etized) that under harder conditions would perish. Varying from
type, the human units of organized society also differ from one
another. They are individual not only in the sense that each is
an ego but also in the sense that each is in a degree peculiar,
which is what we mean when we say that each has individuality.
So, as the final product of social evolution, we get human per-
sonality, concrete in an ego that has been adapted, made complicit,
socialized, civilized, and, in the end, individualised.
THE MIND OF THE MANY 167
It should be clear by now why I cannot assent to the proposition
that the "material" of society is all kinds of thoughts and "knowl-
edges." The material of society is a plural number of concrete
human beings so constituted that they think alike on matters of
fundamental importance, behave alike in critical situations and,
intellectually knowing that they so do behave, consciously count
on one another to keep on so thinking and so behaving. Or, more
briefly put, the material of society is a plural number of like-
minded persons.
When, many years ago, I singled out like-mindedness as a
phenomenon of preeminent importance for the theory of human
society, I was careful to acknowledge my obligation for the idea to
a source very old and immensely respectable.
Paul the Apostle was not only one of the most gifted men of
any age, but also one of the most practical. He had been reared
in Jewish formalism and had witnessed the beginnings of Roman
imperialism before he participated in the organization of Chris-
tianity. Accepting the duties which circumstances and his own
nature placed upon him as an interpreter and missionary of the
new faith he gave heed to the social cohesion of its converts, and
perceived in what it must consist. All of the older religions
against which Christianity was to make headway had grown into
elaborate social systems, with their priesthoods, their carefully
graded ranks or classes of believers, their rituals and festivals,
and against these the disciples had protested. Knowing, there-
fore, that the social unity of Christian believers must be more
spiritual and spontaneously behavioristic than authoritative and
legal, Paul saw that it must be the unity of like-mindedness.
Therefore insistently in the Epistles he forces like-mindedness
upon the attention of his readers, and warns them to give heed
to it. "Be of the same mind one toward another," he says to the
Romans; and in the same Epistle he prays for them, that they
may be of the same mind; that with one accord and with one
mouth they may glorify their God. The Corinthians he beseeches
to "speak the same thing" ; to "have no divisions" among them ;
that they may be "perfected together in the same mind and in the
same judgment." And the Philippians he implores to "stand fast
168 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
in one spirit, with one soul" ; to "be of the same mind, having the
same love, being of one accord."
That it was in truth Paul who first seized upon this social
phenomenon for practical purposes, we have proof. Only in two
places outside of his writings can any allusion to it be found in
either the Old or the New Testament. One is in the first epistle
of Peter, where the expression "finally, be ye all like-minded" is so
exactly the phraseology of Paul that we can hardly doubt that it
was borrowed from him. The other is in Revelation, where ten
kings are spoken of as having one mind. That the Apostle him-
self derived the suggestion from a Greek or a Roman source is
probable. Plato in the passage quoted in Chapter VI observes how
different is the behavior of "all kinds of people flowing together
to the same point" from that of a community homogeneous in
blood and speaking one language. Aristotle in the Ethics quotes
the saying that "birds of a feather flock together," and recalls a
contention of Empedocles that "like desires like." To Roman
lawyers the "meeting of minds" was an essential factor of a con-
tract. But, so far as we know, neither Greek nor Roman before
Paul insisted as he did that like-mindedness is the effective co-
hesion and unity of discrete individuals for practical ends.
If he and those who anticipated his thought were right in this,
we find in implications of their teaching a provisional definition of
society and of its "stuff." The like-mindedness that is essential is
known and understood for what it is by those who share it. They
foster it, knowing its value. Not only do A and B agree in their
thoughts, feelings, purposes ; but also both A and B are aware of
their agreement. Moreover, they perceive that agreement is pleas-
urable ; that the fruits of concord are peace ; that discord is not
happiness and is likely to end in disunion. They strive, as en-
joined, to be "perfected together in the same mind and in the
same judgment." Obviously, then, it appears, a society is any num-
ber of individuals in a general way like-minded, or like-minded
on a particular matter, who know and enjoy their like-mindedness,
and are therefore able to work together for common ends.
The inhabitants of villages, cities and nations are like-minded
in a general way, but usually tolerant of many differences that
are not divisive and favorably disposed to any that function in
THE MIND OF THE MANY 169
occupational specialization, the so-called division of labor. The
members of artificial societies intentionally formed and main-
tained for particular purposes, the church for example, the politi-
cal party, the business corporation, the scientific association, or
the club, are like-minded in respect of the particular interests
which these societies conserve or foster, and usually they are
intolerant of attitudes inimical to the interests cherished.
Toleration of the modes and degrees of unlike-mindedness that
are as necessary for social variation as fundamental like-minded-
ness is for cohesion and for stability, is always "within limits" of
kind, degree and range. These do not necessarily, or perhaps
usually, coincide with limits of desirability, but what the latter
are has never been determined. Everybody except the fanatic
and the moron can see that only if new types of character, new
habits and ambitions, and new ways of thinking appear by muta-
tion or are brought in, can a community undergo appreciable
change for better or for worse; that only as individual men differ
from their fellows can the church or the party adapt itself to new
conditions; but beyond this all is guesswork, and experimental
policies are shaped by conflicts of group and class interest, as these
are played upon by winds of destiny. Scientific knowledge of this
matter is presumably attainable ; but at present we know only that
the balance of like-mindedness over unlike-mindedness must be
large for society to exist at all and that for orderly development a
continually appearing unlikeness of behavior, of expressed pur-
pose, feeling and thought, must be reconcilable with a great mass
of established agreement, and in fact, be harmonized with it, and
utilized.
By tolerated variegations of population and variations of be-
havior much social change is accomplished quietly and unob-
served. Slight differences of nationality are assimilated; minor
peculiarities of manner are imitated ; modifications of opinion are
effected ; until, in time, a really important metamorphosis of soci-
ety has taken place, and no one can tell exactly how. These from
the first are things "of course" or of habit more than of emotion
or of conviction, far more than of intellectual concern. They
enter into tradition, partaking of its color, and mellowing in its
atmosphere.
1 70 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
But, now and then, masses of men become consciously dissatis-
fied with existing conditions, and by combined action, consciously
begun and intentionally kept up, bring about momentous changes
in a relatively brief while. Such are revolutionSj_and occasional
transformations inaugurated by governmental policy. Such, for
example, were the Puritan rebellion in England, the American
Revolution in 1776, the establishment of the French Republic, the
ratification of the Federal Constitution of the United States, the
abolition of negro slavery, and the communistic regime in Russia.
These comparatively swift overturns or metamorphoses are
brought about in two ways : an impulsive, unreasoning social ac-
tion, like that of the mob, is one ; deliberation and discussion are
the other. Of impulsive social action, sane men in their sane
moments have a well-grounded dread. Not all the cruelties that
have deliberately been inflicted by political tyrants and ecclesiasti-
cal councils can be compared with the horrors that have been
perpetrated by irresponsible masses of men who have broken
with tradition or ceased to reason about their social situation, and
have surrendered themselves to the frenzy of emotion.
Scientific analysis of the conditions and processes of mob
action can add nothing to the repugnance which calm-minded men
feel toward collective outbreaks of the brute nature that still sur-
vives in man. Nevertheless, inventory and description contribute
two elements of value to our knowledge of this subject. The first
is the record of history that transition from violent talk to violent
action is begun by irresponsible, quasi-criminal elements of the
population. Riots, insurrections, revolutions, rarely begin with
the striking of a well-directed blow by a disciplined force, under
the command of a far-seeing leader. They start with assaults,
thefts, and homicides, with volleys of stones, with random shoot-
ings and stabbings, with the looting of shops, and the lynching of
opponents. To mention but one among countless instances, the
Crusades, a true epidemic craze, did not begin with the setting
forth of armed expeditions under Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh the
Great, Robert Curthose, Count Robert of Flanders, Prince Boeh-
mond of Tarentum, and Count Raymond of Toulouse, in the year
1097. They began with the three unorganized crusades of the
preceding year, under Walter the Penniless, whose twenty thou-
THE MIND OF THE MANY 171
sand followers, described as the dregs of Christendom, filled Bul-
garia with robbery and murder, until they were themselves slaugh-
tered in the storming of Belgrade ; under Peter the Hermit, whose
rabble of forty thousand men, women, and children was hardly
better in character; and under the German priest, Gottschalk,
whose fifteen thousand followers from Strassburg, Worms, and
Mayence inaugurated their pilgrimage by massacring Jews in the
valley of the Rhine. Collective conduct of this kind, whether it
develops into revolutionary "terrors" to culminate in the devasta-
tion of an empire, or becomes a f olkway, like lynching in America,
admits of but one interpretation. It means that the unchaining
of the wild beast in man, which is often spoken of as a result of
mob action, is not its result at all, but its beginning; and that a
fearful responsibility rests upon those men and women who, while
believing in rational deliberation, and justly dreading epidemic
emotion, look tolerantly upon the initial stages of social excite-
ment, or carelessly permit themselves to contribute to it, in the
unwarranted belief that they can turn to and check it when it
begins to go too far.
The impossibility of checking, until it has run its course, any
mob action that has once gathered headway, has fully been estab-
lished as a demonstrated sociological principle; and this is the
second element which a scientific description of society adds to
our knowledge of the non-reasoning or impulsive modes of social
transformation. From the moment that habit and reason lose
control over masses of communicating men, they fall under the
power of example and suggestion; and emotional fury sweeps
through them with increasing volume and accelerating velocity,
as a conflagration sweeps through accumulations of combustible
material. Impulsive social action, in short, proceeds not slowly
through the mass, as water filters through sand, but with the ac-
celeration of a geometrical progression. This law is no more open
to doubt than is the law of gravitation, and no fact of social knowl-
edge is more sobering. The only way to prevent the devastating
consequences of epidemic madness is to multiply in the com-
munity the number of those men who habitually subordinate feel-
ing to morale or to reason, and who, therefore, cannot become a
part of the combustible material of the mob spirit.
172 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
If these things are true, it is certain that as far as well-being
depends upon human intention and the putting forth of human
will to supplement the slow accumulation of minute changes that
are imperceptibly effected, we must look chiefly to the agency of
deliberation. What, then, are the conditions under which reason
functions in social affairs and establishes morale? What are the
conditions under which deliberated behavior is encouraged, and
the proportion of emotional, fanatical, hypnotizable, impulsive be-
havior is diminished?
These questions may best be answered by converting them into
a negative form. Under what conditions are irrationality, hyp-
notic susceptibility, willingness to follow without question or
resistance any suggested course of action, most likely to prevail?
Are we tolerant of influences or agencies, whose certain tendency
is to break down morale and give rein to impulse ? The answer is
disturbing but not disputable. For generations society has per-
mitted, not to say encouraged, in the name of religion, the practice
of arts that menace happiness and social order. A certain type of
the professional revivalist plays upon ignorance and upon fear.
A certain type of the revival meeting is, and always has been, .a
school of ill-considered action. Throughout history a kind of
revival in which reason is denounced, anathematized, and sub-
merged under billows of crazing emotion, has been a foster-
mother of the mob.
No sane person can witness the occurrences of a negro revival
in the South, or read of the similar occurrences that took place
during revival epidemics that swept westward from the Atlantic
seaboard in 1837 an d in 1857, or listen to the preaching of some
of the more popular of contemporary revivalists, without being
convinced of the truth of these propositions. The methods of the
professional revivalist are those of the professional hypnotizer,
even when they are more refined, and keep their machinery out of
sight. The professional revivalist tells his hearers that their
reason is the most deadly enemy of their souls ; that the deliberat-
ing, critical habit of mind endangers eternal salvation ; that safety
lies in acting immediately upon the impulse which he is striving
to awaken in their bosoms. Such a teacher, addressing an audi-
ence of thousands in New York City, repeated as a model for
THE MIND OF THE MANY 173
universal imitation the prayer of a man who besought God to
crush his individual will, and make him a drift-log on the current
of divine purpose. Men and women who surrender themselves
to such teaching in the revival will not act coolly, reasonably,
and courageously in the affairs of secular life. Those who yield
to the impassioned appeal of the exhorter, will not be unmoved by
the harangue of the partisan orator, or resist the impulse to fellow
blindly the lead of the "boss" who, like his religious preceptor,
exacts unquestioning obedience. As long as the grosser forms of
revivalism are possible, the protection of society against epidemic
madness, and the overthrow of "bossism" of the brutal sort will be
impossible. It is unreasonable to believe that we can make men
irrational, impulsive, hypnotic creatures for the purposes of re-
ligion, and then find them cool-headed, critical, rational men for
the purposes of politics.
When reason controls the social situation, deliberation consists
largely in a review and criticism of social values ; one of the high-
est enterprises in which the rational intelligence can engage.
By the term "social value" I mean a regard or esteem for any
social habit, relation, or institution which makes men cherish and
defend it. In the long run, social values are measured, as eco-
nomic values are, by the sacrifices that men make for them. The
measure of the value that we attach to civil liberty is found in the
sacrifices that we make to maintain it. The measure of the value
that we attach to any ancient usage or institution which, in some
degree, obstructs the later developments of our social system is the
sacrifice of new possibilities that we submit to, rather than witness
the destruction of things that we long have admired or revered.
Social values, like economic values, are determined in part by
comparisons that theoretically should be extended throughout the
entire range of possible utilities and costs. It would be worth
while for the individual, if he were well enough informed and
sufficiently in control of his impulses and prejudices, to estimate
accurately every utility and every cost which enters into his cal-
culations. It would promote the general welfare if society could
estimate accurately the utility of every social institution, of every
cherished usage or custom, and, with equal accuracy, the sacri-
fices, not only of the time and money of individuals, but also of
174 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
possible developments oh new lines of progress, which must be
made in order to maintain the old ; or, taking the other point of
view, if it could estimate accurately how much of the old must be
sacrificed to secure the new. Therefore, the rational process in
social development consists chiefly in that criticism of all our
social values which enables us wisely to choose among them.
Objects of social esteem are ends to be attained or they are
means to attainment. Here, again, we find analogy with economic
categories, since economic goods are either goods for final con-
sumption, or the means of production which we describe as capi-
tal. The ends that we strive to attain in society are not essentially
different from those that we strive to attain as individuals. The
objects of endeavor, whether of individuals or of communities,
are life, happiness, and the development of our rational personal-
ity. Society itself is a means. Philosophy cannot set aside or
improve upon the Platonic and Aristotelian dictum that the state
exists for the good life. Yet no truth is more frequently lost sight
of in personal conduct or in public policy. Nothing is so hard
for the partisan to see and admit as that his party is only an in-
strumentality, and that it cumbers the ground when it no longer
promotes the end for which it was instituted. Nothing is more
difficult for men and women in general than to see and admit
that customs, usages, institutions, parties, churches, creeds, have
no sacredness in themselves, and that there is no other warrant for
their existence than may be found in their power to contribute
to the safe and comfortable maintenance of human life, or to the
advance of the human mind in knowledge and command.
The conditions under which means in use are effectively com-
bined for the promotion of ends in view have been set forth in
part, and now must be considered further. Institutions have be-
come what they are through historical processes of evolution, and
cannot instantly be made over or re-correlated. Also, they are
related in definite ways to like-mindedness and to variability.
The criticism of social values must proceed in presupposition and
recognition of these conditions.
CHAPTER X
THE GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS
CONFLICTS and contradictions among ideas and beliefs are of
various degrees and of various modes besides that specific one
which we call logical incompatibility. A perception, for example,
may be pictorially inconsistent or tonically discordant with an-
other perception ; a mere faith unsupported by objective evidence
may be emotionally antagonistic to another mere faith, as truly as
a judgment may be logically irreconcilable with another judg-
ment. And this wide possibility of contradiction is particularly
to be recognized when the differing ideas or beliefs have arisen
not within the same individual mind, but in different minds, and
are therefore colored by personal or partisan interest, and warped
by idiosyncrasy of mental constitution. These intermental con-
flicts are more extensive and more varied than the logical duels
that are intramental; they are also less definite, less precise. In
reality they are culture conflicts, in which the opposing forces, so
far from being specific ideas only, or pristine beliefs only, are in
fact more or less bewildering complexes of ideas, beliefs, preju-
dices, sympathies, antipathies, and personal interests.
Any idea or group of ideas, any belief or group of beliefs, may
happen to be, or may become, a common interest, shared by a
small or a large number of like-minded or potentially like-minded
individuals. It may draw and hold them together in bonds of
acquaintance, of association, even of cooperation. So it may play
a group-making role. Contradictory ideas or beliefs, therefore,
may play a group-making role in a double sense. Each draws into
association the individual minds that entertain it or find it attrac-
tive. Each also repels those minds to whom it is repugnant, and
drives them toward the group which is being formed about the
contradictory idea or belief. Contradictions among ideas and
beliefs, then, it may be assumed, tend on the whole to sharpen the
lines of demarkation between group and group.
i75
1 76 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
These assumptions are, I suppose, so fully justified by the
everyday observation of mankind, and so confirmed by history,
that it is unnecessary to discuss them, or in any way to dwell
upon them ; but it should be not unprofitable to inquire what kind
or type of groups, distinctive ideas and beliefs and the inevitable
contradictions among them are likely to create and to main-
tain within the progressive populations of the world, from this
time forth.
Somewhat more than three hundred years ago, Protestantism
and geographical discovery had combined to create conditions
extraordinarily favorable to the formation of groups or associa-
tions about various conflicting ideas and beliefs functioning as
nuclei; and for nearly three hundred years the world has been
observing a remarkable multiplication of culture groups of two
fundamentally different types. One type is a sect, or denomina-
tion, having no restricted local habitation, but winning adherents
here and there in various local communities, provinces, or nations,
and having, therefore, a membership either locally concentrated or
more or less widely dispersed ; either regularly or very irregularly
distributed. The culture group of the other type, or kind, is a
self-sufficing community. It may be a village, a colony, a state,
or a nation. Its membership is concentrated, its habitat is defined.
To a great extent, as everybody knows, American colonization
proceeded through the formation of religious communities. Such
were the Pilgrim and the Puritan commonwealths. Such were
the Quaker groups of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Such
were the localized societies of the Dunkards, the Moravians, and
the Mennonites.
As late as the middle of the nineteenth century, the American
people witnessed the birth and growth of one of the most remark-
able religious communities known in history. The Mormon com-
munity of Utah, which, originating in 1830 as a band of relatives
and acquaintances, clustered by an idea that quickly became a
dogma, had become in fifty years a commonwealth de facto, defy-
ing the authority de jure of the United States.
We are not likely, however, again to witness a phenomenon of
this kind in the civilized world. Recently we have seen the rise
and the astonishingly rapid spread of another American religion,
GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 177
namely, the Christian Science faith. But it has created no com-
munity group. It has created only a dispersed sect. It is obvious
to any intelligent observer, however untrained in sociological dis-
crimination he may be, that the forces of Protestantism, still
dividing and differentiating as they are, no longer to any great
extent create new self-sufficing communities. They create only
associations of irregular geographical dispersion, of more or less
unstable or shifting membership. In a word, the conflicting-idea
forces, which in our colonial days tended to create community
groups as well as sects, tend now to create sectarian bodies only
mere denominational or partisan associations.
A similar contrast between an earlier and a later stage of cul-
ture group-making may be observed if we go back to centuries
long before the Protestant Reformation; there to survey a wider
field and a longer series of historical periods.
It is a commonplace of historical knowledge that in all of the
earliest civilizations there was an approximate identification of
religion with ethnic consciousness and of political consciousness
with both religious and race feeling. Each people had its own
tribal or national gods, who were inventoried as national assets,
at valuations quite as high as those attached to tribal or national
territory.
When, however, Roman imperial rule had been extended over
the civilized world, the culture conflicts that then arose expended
their group-creating force in bringing together like believers in
sectarian association. Christianity, appealing to all bloods, in a
measure to all economic classes, and spreading into all sections of
the eastern Mediterranean region, did not to any great extent
create communities. And what was true of Christianity was in
like manner true of the Mithras cult, widely diffused in the second
Christian century. Even Mohammedanism, a faith seemingly
well calculated to create autonomous states, in contact with a
world prepared by Roman organization could not completely
identify itself with definite political boundaries.
The proximate causes of these contrasts are not obscure. We
must suppose that a self-sufficing community might at one time
as well as at another be drawn together by formative beliefs.
But that it may take root somewhere and, by protecting itself
178 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
against destructive external influences succeed for a relatively
long time in maintaining its integrity and its solidarity, it must
enjoy a relative isolation. In a literal sense it must be beyond
easy reach of those antagonistic forces which constitute for it the
outer world of unbelief and darkness.
Such isolation is easily and often possible, however, only in
the early stages of political integration. It is always difficult and
unusual in those advanced stages wherein nations are combined
in world-empires. It is becoming well-nigh impossible, now that
all the continents have been brought under the sovereignty of the
so-called civilized peoples, while these peoples themselves, freely
communicating and intermingling, maintain with one another that
understanding which constitutes them, in a certain broad sense
of the term, a world-society.
The proximate effects also of the contrast that has been sketched
are generally recognized.
As long as blood, sympathy, religious faith, and political con-
sciousness are approximately coterminous, the groups that they
form, whether local communities or nations, must necessarily be
rather sharply delimited. They must be characterized also by
internal solidarity. Their membership is stable, because, to break
the bond of blood is not only to make oneself an outcast^ but is
also to be unfaithful to the ancestral gods ; to change one's religion
is not only to be impious, but is also to commit treason; to ex-
patriate oneself is not only to commit treason, but is also to
blaspheme against high heaven.
But when associations of believers, or of persons holding in
common any philosophy or doctrine whatsoever, are no longer
self-sufficing communities, and when nations, composite in blood,
have become compound in structure, all social groups, clusters,
or organizations, not only the cultural ones drawn together by
formative ideas, but also the economic and the political ones,
become in some degree plastic. Their membership then becomes
to some extent shifting and renewable. Under these circum-
stances any given association of men, let it be a village, a religious
group, a trade-union, a corporation, or a political party, not only
takes into itself new members from time to time; it also permits
old members to depart. Men come and men go, yet the associa-
GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 179
tion or the group itself persists. As group, or as organization,
it remains unimpaired.
The economic advantage secured by this plasticity and renew-
ableness is beyond calculation enormous. It permits and facili-
tates the drafting of men at any moment from points where they
are least needed, for concentration upon points where they are
needed most. The spiritual or idealistic advantage is not less
great. The concentration of attention and of enthusiasm upon
strategic points gives ever-increasing impetus to progressive
movements.
Let us turn now from these merely proximate causes and
effects of group formation, to take note of certain developmental
processes which lie further back in the evolutionary sequence,
and which also have significance for our inquiry, since, when we
understand them, they may aid us in our attempt to answer the
question, What kind of group-making is likely to be accomplished
by cultural conflicts from this time forth?
The most readily perceived, because the most pictorial, of the
conflicts arising between one belief and another are those that
are waged between beliefs that have been localized and then,
through geographical expansion, have come into competition
throughout wide frontier areas. Of all such conflicts, that upon
which the world has now fully entered between occidental and
oriental ideas is not merely the most extensive; it is also by far
the most interesting and picturesque.
Less picturesque, but often more dramatic, are the conflicts
that arise within each geographical region, within each nation,
between old beliefs and new the conflicts of sequent, in dis-
tinction from coexistent ideas; the conflicts in time, in distinc-
tion from the conflicts in space. A new knowledge is attained,
which compels us to question old dogmas. A new faith arises,
which would displace the ancient traditions. As the new waxes
strong in a region favorable to it, it begins there, within
local limits, to supersede the old. Only then, when the conflict
between the old as old, and the new as new, is practically over,
does the triumphant new begin to go forth spatially as a con-
quering influence from the home of its youth into regions out-
lying and remote.
i8o STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Whatever the form, however, that the culture conflict assumes,
whether serial and dramatic, or geographical and picturesque,
its antecedent psychological conditions are in certain great es-
sentials the same. Men array themselves in hostile camps on
questions of theory and belief, not merely because they are vari-
ously and conflictingly informed, but far more because they are
mentally unlike, their minds having been prepared by structural
differentiation to seize upon different views and to cherish op-
posing convictions. That is to say, some minds have become
rational, critical, plastic, open, outlooking, above all, intuitive of
objective facts and relations. Others, in their fundamental con-
stitution have remained dogmatic, intuitive only of personal atti-
tudes or of subjective moods, temperamentally conservative and
instinctive. Minds of the one kind welcome the new and wider
knowledge; they go forth to embrace it. Minds of the other
kind resist it.
In the segregation thus arising, there is usually discoverable a
tendency toward grouping by sex.
Whether the mental and moral traits of women are inherent
and therefore permanent, or whether they are but passing effects
of circumscribed experience, and therefore possibly destined to
be modified, is immaterial for my present purpose. It is not cer-
tain that either the biologist or the psychologist is prepared to
answer the question. It is certain that the sociologist is not. It
is enough for the analysis that I am making now if we can say
that, as a merely descriptive fact, women thus far in the history
of the race have generally been more instinctive, more intuitive
of subjective states, more emotional, more conservative than men;
and that men, more generally than women, have been intuitive of
objective relations, inclined therefore to break with instinct and
to rely on the later-developed reasoning processes of the brain,
and willing, consequently, to take chances, to experiment, and to
innovate.
If so much be granted, we may perhaps say that it is because
of these mental differences that in conflicts between new and old
ideas, between new knowledge and old traditions, it usually hap-
pens that a large majority of all women are found in the camp
GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 181
of the old, and that the camp of the new is composed mainly of
men.
In the camp of the new, however, are always to be found
women of alert intelligence, who happen also to be tempera-
mentally radical ; women in whom the reasoning habit has asserted
sway over instinct, and in whom intuition has become the true
scientific power to discern objective relations. And in the camp
of the old, together with a majority of all women, are to be found
most of the men of conservative instinct, and most of those also
whose intuitive and reasoning powers are unequal to the effort of
thinking about the world or anything in it in terms of impersonal
causation. Associated with all of these elements, both male and
female, may usually be discovered, finally, a contingent of priestly
personalities ; not necessarily religious priests, but men who love
to assert spiritual dominion, to wield authority, to be reverenced
and obeyed, and who naturally look for a following among the
non-skeptical and easily impressed.
Such, very broadly and rudely sketched, is the psychological
background of culture conflict. It is, however, a background
only, a certain persistent grouping of forces and conditions ; it is
not the cause from which culture conflicts proceed.
Always one and the same throughout the ages, although in the
course of human history it has assumed endlessly varied outward
shapes, the cause of all conflict, cultural, economic, juristic, polit-
ical, has slowly fashioned also their psychological factors. From
the dawn of life until now the alternative has ever and again
confronted living things, to change their habits or die. By far
the greater part of them have prematurely died because they could
not change. Of the survivors, the greater part have lived on be-
cause they have changed unconsciously. To a very few, of the
human kind, it has been given to know before the event that
change must come. They have perceived in time the shifting of
external relations, and this perception has been the fearsome New
Idea that has set man at variance against his father and the
daughter against her mother, that has brought not peace on earth,
but the sword.
And from the beginning it has literally been true that a man's
foes have been they of his own household. Sheltered in some
182 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
degree in the struggle for existence, women have rarely felt, as
men have felt, the first staggering shock of new conditions. They
have rarely been compelled to change their outlook and their way
of life as unexpectedly and decisively as men have had to change.
They have been able therefore to cling longer to the established
order, and to cherish for it a lingering sentiment, a deep affection
even, that vigorous men have not been able fully to share.
From the beginning, therefore, whenever the necessity for a
new adjustment of life to its conditions has arisen, a conflict
between old and new habits, between old and new convictions,
between old and new sentiments, has been precipitated, and it has
arrayed the rationalistic or kinetic minds, chiefly men, against the
instinctive or static minds, chiefly women.
Yet from the beginning another tendency also has been mani-
fest. The approximate identification of static interest with
woman and of innovating interest with man, never absolute, has
become more and more imperfect.
In the dim past of the primitive age, when each sex had its
own traditions and its own ritual, each was taboo to the other,
except as the taboo could be broken by ceremonial magic.
Yet that primitive cult of the feminine, it is necessary to
remember, always included men as well as women. Boys who
could not endure the formidable initiation ceremonies that would
admit them to the cult of the men, were consigned to the camp
of the women, perhaps for life; were often compelled to don
female costume and to remain with the women while their more
stalwart brothers went forth to the chase or to war. As time
went on, around this nucleus of women and effeminate men
gathered an ever-enlarging accretion of men somewhat less femi-
nine in mental constitution, although, on the whole, timid and
conservative, and therefore antagonistic to a broadly masculine
view of life. At length men of strong personality, dogmatic and
authoritative, including old and clever men no longer fit for war,
seeing their opportunity to establish dominion, threw in their
fortunes also with the backward-looking multitude. In the camp
thus constituted, there developed one general attitude toward life
and conduct, one general scheme of piety and morals. In the
boldly masculine camp there developed another. There, superla-
GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 183
lively virile minds stood ready to dare new risks. Crudely and
awkwardly but fearlessly experimenting, they perfected new ad-
justments and took the first infinitely difficult steps of human
progress.
So, while priests and women created backward-looking religion
and a punctilious morality of personal behavior, men of the daring
mood prophet and discoverer, warrior and reformer created a
forward-looking faith and fashioned the plastic secular structure
of economic, juristic, and political relations.
From the moment that these differentiations are established, one
new adjustment of human life to its changing conditions follows
swift upon another. Culture succeeds culture. That which in
its day and generation is practical and profane is transmuted into
the sacred and ceremonial. That which today is faith, front-fac-
ing and alive, tomorrow will have become reminiscent religion,
the sentimental worship of dead ideas, a thing of gentle memories
and regrets.
For long ages, each new faith as it arises, each new economic
and juristic order, is locally circumscribed. It cannot pass beyond
the bounds of a rigid political organization, and these are identi-
fied with the blood of tribe or nation.
But, little by little, political integration is achieved, and as age
after age goes by, each new culture finds a wider area open to it
for possible extension. At the same time each is more and more
restricted as a community- forming activity, because political
integration makes isolation difficult. Thenceforward, each cul-
ture beats upon every other, each mingles with every other, until
at length each blends with all.
The significance of this evolutionary process for our immediate
question I conceive to be somewhat as follows :
We are practically at the end of the community-forming stage
in culture conflict. Every vigorous group of ideas or beliefs in
the world will henceforth have unhindered way to propagate itself
geographically, to form vast associations of adherents.
The groups so formed will be indefinite. In the main they
will be plastic. In the main their membership will be mobile and
shifting.
That mobility is on all accounts to be desired. But while its
1 84 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
gradual increase is on the whole inevitable, it will, nevertheless, in
some measure be restricted, and certain tendencies will be mani-
fest toward the formation of relatively definite groups of rela-
tively stable membership. The cause of these tendencies will be
the effort which each of these contending forces will make to
control and to use the police power of the state.
The police power has always a strictly regional or territorial
application. A municipal ordinance is valid for that local area
the population of which is incorporated as borough or city. The
statute of the commonwealth applies throughout the territory of
that state, but not elsewhere. The laws and administrative orders
of a national government have force within its territorial bound-
aries, but not beyond.
It follows that to the extent to which the use of the police power
for the achieving of any particular purpose is effective the popu-
lation to which it is applied becomes a selected group. Opponents
and misdemeanants are eliminated, or forced into conformity.
It is, therefore, theoretically possible for idea-forces, including
religious faiths and moral creeds, still to create community, as
well as sectarian, groupings. How far it is practically possible is
perhaps well enough illustrated by prohibition legislation in its
various forms.
If now we wish to judge what use is likely thus to be made of
the police power in culture conflict, we must call to mind the
character of the chief groups of conflicting ideas at present ar-
rayed against each other, and, as far as can be foreseen, likely to
maintain their antagonism into an indefinitely distant future.
The chief culture conflict today is the world-wide struggle
between scientific secularism on the one hand, and, on the other
hand, the various cults of supernaturalism, obscurantism, and
dogmatism. On the side of the cults are the forces of sentiment
and inertia. On the side of scientific secularism are arrayed the
forces of practical interest. Science makes its way with the mul-
titude, not because the multitude is capable of understanding it,
or even of greatly caring about it, but chiefly because the multi-
tude sees that science does things. It safeguards the crops. It
prevents or controls epidemics. It cuts down freight rates, and it
transmits thought through pathless wastes of firmament and sea.
GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 185
Now it is a peculiarity of scientific secularism or profane
practicality, if we prefer so to describe it that, with all its power
and prestige, it has not been disposed thus far to employ the police
power to any considerable extent in furtherance of propagandism
or any sort of social group-making. It has used it chiefly for
general utilitarian ends as, for example, to enforce sanitation,
or to prevent destructive forms of exploitation, like child labor.
It has been distinctly opposed to any use of the police power to
compel assent to a belief, to enforce a creed, or to establish any
code of purely personal morals.
On the other hand, dogmatic supernaturalism has never cared
greatly about utilitarian interests, since these are of the earth,
and materialistic. But since the dawn of history dogmatic super-
naturalism has unhesitatingly made use of the police power, when-
ever it has been in a position to do so, to compel assent to articles
of faith, to enforce rules of purely personal conduct, and to
establish ceremonial forms.
Therefore it is probable that to the extent that scientific secular-
ism commands the situation, cultural association will be free. 1
To the extent that dogmatic supernaturalism, obscurantism,
mysticism, are in any region dominant, we may expect them to
use the police power to create group solidarity.
Much will depend, accordingly, upon the mental composition of
the various regional populations. By this I mean that much will
depend upon the predominance, in any given region, of one or
another mental type. The inductive, critical, intellectual mind,
intuitive of objective relations, turns naturally to scientific secu-
larism. The mystical, emotional, subjectively intuitive, instinctive
mind as naturally, indeed inevitably, embraces some highly re-
spectable dogmatism with an impressive pedigree, or rushes upon
a new-fangled miracleism.
It is to be regretted that we seem to have no quite appropriate
descriptive name for these two types of mind. In the writings of
European sociologists they are commonly designated as masculine
and feminine, and the social dominance of one type or the other
1 This I still believe to be true, notwithstanding all that has happened
since 1914.
i86 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
is called masculinism or feminism. This usage is sometimes car-
ried to the point of labeling entire nations by sex-connoting terms.
Germany, for example, was by Bismarck called a masculine na-
tion, and Russia a feminine nation.
If the analysis of the two mental camps, radical and conserva-
tive, which I have presented in the foregoing pages, is substantially
accurate, these sex-connecting tags are somewhat inappropriate
and misleading. If we adopted them for scientific purposes, we
should be compelled to say that the prophet, whether man or
woman, is mentally masculine, and that the priest, whether woman
or man, is mentally feminine. This might not mystify because,
as a mere satirical conceit, the discrimination has long been fa-
miliar. But what would be said if we should apply this nomen-
clature to the business population of the United States? We
should then be compelled to class as masculine the business minds
of an engineering type minds that weigh, measure, calculate, and
plan, and to class as feminine all business minds that are incapable
of grasping the conception of impersonal causation. This would
be to say that American business men in general are woman-like,
since they are unable as yet to find any better explanation of com-
mercial crisis or industrial depression than the truly feminine
hypothesis that the administration is to blame for it.
But while we cannot describe intellectualism as masculine, .or
instinctive dogmatism as merely feminine, we cannot, I think,
afford to overlook the influence of so-called feminism when
we try to predict which of the conflicting culture forces will prob-
ably be ascendant in civilized life in the near future.
As we see it today, feminism is difficult to analyze. Doubtless
we may discover in it an effort by intellectual women to awaken
large numbers of their sex to the rational life, to wean them
from instinct, and to make their outlook increasingly objective.
It appears, however, that in certain respects the woman's move-
ment is so conducted as to defeat this commendable end.
When, for instance, women make up their minds to see things
"from the man's point of view," how shall they go about it?
As far as the somewhat skeptical observer, like myself, can
judge, they imagine that they are getting the masculine view
when they draw men into the circle of their own projects and
GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 187
enterprises, planned, organized, and conducted by themselves. I
may be quite wrong in my interpretation of the facts, and I hold
my opinion subject to revision, but at present I am sure that by
this process of influencing and converting men, women get nothing
whatever but an intensification of feminism. They get "the point
of view" not of masculine men, but of two somewhat nondescript
varieties; namely, first, those gentlemen who in their schoolboy
days preferred daisies and buttercups to snowballs and "double
rippers," and second, those authoritative persons who are but too
glad to seize upon the opportunity thus afforded them to become
the confessors and demigods of a worshipful sex. Such always
are the men who lend themselves to those moral crusades which
proceed on the assumption that there is only a quantitative dif-
ference between virtue of private vintage and the virtue that is
squeezed and barreled at the public winepress.
To this particular skeptic now speaking, it appears that the
person who at the present moment is commonly styled "the new
woman" is of all women in civilized lands the most thoroughly
primitive. So far from seeing life from the man's point of view,
she has taken herself back to that most ancient camp of her sex
from whose sacred ground all strictly non-feminine men were
looked upon as scandalous and taboo.
On the other hand, it does not seem to this skeptic that woman
necessarily gets the man's point of view by following "the good
old way, the simple plan" of giving herself to him in the holy
bonds of matrimony and bearing numerous sons to distribute his
property.
In reality, her getting the man's point of view, if that is what
she wants and is bound to have, depends altogether upon the kind
of men, including father and brothers, husbands, sons, and ac-
quaintances that she happens to consort with. If she is thrown
with anabolic gentlemen only, she can never arrive at the mascu-
line outlook. If her associations are with masculine men she will
enjoy that outlook, if she is capable of seeing it.
Probably nothing can with so much certainty be counted on to
bring women into contact with men of essentially masculine type
as an intellectual education and the cultivation of intellectual
interests in intellectual association and comradeship with men.
1 88 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
But this in my judgment is not to be achieved by the ordinary
processes of college training only. Intellectual principles must
be applied to life, and women must be associated with men in
making the application. Of the many spheres of activity in
which this may be done, the economic, the scientific, the literary,
and the artistic are not to be despised. Yet, after all, the great
realm in which intellectual principles can be and should be applied
to life is the realm of politics, and possibly women in general will
not see life quite as men see it until they fully participate in the
obligations as in the privileges of the masculine Brotherhood of
Machiavelli.
If such, however, is the truth, argument appears to end in
dilemma, as indeed, most arguments on practical questions do.
For it is not probable that if all women were at once to take part
in political life, the forces of true radicalism, of scientific secular-
ism, could make headway, or even hold their ground. What then
would become "of the man's point of view"? The dogmatic pro-
gram of using the police power of legislatures and the courts
to compel uniformity of moral profession and pretense would
in all likelihood be used to the uttermost. 1 We should have retro-
gression from free and plastic association toward local or com-
munity grouping on grounds not perhaps of belief, as in bygone
days, but at least of "good morals."
Happily, no such calamity need be apprehended. Great num-
bers of women are yet too wedded to tradition to become at once
politically active. Those that accept political obligations will in a
measure be transformed and broadened by them before the multi-
tude of their sisters follows their example. Therefore, with some
confidence we may still hold to the main conclusion that this
survey of forces and tendencies of culture conflict has suggested.
Political integration will not cease. Scientific secularism, not only
through its appeal to the intelligence of modern man, but also
through its sheer practical utility, will assuredly hold the ground
it has taken and make further gains. Whatever its momentary
victories, the old, in the long run, cannot overthrow the new,
because Its own inertia incapacitates it for continuous aggressive
action. Therefore we may reasonably expect that the world of
* It is, in 1922.
GROUP-MAKING ROLE OF IDEAS AND BELIEFS 189
social relations will continue from this time on to become less and
less a congeries of static, solidaristic groups, and more and more a
bewildering complex of free associations, through which the ener-
gies of mankind, responsibly economized, will freely create the
things of human good.
CHAPTER XI
FOLKWAYS AND STATEWAYS
IDEAS, including group-making ideas, and policies, including
policies of control, are carried out, or "realized," in collective
action through two contrasting procedures, each of which uses
characteristic means. One of them is without authority to com-
mand, although it now and then does command, and it is not
governmental in form or power; the other commands, and it
uses all arms of the political state to compel.
The value of non-governmental mechanisms and methods was
emphasized in radical political theory and insisted on in radical
practical politics long before their true nature was understood;
long, indeed, before their history, variety and actual performance
were known. Men temperamentally rebellious against authority
and intellectually convinced that the government which governs
least is best, looked to voluntary cooperation to initiate and carry
on most of the enterprises of civilization. In particular, they
objected to governmental meddling in business, they resented gov-
ernmental dictation of private conduct, and they distrusted
governmental activity in education. The classical formulations
of this creed are Mill's Liberty and Spencer's Social Statics.
If one were looking for an example of how not to think about
human behavior one could hardly hope to stumble upon anything
better for the purpose than a political platform constructed out
of laissez faire economics and utilitarian ethics. As an appeal to
reason it gets the assent of not a few vigorous intellects, but the
masses of mankind are not made up of vigorous intellects, and
political parties have never been able to do a large scale business
on appeals to reason. The Liberal party of Great Britain has
been Benthamite and the Democratic party in the United States
has been Jeffersonian on occasions, but theoretical consistency has
not often strengthened them with electorates.
190
FOLKWAYS AND STATEWAYS 191
The practical politician has always known what the psychologist
and the sociologist have been slow to learn, that "muddling
through," as the Englishman (not without a touch of pride per-
haps) is wont to describe the collective behavior of Britons, is a
general practice. It has been the method of the human race
throughout history. Even the Frenchman, with all his love of
logic, has been experimental in the main. He has arrived at an
approximately stable republicanism after trial of most of the pos-
sibilities of aristocracy and royal despotism, of revolution and
communism, of dictatorship and militaristic imperialism.
This does not mean that voluntaristic cooperation has played a
smaller part than government in human affairs. It has played
an immensely larger part, but it has been a thing hit upon at ran-
dom, an accumulation of accidental combinations of efforts, a
slowly developed usage, and not in any considerable measure
a reasoned contrivance.
Among the earliest scholarly studies of the history and preva-
lence of usage were Henry Sumner Maine's writings on custom.
The first scientific account of its origin was Walter Bagehot's
Physics and Politics. In that little book, one of the most
valuable contributions to sociology ever made, the true character
of custom is clearly exhibited, and its functioning in the collective
struggle for existence is accurately described. In one particular,
however, it leaves a wrong impression, as Maine's studies also
did, namely that custom, the substance of early society, is super-
seded in later society by deliberation. This impression is con-
veyed also in a degree by Spencer's Ceremonial Institutions.
How far from the whole truth it is we were made aware when
William Graham Sumner published Folkways. In this further
unique contribution to our knowledge of society, indispensably
supplementing Bagehot, we learn how large and pervading is the
part played in our most complex modern civilizations by modes
of voluntaristic cooperation that began nobody knows when or
how, that in most instances have been modified only with incred-
ible slowness throughout the generations, and that are resistant
now, as always hitherto, to rationalization.
The serious student of these matters must know his Bagehot
and Spencer and Sumner at first hand. Not otherwise can he
IQ2
attain appreciation and understanding of the infinite variety and
complexity, the quality and the social functioning of the folk-
ways and the mores : of all that we have called ceremony, usage
and custom, manners and morals. I shall make no attempt, there-
fore, to summarize the matter here. Assuming on the part of my
readers a sufficient acquaintance with it, I call attention to some
of the more important particulars in which folkways differ from
stateways (the governmental ways of states) and stateways from
folkways, and to the ways (a highly important specialization of
ways), in which these fundamental modes of human behavior
react upon one another, setting bounds to the scope and the
performance of each.
It is to be understood that while all prevailing modes of volun-
tary cooperation are folkways, not all folkways are modes of co-
operation. Anything that everybody does is a folkway, and so is
anything that most or even many persons do in any region for two,
or three, or many generations.
When in 1888 I went to Bryn Mawr to live I found myself
curiously interested one morning in "the green bag." On a train
going into Philadelphia every commuting attorney and counselor-
at-law was carrying one. . In the Housatonic and Connecticut
River valleys, where I had spent my childhood and earlier bread-
winning years, I had never seen one, although I happened to know
something about the history of the thing and the legal connotations
of its name. Such localization of a folkway is one of the more
obvious marks of its true character as a spontaneous or uncon-
trivecl product of the adaptations and adjustments of men to
environment and circumstance . It is itself highly adaptive. It
can extend widely by imitation, or so identify itself with the
region in which it arose or to which it was transplanted that it
remains unknown elsewhere. In contrast to this fundamental
characteristic of folkways, stateways extend themselves aggres-
sively. The state itself is an inclusive organization which pro-
claims authority over all individuals residing within defined geo-
graphical bounds, admitting them into its citizenship or govern-
ing them as aliens.
FOLKWAYS AND STATEWAYS 193
Because the folkway is adaptive it is variable, and folkways,
therefore, become various, not only because new ways from time
to time arise out of new circumstances and demands, but also
through differentiation. One has only to call to mind the fluctua-
tions of fashion, the changing forms of address and ceremony, the
rise and fall of recreations, the fleeting fads in games and sports,
to realize the enormous flexibility of folkways. Stateways tend
toward uniformity. Governments attempt to standardize not only
rights at law but also legal procedure, administrative rules, and
the conduct of citizens. Legislators are intolerant of exceptions,
bureaucrats abominate them, and courts, while finding precedents
for them when moral justice or the rule of reason requires, do
not otherwise make them. Trial by jury, however, which medi-
ates between folkways and stateways, is a venerable if not always
a venerated defense against the governmentalists, who would dic-
tate and ration our food and drink, write our medical prescrip-
tions, cut our clothes, tell us what we may read and look at, and
send us to bed at curfew.
Stateways are instituted by command, backed up by physical
force. They are formal, as machine-like as they can be made,
and relentless. Folkways exert pressure which may be resist-
less, but it is indefinable, elastic and automatically variable.
At a seashore club of the quiet sort I remarked to a lady whose
associations were with college folk and writers, that habitues
there, most of them apparently intelligent, did not desecrate the
place with intellectual conversation. "No," she replied with
admonitory severity, "it isn't done." There you have the true
folkway pressure, or control. The thing is done or it isn't, and
you know (or you learn) which.
Means or devices are used, to be sure, but they are countless
and protean. They range from silent approval or disapproval to
taboo, from snubbing to bullying. In a majority of instances the
lighter means suffice, but occasionally, in times of stress, especially
in days of war or of industrial clash, more vigorous measures are
resorted to. These include "drives," the boycott and slacking, the
strike, property-destroying sabotage and violence, and, in last
resort, the use of physical force in direct action. When this
194 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
happens the folkway is verging on revolution, which, in fact, is
contemplated. The folkway then has become an incipient state-
way.
In these latest named phenomena we come to the reactions of
folkways and stateways upon each other.
Antecedent to revolution, and usually by warning preventive of
it, are folkways of disregard and disobedience of law and of open
opposition to government. These lower the state's coercive
efficiency, and admonish it to reconsider its possibly unjust or
inexpedient command, or its ruthless or arbitrary policy.
The assumption of pre-sociological political science that
sovereignty is a power to compel obedience was never quite true
and probably it never will be. 1 The dean of one of our most
reputable law schools said to me, "You couldn't find a citizen of
this or of any other American commonwealth who is not a law-
breaker." Whether or not he was right in his belief, it is true that
no law ever enacted has been obeyed by all individuals in any
group or class of citizens, however respectable. It is also true
that a large proportion of all legislative enactments sooner or later
fall into the "dead letter" category. Furthermore, drastic laws
are openly contemned by great numbers of otherwise reputable
citizens. Laws prescribing Sunday observance, laws like the
Dred Scott decision maintaining slavery, laws forbidding discrim-
ination on account of color, and laws prohibiting alcoholic drinks,
are notorious American examples.
The dictum attributed to General Grant, often quoted and
widely accepted, that the way to get ruTof a bad law is to enforce
it, may be good logic but it is not historical fact. Laws are re-
pealed only when law breakers, and voters who would be law
breakers if conscience or good sense would permit them to be, are
numerous enough and courageous enough to upset legislative
majorities. Often a highly provocative law cannot be repealed by
this procedure because the necessary courage is lacking. Out-
spoken advocates of repeal are set upon as irreligious or immoral,
as apologists for vice and crime, or as anarchists who want to
destroy property and upset the social order. Such penalizing,
1 See Giddings, The Responsible State.
FOLKWAYS AND STATEWAYS 195
which is meant to frighten off support by the timid, and usually
does, is itself a folkway. It is powerless, however, against the
folkways of clandestine disobedience, and when these flourish,
disobedience presently ceases to be clandestine. Nothing further
happens then, perhaps for generations, unless new attempts to
enforce create enough irritation to provoke organized defiance, as
happened in the case of slavery. In either case the objectionable
law, whether quietly nullified or noisily defied is not done away
with by due process of stateways, until these have been changed or
mitigated by folkway pressure.
In all these instances, however, the folkways are attacked by the
state, which may or may not prevail. If it does not prevail, it
nevertheless impedes and limits folkway achievement. In partic-
ular it forbids and undertakes to repress the use in folkway action
of physical force, which the state asserts its authority to monopo-
lize.
These, then, are the normal reactions of folkways and stateways
upon each other: folkways of disobedience nullify laws, and now
and then defy the stateways; the state paralyzes disobedience
when it can ; and at any cost it makes vigorous effort to repress
folkway violence.
Normally these contrary forces arrive at equilibrium. Ways
of adjustment develop, and in these society attains a compromise
of liberty with security. Out of trial and error a tradition of
general consent grows up that the state shall use physical force
to repel invasion, to put down rebellion, to repress organized vio-
lence and mob action, and to penalize crime. No equally general
consent is ever reached to the use of for^e by the state to repress
vice and to correct negligence. This province remains fighting
ground where folkways and stateways contend. We are not with-
out indications, however, of possible truce. When vice or negli-
gence threatens social existence because folkways have failed to
repress, or to meet urgent needs, action by the state is usually
assented to ; but when folkways are presumably adequate to the
occasion, objection to state interference and resentment against it,
extend and deepen- The possibilities of truce are measured, how-
ever, by the intelligence and the education of the population. To
see when folkways spontaneous, elastic, and adaptable are
196 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
adequate to correct and superior to improve, and, conversely, to
see when state interference is indubitably called for, is not given
to ignorance or to stupidity.
The interactions of folkways and stateways are further ex-
hibited in the next two following chapters.
CHAPTER XII
SOCIAL SELF-CONTROL
AT a meeting of the inhabitants of Dorchester, Massachusetts,
on October 28, 1634, it was "agreed that whosoever is chosen into
any office for the good of the plantation, he shall abide by it or
submit to a fine as the company shall think meet to impose."
Less than a week later, on November 3, it was "ordered that no
man within the plantation shall sell his house or lott to any man
without the plantation whom they shall dislike of." 1
In voting these measures the people of Dorchester only made
definite and explicit a general policy adopted by all the early
New England towns, and for a long time adhered to. No one was
a franchise-exercising member of a town until he was formally
admitted as a freeman, and at the outset church membership was
a condition.
Historically interesting because of the conditions which it was
intended to meet and because of the specific tests that were applied
in carrying it out, this policy was not new or exceptional as a phe-
nomenon of community action. Since human beings began to
dwell together in groups and to work together in bands or com-
panies, the groups and the bands have exercised supervision over
their membership and over the conduct of their members. On a
larger scale than elsewhere, or before in history, the United States,
through its immigration and naturalization laws, exercises super-
vision over the membership of a national community; and our
local state and federal laws probably comprise the largest body
of rules of conduct ever enacted by a politically organized popula-
tion for the regulation of individual life.
It is not for the purpose of recalling a chapter of American
history, however interesting it may be in itself, that these facts
are here set down. They are given because they happen to exhibit
1 Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners of Boston (1880), docu-
ment 9, pp. 7, 8.
197
ig8 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
clearly a social phenomenon that too often has been overlooked
or forgotten in the construction of social science, but which may
prove to be the point of departure for important discriminations.
The minutes cited from the Dorchester record quite plainly
show that the inhabitants of that town were looking after the
make-up of their community and the conduct of its members for
at least two distinct purposes. The resolution that a man chosen
to office must undertake its duties or pay a penalty shows that
the Dorchester folk assumed that they were collectively doing
something, not idly enjoying the pleasure of neighborly association
while pursuing merely individual ends. Translated into the com-
pact language of these latter days, the resolution tells us that the
townsmen of Dorchester understood that they were attempting
"team work," and that every man in the enterprise must accept
that particular part of the task which "the team" assigned to him.
The second resolution manifests an alert consciousness of the
importance of group cohesion, a thing even more essential than
individual efficiency as a factor in common enterprise. The mem-
bers of the community must be agreeable one to another. The
man "disliked of" should be kept out.
Let us apply a bit of analysis to these elementary facts. The
common activity of a community of the simpler sort a neighbor-
hood group of farmer folk, for example may be extremely slight.
Its team work may for a long time be potential only, a mere readi-
ness to undertake the common defence, if necessary, or to co-
operate in some emergency, as of flood or fire. In a large and
complex community the team work is actual, often energetic,
carefully organized and extremely varied. It provides for the
common safety. It engages in the production of wealth. It
establishes and maintains those rules of the game which collec-
tively are called law, and it carries on government to ascertain
and to apply the common will.
But whether actual and organized or only potential and un-
formed, the collective activity of any group of human units
obviously presents to scientific view two unmistakably different
aspects. A community collectively does things for itself that is,
for its members and it collectively does things to or upon itself,
SOCIAL SELF-CONTROL 199
scrutinizing and determining its membership, scrutinizing and
censoring conduct. It does things collectively for itself, because
experience has shown that many things can be accomplished by
collective action or team work that cannot be accomplished ade-
quately or at all by individual effort. It does things to itself,
because experience has shown that not every aggregate of indi-
viduals can carry on team work effectively or even live together
amicably.
This differentiation of social function into collective action
for and collective action upon society would seem to be funda-
mental. If it is, we apparently have here the point of departure
for a working distinction between certain special social sciences
and a more general science of society. It is clear, for example,
that the economist, in studying the social production and distribu-
tion of wealth, is primarily investigating the action of the com-
munity in doing an important work for its productive units. He
concerns himself only incidentally with the reactions of economic
activity upon the social composition and structure. In like man-
ner the jurist, in studying the nature and the evolution of legal
relations and activities, and the student of political science, in
examining the nature and the evolution of government, are pri-
marily looking at social functioning as it bears directly upon the
well-being of component elements of society, although incidentally
or secondarily they may be interested in consequent modifications
of the integral social order. On the other hand, a student who
has followed the genesis of the community itself and has observed
that sooner or later it becomes aware of itself as a community
and begins consciously to react upon itself, may then direct his
further inquiries upon the nature, scope and consequences of the
reaction. If he does this, he is engaged upon investigations which,
in recent years, have been grouped under the name of general
sociology.
In offering this distinction between general sociology and the
special social sciences, I suppose that I am not making an essen-
tially new generalization; certainly I am not doing violence to
usage. For the distinction itself, I think, has unconsciously
grown up in usage, and I am here merely recognizing it, pointing
out the two distinct aspects of social functioning upon which it
200 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
rests and putting it in explicit terms for more convenient appli-
cation.
Assuming, then, that general sociology, whatever else it may
comprise, is particularly concerned with the phenomenon of social
self-control, 1 including under this term the social determination
of the composition of the community, the control of conduct, the
promotion of efficiency, the shaping of social organization and
the determination of general policies, we may further look at the
whole subject in certain other lights, hoping so to get a more
rounded notion of what social self-control is, how it arises, what it
does and by what methods it may be subjected to effective scien-
tific study.
All nations compel their subjects to live under restraints and to
perform prescribed acts. As far as their observed conduct goes,
subjects must be loyal, whether or not they are patriotic at heart.
In a lesser degree the modern nations constrain their subjects in-
accordance with some prevailing idea of the common good. A
protective tariff, for example, does not altogether prevent, but
it restricts, the purchase of desired commodities produced abroad.
Within the broad limits fixed by national policy, states and
municipalities regulate the individual lives of their citizens in
endless detail. From birth to death the pressure of organized
society is hourly felt by its conscious units. Parental authority
is restrained wifhin bounds which the state prescribes. At the
command of the state the child is taught and drilled. Growing
to manhood, he orders his walk and conversation as the state in-
structs, or he languishes in jail.
If the citizen, thus reared and moulded by an external power
manifesting itself through government and law, happens to be a
religious as well as a political animal, he finds himself subjected
to further rules and orders. The church to which he belongs
exacts an obedience sanctioned by penalties which may be as
fearsome to his mind as are the fines and imprisonments im-
*In employing this term I am not trying to improve upon the phrase
made familiar through Professor Ross's admirable book on Social
Control but am only examining some aspects of social control more
particularly.
SOCIAL SELF-CONTROL 201
posed by a secular power. If he earns his bread in the sweat of
his brow, he discovers that he is only partly free to work as
he pleases, or when or as long as he pleases, or to make such
contracts as his own best judgment approves. The "walking
delegate" finds him out and instructs him in the ethics of industrial
solidarity. If in idleness he consumes the substance that other
men have provided and, in the quiet of his club, seeks refuge from
the over-regulated life of a Philistine world, even there he encoun-
ters the rules committee taking cognizance of his language and
his drinks, and standing ready to exclude him if he oversteps the
line of that conduct which is reputable among gentlemen.
In barbarian and in savage communities the collective regula-
tion of life is not less but greater than it is in the civilized state.
The bounds that may not be overstepped are narrow and dread.
Immemorial custom is inflexible, and half of all the possible joys
of existence are forbidden and taboo.
Even in animal bands and herds, individual behavior is con-
strained. Inadequate or obnoxious members of the company are
abandoned, expelled or killed by their fellows. We do not presume
that in animal groups there is any cooperative understanding in
these matters. We cannot suppose that there is. But through
like response to the same stimulus or to similar stimuli, through
suggestion and impression, a real although non-reasoned coopera-
tion is effected. While, therefore, we may not say that animal
society abides by rules, we observe that it lives by habits from
which a member departs only at the risk of life.
There would be no excuse for bringing forward observations
so commonplace as these if the general truth which they thrust
upon us had not been very nearly left out of consideration in
our attempts to establish the broad conceptions of a science of
society. Whatever else society is, it is a group of units and
relations which collectively acts under self-direction. It not only
manifests a continuing process, as brain and nervous system
manifest the processes of mind, as organic matter manifests the
processes of life, but also, like living matter and like mind, it con-
trols its own processes. Society constrains. Unconsciously at
first, but consciously in its later and higher development, it brings
202 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
pressure to bear upon its component units. It incites and re-
strains them. It trains and moulds them. It conforms them to
a norm or type and sets limits to their variation from it.
Here, then, we have a generalization of significance. Society
4s a type or norm or mode, which in a measure controls the varia-
tions from itself.
In thus functioning, society, by trial and error and by rational
effort, carries further and brings to greater precision that process
which in its unconscious mode we call natural selection. In the
organic struggle for existence those individuals and those groups
survive which are adapted to the conditions under which they
dwell. This is only another way of saying that organisms which
in some fortunate way combine certain structures, qualities and
traits, and which, therefore, conform closely to a type that hap-
pens to be suited to a given place, can live there ; while individuals
or groups that vary too widely from this type sooner or later fail
there to perpetuate their race. Or, to put it in yet another way,
in every inhabitable region there is an environmental constraint,
compelling conformity of organic structure and of life to certain
adapted or adaptable types, from which variation is possible only
within somewhat definite limits.
It is because of this conformity to type that society arises.
Typical units or individuals of a given species or variety are alike
as far as they are typical. Animate individuals that closely re-
semble one another respond in like ways to the same given stim-
ulus or to similar stimuli. So organized and responding, they
want the same things and by similar behavior try to obtain them.
If the supply is inadequate for all and some part of it can be
obtained by individual effort, like acts develop into competition.
If the supply is adequate for all but cannot easily be obtained by
individual effort, the like efforts of many individuals directed
toward the same end develop, unconsciously and accidentally at
first, but afterwards, in mankind, rationally, into cooperation. In
either case, those adaptations which the animate organism, in
common with all others, makes directly to its environment in gen-
eral, are supplemented by a set of highly complicated adjustments
made to the similar adaptations of other units like itself.
SOCIAL SELF-CONTROL 203
These adjustments of animate individuals to the like adapt-
ations of other individuals of their own kind are the bases of
social relations. Repeated and developed into habits, they create
and establish those relationships which we call social organization.
The similarity which is antecedent to all these adjustments and
relations becomes to some extent an object of consciousness in all
associating creatures of the higher varieties. Appearing first as
sympathy, it develops into a perception of likeness and at length,
in mankind, into a more or less rationalized understanding of re-
semblances and differences, of agreements and dissensions. Step
by step with this evolution of a consciousness of kind, the impor-
tance of "kind" itself is apprehended. Fundamental identities or
similarities of nature and purpose, of instinct and habit, of mental
and moral qualities, of capacities and abilities, are recognized as
factors in the struggle for existence. To the extent that safety
and prosperity depend upon group cohesion and cooperation, they
are seen to depend upon such conformity to type as may suffice to
insure the cohesion and to fulfil the cooperation.
Conforming to the requirement of group life which itself is a
product of the struggle for existence animals instinctively and
by habit, human beings instinctively, by habit, and rationally,
manifest a dominant antipathy to those variations from type
which attract attention. There are striking exceptions to this rule,
as there are to nearly all rules of behavior by organic units. But
the rule is beyond question. From the insects to the highest mam-
mals, individuals deformed or queer are commonly objects of
attack and may be put to death by their fellows. Death or aban-
donment usually overtakes the conspicuous variates among sav-
ages and barbarians, while in civilized communities they are ob-
jects of suspicion and avoidance, or of guardianship or restraint,
according to the state of enlightenment and the degree of humane
feeling.
How far individual conduct in swarms of insects and in bands
of gregarious animals is forced into conformity to type by an
instinctive adjustment, distinct from a circumstantial constraint,
it is not possible on the basis of present knowledge to say. That
the uniformity of human conduct in savage and barbarian
communities is immediately a product of social constraint largely
204 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
spontaneous, imitative and unconscious, but also partly conscious
and deliberate and only remotely and indirectly a product of
environmental or circumstantial constraint, is a fact too familiar
to call for demonstration. By the conscious cooperation of elders
in directing the rearing of children by young parents, by organ-
ized initiation ceremonies, by clan and tribal councils, each new
generation is remorselessly trained in those beliefs, habits and
loyalties which the group regards as vital to its existence. Care-
fully analyzed, the entire mass of inculcations and restrictions
whereby individual behavior is controlled in uncivilized society
may be seen to be a means of enforcing conformity to type, of
recognizing and maintaining a "kind," for the ulterior purpose of
ensuring group cohesion and cooperative efficiency.
The restraints, the inculcations, the obedience-compelling de-
vices of civilized society are so varied and so interlaced that they
easily mislead, and it is only after long and comprehensive study
of them that one begins to grasp their nature and function.
Stripped of all adventitious features, they one and all are means to
the same general end which is served by social constraint in bar-
barian and in savage communities. They determine, limit and
control variation from type, now extending its range, now nar-
rowing it and compelling a closer conformity.
A word must here be added regarding the consequences of
social control. Society constrains. What are the effects of con-
straint ?
The proximate results are new or wider uniformities of be-
havior and ultimately of character. Life is made so difficult for
the variates that stray too far from type that they go down in the
struggle. Society, in a word, create? artificial conditions of exist-
ence which affect selection, as natural conditions do, by determin-
ing a selective death-rate. When, for example, a Christian civili-
zation compels a savage population to wear clothes, it kills off
those individuals whose viscera cannot adapt themselves to the
unaccustomed burden. When society increases its educational
pressure, it eliminates some who cannot endure further nerve
strain or whose reproductive powers fail under the increased re-
quirement of individuation. Social constraint, then, creates arti-
SOCIAL SELF-CONTROL 205
ficial conditions, which act selectively upon the associated units.
From a human point of view, such selective action may be good
or evil. It may tend to produce and to perpetuate a stock of
which intelligent minds think well, or one of which they think ill.
From the point of view of the evolutionary process, the selected
and surviving stock may be one which perpetuates its line with
diminishing or with increasing cost to the individual. Assuming
that race perpetuation with diminishing cost to the individual, or
with actual increase of individual opportunity and happiness, is
worth while and is, substantially, the thing which mankind calls
progress, we may say that social constraint makes for progress or
against it.
Summarizing the foregoing observations, we note that the un-
conscious evolutionary process in nature creates types. Because
they conform more or less closely to type, animate organisms
of the same variety or kind want the same things and in like
ways try to obtain them. The various primary adaptations to
environment, therefore, are inevitably supplemented by adjust-
ments made by each individual to the similar adaptations of
fellow-individuals. Group relations in which both competitive
and cooperative activities are carried on unconsciously and only
accidentally at first, but presently, in the human species, deliber-
ately therefore necessarily appear. Society comes into exist-
ence. The conscious units of human society become increasingly
aware of differences and resemblances among themselves. They
apprehend the extent of their conformity to type or kind. The
belief arises among them that in most instances marked departure
from type is dangerous to the safety of the group or is a limitation
of cooperative efficiency. Conformity to type is regarded as con-
tributing both to the safety and to the efficiency of the group.
Out of this notion grow conscious efforts to increase conformity,
to scrutinize the "kinds" and to limit the range of variation. A
social constraint is consciously evolved which exerts its pressure
upon all component units of the group. Like environmental con-
straints, social constraint affects selection. In the long run it
makes itself felt in the selective death-rate. The kind or type that
survives under social pressure is believed by the conscious units
206 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
of society to be relatively efficient in the struggle for existence.
It is supposed also to be relatively individualized. A group or
community in which increasing individuation is secured without
imperiling race maintenance thinks of itself as progressive.
The means of constraint that society uses, as we learn early in
life by individual experience, are rewards and punishments. By
praise and blame, by avoidance and rebuke, by indulgence and
license, by penance and fine, by suspension and expulsion, by cor-
poral punishment and maiming, by imprisonment and execution,
men are forced to desist, to obey, to help ; their conduct is edu-
cated into habits ; their efforts are stimulated or goaded to accept-
able degrees of intensity and persistence; their characters are
moulded to approved types.
For all these processes of constraint and regulation in their
entirety, society has its own descriptive names. Collectively they
constitute the thing familiarly known as discipline, and their
objective product, conformity of behavior, is morale.
Upon the creation and perfecting of discipline, and upon
the standardizing of behavior and the selection of character by
means of discipline, society has directed conscious efforts from
the beginning. At first blunderingly, afterwards more or less
skillfully, it has discovered, applied and tested disciplinary
measures. The larger number and the best of them have been
folkways. Stateways have been cruder, often cruel and often
disastrous, but sometimes necessary and effective. But whether
folkways or stateways the particular methods constituting disci-
pline have been employed in the conviction that much conformity
to kind or type or standard is essential to security and to co-
operative efficiency. The object in view from the first has been
to diminish the failures and to multiply the successes of associat-
ing human beings, in the struggle for existence.
If then we say in the language of every-day life, that society is
an organization for the promotion of well-being and efficiency by
means of standardization and discipline, we say the same thing as
when in evolutionist terms we said that society is a type, control-
ling variation from itself for its own survival and further evolu-
tion. Discipline, from the evolutionist point of view, is a distinct
SOCIAL SELF-CONTROL 207
phenomenon, differing in kind, rather than in mere degree, from
all others. Motion, the activity of all matter, inorganic or or-
ganic; metabolism, the activity of organic matter; response to
stimulus, the activity of animate organic matter; discipline, the
activity of type-conforming conscious groups this is the series
of natural phenomena. Physics and chemistry, biology, psychol-
ogy and anthropology, sociology these are the corresponding
sciences.
Material for the descriptive and historical study of the evolu-
tion of discipline and of the relations of discipline to efficiency,
to individuation and to survival, is abundant, but as a phenomenon
of control, by a type, of variation from itself, it calls for quantita-
tive study by the statistical method, since type as it appears among
natural objects, including forms of plant and animal life, as it
appears in mental processes and in conduct, and as it appears in
the groupings and the collective activities of individuals socially
organized, can always be expressed in the statistical terms of
"frequency" and "mode." In other words, a type or norm can be
resolved into numerical elements.
The question may naturally and properly be raised, however,
whether numerical measures of social constraint would afford us
any knowledge that we could not more directly obtain by other
methods of inquiry. The corresponding question was raised
when statistical methods were introduced in biology and in psy-
chology. We may confidently anticipate that the conclusive
answer which trial and demonstration have afforded in those sci-
ences will be reached and accepted in sociology also.
A simple illustration may help to make the point clear. The
temperature of the human body in health fluctuates within narrow
limits about the normal of 98.5 Fahrenheit. Under the physio-
logical disturbance of disease or of shock, the range of variation
is greatly widened, and every one acquainted with modern medical
practice, in hospitals and elsewhere, knows how closely the tem-
perature curve is watched by nurses and physicians. In most
cases the fact of illness or of shock is known independently of
any scrutiny of the chart. But there are instances, sometimes
critical ones, in which the temperature fluctuation affords the first
warning ; and in all cases it affords the warning that possesses the
qualities of exactness and degree, and upon precisely these quali-
ties the issues of life and death may turn. In other cases the
condition of the system is made known by a blood test that is
statistical in form, consisting in a count of corpuscles exhibiting
certain characteristics; in yet others by records of heart action
and of arterial resistance.
It is reasonable to suppose that the social constraint which in
any given community bears upon individuals and upon component
or constituent groups is, under ordinary conditions, of a degree
and an extent that may properly be described as normal, and
that any considerable fluctuation from normal, could we measure
it, would immediately make known to us the action of disturbing
forces. The value of such knowledge can hardly be overesti-
mated. The question, how much restraint, how much liberty,
how much conformity to type, how much variation from it, are
conducive to the general welfare, is the supremely important
question in all issues of public policy. The right answer to it
turns upon the determination of a previous question, namely, what
is normal social constraint in a given community, at a given
stage of its evolution, and what at a given moment is the actual
range of fluctuation?
To obtain, then, determinations of normal social constraint for
modern communities, including municipalities, commonwealths
and nations, and to perfect the methods of measuring fluctuations
must, I think, be regarded as an important object of sociological
effort in the immediate future. That the effort will be successful
is, I am convinced, a fairly safe prediction.
CHAPTER XIII
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 1
IT is an interesting circumstance that the makers of social
theory in all generations have aimed to be true counselors in the
sense contemplated by Demosthenes, who said that to censure "is
easy, and in the power of every man," but that the true counselor
"should point out conduct which the present exigence demands."
Like other men, they have reacted to the greater exigencies of
their day. With fellow citizens they have played their part in the
collective struggle for existence and advantage. By one sort of
thinking or another, their theories have been derived, at least
in part, from observations or reflections upon large issues of
public policy, and upon public policy they have left an impression
by no means insignificant.
If their counsel has been not always wise, not always salutary,
imperfect knowledge, more than any defect of patriotism, has
been at fault. Until social theory became sociology, it was highly
a priori and speculative. A conclusion much desired for fortify-
ing a policy predetermined, more often than not, was the actual
base of intellectual operations. Knowing what he ought to prove
for the glory and safety of the state, the pragmatic political philos-
opher discovered adequate premises for it as unerringly as any
soothsayer to Cyrus or Alexander found the right flock of birds
to deliver a prognosis of promise for expeditions then afoot.
It would be rash to assume that speculative methods have faded
with the nobler intellects that used them "into the infinite azure of
1 This chapter was written in 1910 and read as the president's address
at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society at St. Louis
in December of that year. It was printed in the Proceedings of the
Society in 1911. Except for one transposition of sentences for form's
sake, the elision of a few redundant words, and the omission of nine
lines of reference to peace propaganda from Fox and Penn to Carnegie,
it is here reprinted without change. I take a frankly egotistical satisfac-
tion in having said these things before 1914 instead of after 1920.
209
210 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
the past." In an age which is witnessing, in supposedly educated
circles, a revival of every cult of magic and demonism known
among men from Gadara to Salem, we cannot feel sure that any
absurdity or obsession may not again mask under the austere
name of "science." But for the time being, social theory of the
speculative sort is discredited. The name "sociology" was in-
vented and is used to lay stress upon inductive method. To find
the facts first, to sort and array them with discrimination, to
observe differences, resemblances, and dimensions closely, to gen-
eralize with caution, and only then to ask what suggestions, if any,
the approximations to truth so obtained offer us for guidance in
private and in public conduct, is the only reputable procedure
among students of social, as of physical, phenomena.
Of the founders of sociology it may be said that in a pre-
eminent degree their interest in practical affairs was deep and
continuous and directed upon the weightier matters of the law.
The "mint, anise, and cummin" of administrative reform they
did not despise, but, one and all, they entertained the high am-
bition to mould public policy. Comte wrote The Positive Philos-
ophy in part that he might fashion The Positive Polity. Spencer
never lost sight of his initial purpose to formulate the principles
of justice. Walter Bagehot, in whatever by-way of science or
criticism he wandered, did not forget that his self-appointed task
was to increase and heighten in the public life of his age that "ani-
mated moderation" which he held to be the unique excellence of
English character.
We cannot doubt that these men, like their forerunners, were
tempted to lay philosophical foundations in the old manner, for
preconceived political systems. That they never dallied with the
temptation need not be claimed. But to whatever extent they
yielded to it, they impaired the value of their total achievement.
Their fame rests upon so much of their accumulation and classifi-
cation of facts as was unprejudiced and so much of their general-
ization as was inductive in quality. If any one of the three did
not fully realize that his contribution to thought would be so
measured, he at least did not fail to shape his intellectual life by
scientific standards. In mature years each one frankly revised the
dogmatic political creed of his youth by the objective light of
211
abundant knowledge. Comte began as the fervid disciple of the
social revolutionist Saint Simon. He became the prophet of a
progress as smoothly projected as a parabolic curve. Spencer's
hatred of aggression proclaimed in Letters on the Proper Sphere
of Government was formulated in his earliest book in the language
of finality. But, mellowed by his historical study of social evolu-
tion, the author of Social Statics arrived at an understanding of
the part that war has played in political integration, and a per-
ception that equal liberty cannot be established among men while
militarism survives. Bagehot, described by the friend of his
college days as an intellectually arrogant and supercilious youth,
became the scientific man of the world, the adviser of ministers
of state and the one psychologist who has succeeded in explain-
ing the mind of the average Englishman to the average English
mind.
To recall these origins of inductive social theory is to realize
that the work remembered was not only ground-clearing and
ground-breaking; it was also superlatively constructive.
Comte not only insisted that completeness of description is a
requisite of method, he also, making contribution, demonstrated
the successive mutations of the human mind. Going forth from
the barbaric feast of credulity, to be "long fed on boundless hope"
of metaphysic, the race of man must, in the end, content itself
with the "simpler fare" of verifiable knowledge. In that day
reason may qualify the passions which dogma has denounced and
damned, but never yet repressed.
Spencer's sociological theories were formulated as a part of
his evolutionist conception of the world. That conception has
become an integral part of the mental equipment of every edu-
cated man. Those writers who would convince us that Spencer is
forgotten are of all philosophers most miserable. They must
either avoid the post-Spencerian problems or think about them in
terms of Spencerian ideas.
As Comte taught students of social science to expend their
energies within confines of the knowable; as Spencer compelled
them to see every process as evolution or dissolution ; so Bagehot,
examining more closely than any predecessor had done the
strictly social phenomenon of a collective struggle for existence,
212 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
demonstrated that fundamentally sociological explanation is
psychological interpretation. Bagehot, rather than Tarde, was
the true founder of the so-called psychological school. Physics
and Politics is one of those excessively rare books that the critic
who has a sense of moral responsibility may daringly call original.
As sociology, the chapters on the "Preliminary Age" and "Nation
Making" forestall Les Lois de limitation. As psychology, the
chapter on "The Uses of Conflict" more than foreshadows some
of the generalizations that we associate with the name of William
James. And he would be a remarkable writer indeed who, desir-
ing to set forth the social interplay of instinct, habit, and reason,
could put it all so luminously as Bagehot has put it in the chapter
on "Government by Discussion."
It is a fair presumption that work of such enduring influence
upon theory has not yet spent its practical power in suggestion.
It is reasonable to think that, were we now to re-examine it, we
might find it still an unexhausted fund of wisdom, as of correlated
knowledge. It may afford us guidance today, not less than it
did yesterday, for a rational criticism of public policy. To that
possibility, it may be well to give attention.
The problems of public policy do not become simpler with
advancing civilization. To speak for the moment of our own
nation, the questions that vex us are of bewildering variety and
complexity: questions of territorial expansion and of rule over
alien peoples; questions arising out of race conflict within our
older continental domain; questions of the restriction of immi-
gration, of the centralization or the distribution of administrative
authority, of the concentration or the diffusion of economic power.
Well may the skeptic ask if any science of human relations, how-
ever wide its generalizations, can offer even presumptive answers
to questions so far-reaching and so diverse. Yet every citizen,
whether he be instructed or ignorant, is expected to help answer
them.
Before we admit that the objection is fatal, let us remember
that an overshadowing question has still to be named, and that
when one question overshadows all others the relative values of
the others are determined. That question .is the world-old
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 213
query older than science, older than any record of history the
question, "Is it War or Peace?"
After ten thousand years of so-called progress, is reason still
so ineffective against instinct that only minor issues can be re-
moved from fields of battle to arenas of intellectual conflict?
Must sovereignty the ultimate social control forever prove and
declare itself in government by slaughter, or may international
relations also be brought under government by discussion? By
this "previous question" of world-politics every question of do-
mestic politics is qualified. With war a possibility, the restriction
of immigration is one problem ; with war made impossible it would
become an entirely different problem. A further democratizing
of the social order, which might be safe if world-peace were
assured, may be fraught with peril if the greater nations are
again to challenge one another's right to live.
These considerations might be dismissed as academic if it were
certain that war will indefinitely continue, or certain that it will
not. Happily we do not know that it will. Unhappily we do not
know that it will not. There are sincere and able men who doubt
if the cessation of war should be desired. They exalt its disci-
plinary value, believing that the world yet needs a measure of
sacrifice, of daring, of endurance and of superiority to material-
istic aims which only war can give. A larger number of men,
also sincere and able, reject every defense of war as invalid, but
are incredulous when ways and means of disarmament are pro-
posed.
It is upon these two interpellations, namely, the desirability of
world-peace and its possibility, that the verdict of sociology may
rightly be demanded and should carry weight. And as a sort of
preliminary report, the conclusions of Spencer and of Bagehot
assuredly deserve a profoundly respectful consideration.
As all students of Spencer know, his most important socio-
logical generalizations pertain to the characteristic differences
between what he calls the militant and the industrial types of
society. His theory of social causation is stated mainly in terms
of war-habit and peace-habit. And, like Mr. Carnegie, who was
his loyal friend, Mr. Spencer looked upon war as the most mon-
2 14 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
strous of social ills, as the most formidable obstacle to the com-
plete evolution of man. Mr. Bagehot, on his part, believed that
in government by discussion we have an agency attained through
immeasurable effort and suffering for the inhibition of hasty
action, for the subordination of brutal passion to a reasonable
expediency, for the final settlement of disputes by reason instead
of by force. Surely, then, we should ask these scouts of inductive
social science whether in their opinion the cessation of war at
the present stage of social evolution is a thing to be desired, and,
if it is, by what policies the consummation may be attained.
Sentiment, doubtless, and the abhorrence of suffering move
most of those who are participating in peace efforts now. Mr.
Spencer shared these feelings, but he did not rest his case against
militarism upon sentiment alone. His faith was in the im-
provability of man, the final and superlative product of cosmic
evolution. He saw that improvement involves adaptation to con-
ditions on which life depends, and ever nicer adjustments of
differing interests. He believed that improvement consists in an
expanding sympathy of man for man, a continuing differentiation
of powers, a better and always better coordination of life-activi-
ties and therewith an ever-deepening joy of living. It has pro-
ceeded through a social process. In this process war has played
a great and recurring part. In breaking down the barriers that
separated primitive men, in bringing savage camps together into
tribes, in hammering tribes together into nations, war was inevi-
table and it was useful. Nevertheless, war achieves results
through frightful cost and waste. It is incompatible with those
more delicate processes of evolution which we associate, or should
associate, with high civilization. This is a point of such funda-
mental importance, and the Spencerian demonstration of it is so
complete and so irrefutable, that we may well linger for a mo-
ment to note wherein the demonstration consists.
Evolution is simple or compound.
Simple evolution is swift, direct and business-like. It occurs
whenever a group of units of any kind, from white-hot iron to
the professors of a faculty, discharge energy promptly and with-
out indirection. Let the heated iron be cooled with least possible
waste of time and in the most economical way. The molecules
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 215
will draw together. Integration, the initial process in evolution,
will quickly be completed. There will be no secondary, no inci-
dental changes. Close crystallization will uniformly characterize
the mass. There will be no differentiation. The product will be
a bar of iron contracted, instead of expanded ; nothing more. Let
professors attend strictly to the business of teaching, withholding
no energy that can freely be discharged upon the environing
student mind. Let there be no day-dreaming and no sauntering,
no dallying with research by the way, nor idle discussion of the
cosmic, or the social, order. As before, there will be integration.
The units of the mass will get together. There will be no disturb-
ing differences of opinion, no disquieting differentiations of apti-
tude or ability. The product will be a coherent, standardized,
teaching force, dependable to turn out standardized 'Masters of
Arts and intellectually pasteurized Doctors of Philosophy, at a
minimum unit cost.
Compound evolution is slow, tortuous, uncertain, halting, and
unbusiness-like to the last degree. Energy, instead of discharg-
ing itself in a straightforward way, goes maundering about in
crooked currents and incalculable eddies. Some Quixotic mind
imagines that it would be interesting to trifle with the cooling bar
of iron. He interferes with the simplicity of its habits, with the
honest promptitude of its crystallization, exposing it to charcoal
fumes, hammering it on an anvil, thrusting it now and again into
boiling oil, reheating it in his forge and hammering it some more.
Very slowly its molecules draw together. They arrange them-
selves in strange, fibrous shapes, no two alike. Infinitely minute
changes work their way upon and through that iron bar. It
integrates, but it also differentiates. It becomes tense, pliant,
elastic, vibrant. It sings, when you strike it, with a clear full
note, and the Quixotic workman, touching it lightly with one last
tap of his hammer, no longer calls it a bar of iron ; it has become
a Damascus blade. Quixotic faculties there have been, teaching
effectively but not too much ; not incoherent and not anarchistic,
though united by little else than a common interest in intellectual
pursuits and a kindly thoughtfulness of man for man. Their
energy has freely been given to their chief task, instruction; but
some of it, unguarded, has escaped into by-ways of science or
216 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
creative thought. Exposed to the play of many forces, not always
equal or alike, members of such faculties have become different
from one another. They have become individuals, each with his
own view of life and its problems, each with his own distinctive
work and record of achievement. Some of them have become
absent-minded and detached, some absorbed in researches which
neither colleague nor intrusive tourist could fully comprehend.
This compound evolution of the loosely integrated faculty has,
therefore, been scandalously irregular, and costly withal. It has
made the business man thank God that he, at least, is not as these
professors are. And yet, because of it, and by means of it, and
chiefly through its very irregularity and freedom, have those dis-
coveries been made which have multiplied the business man's
thousands and millions into billions of ingots of good red gold.
Through and by means of it students have been tempered and
tested as well as taught, and sent forth into life to be leaders of
men. Above all, this idling compound evolution, seemingly so
loose and irresponsible, has sustained the pristine faith of man,
which happily shall live when every other faith is dead, the faith,
to wit, that the world is still "full of a number of things."
All this is but a way of saying that growth, and the art which
simulates growth, are not manufacture. Nature knows nothing
of standardization. Within some given range of variation she
creates types, that is to say, resemblances, but no two individuals
are precisely alike. But growth, with its possibilities of correlated
difference, of diversity in unity, requires freedom and takes time.
It can be hastened, but only with some sacrifice of results. Some
strength of fiber, some delicacy of adaptation, is missed. Has-
tened evolution is crude evolution. Massiveness of parts and
brutality of power may be attained, but not completeness of life.
Now of all ways of hastening social evolution, war is the most
obvious, the most effective, the most absolutely business-like. A
well-organized and well-drilled army is the best example of
standardization that we know. Conquest and a rigorous military
rule over conquered foes are the quickest way to integrate and
standardize vast populations. The product is a militaristic em-
pire. It is massive and imposing. It brings together the ma-
terials from which civilization may be evolved, but it is not itself
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 217
an example of compound evolution. The notion that war can
perfect the internal adaptations of national life, the finer adjust-
ments of sectional, racial, or class interests, has no historical
justification. Two concrete illustrations will suffice.
Writing of Bismarck's inflexible purpose to consolidate the
German empire, Emile Ollivier, minister to Napoleon III, says:
The cause of the Franco-German conflict was one of those artificial
fatalities born of false conceptions and the unwholesome ambitions of
statesmen, which time might wear out, transform, and often extinguish.
. . . But there existed a man to whom it imported much that this factitious
fatality should subsist, and should finally burst forth into war. It was
this puissant genius, unwilling to leave to time the glory of accomplishing
the task of unification, the triumph of which would have been inevitable,
who wished to make short work of evolution and impose upon the present
what the future would have freely established, and to keep for himself
the glory that his successors might have shared. 1
And M. Ollivier might have added that the ceaseless activities
of a generation of statesmen and writers had not sufficed to com-
plete in the hearts of the German people that unification by divine
right which was outwardly and politically established by Bis-
marck's crass attempt to hasten social evolution. 2
Can it be said that the attempts of our southern brethren to
solve by war, or of the federal government to solve by the essen-
tially militaristic policies of reconstruction, the terrible problem
of race interests were more successful? Can any sane man ex-
pect that the problem will ever be solved in any other way than
through the infinitely slow process of a social evolution so com-
plex as to baffle analysis ?
This, then, is the evolutionist's case against war. It can hasten
social integration, but in the measure that it succeeds, it prevents
or postpones those finer and endlessly varied adaptations which
require freedom and time, and upon which completeness of life
depends. War has rudely assembled the factors of civilization,
but the possible recurrence of war menaces civilization from this
time forth.
Can war then be outlawed and generally prevented? These
1 Philosophic d'une Guerre, pp. 342, 343.
1 Nor did the war of 1914 complete it, as swift-following revolution
proved.
218 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
terms are used advisedly, because no wrong has ever been com-
pletely abolished by penalizing it, or by adopting resolutions to
discountenance it. We do not, however, on that account think it
useless to penalize or to resolve.
I suppose that there is substantial agreement among economists
and historians that the prevailing causes of war have been hunger
and greed. Primitive men, made desperate by impending famine,
have pushed into productive regions already occupied, there to
contend for a share of nature's bounty. Modern men do as savage
and barbarian did, but in ways so devious that the actual process
is rarely seen or understood. Whole peoples or nations no longer
move en masse, but, like the ancient Aryans at springtime, of
whom Festus, describing the ver sacrum, tells us, they mitigate the
bitter economic struggle by sending forth their youth and maid-
ens into distant parts. Nations that live, grow. They must work
more intensely, keying up the strings of life to higher pitch, or
they must expand. Either way, the struggle for existence within
nations becomes a struggle for advantage among nations. Emi-
grants from one may not be welcomed as immigrants by another.
Colonization is an intrusion of the strong upon the weak. An
acceleration of domestic industry is correlated with an expansion
of foreign trade. With colonies and profit by trade, greed enters,
adding its insatiable demands to those of primal human need.
These conditions create tension and provoke contention. They
do not, however, inevitably produce war. The sociologist may
go far with economist and historian in recognizing economic
causes in history, but he may not lose sight of other factors,
which it is peculiarly the province of his own science to analyze
and appraise.
These factors are psychological, and without their cooperation
war does not begin. The passions of men must be consolidated.
Consuming hatred or fierce exaltation must merge individual
wills in the collective fury of the psychologic crowd. Even then
war does not follow if the fury merely bursts. An explosion may
make hell writ small, and war is hell writ large, but there resem-
blance ends. An explosion in the open does no work, and war is
systematic work. To make war, the public fury must so far be
controlled that it can discharge itself only through the mechanism
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 219
of a military organization, in a series of regulated explosions,
directed upon a definite object, until its infernal task is done.
Failure to remember this incontrovertible fact has had unfor-
tunate consequences for historical theory and for political ethics.
How does the control of public wrath arise? In what does it
consist? Through what agents or agencies does it direct this
fearful power, dissipating it in peace, or aggregating it for war?
Answers to these questions I find in Bagehot's chapters on
"Nation Making," and it is at variance with those notions of the
insignificance of great men in history which, for twenty years or
more, have reigned unchallenged in the domain of historical
criticism.
A nation is more than a population. Millions of individuals,
differing one from another, compose it; yet, although not stand-
ardized, they are alike. In ways not easy to describe, Englishmen
are Englishmen and Frenchmen are Frenchmen. Their resem-
blances are not merely physical. Englishmen are blue-eyed and
dark-eyed, florid and brunette. Nor are they merely racial. The
Frenchman may be Picard or Gascon, Breton or Provengal. The
similarities that we note lie within a well-defined range of mental
facts. They are not phenomena of instinct, nor yet of reason.
If men were creatures of instinct only, that is, if all their activities
were narrowly determined by heredity and began at birth, there
would be no distinctions of nationality. Or, if we never saw
Englishmen or Frenchmen, nor heard them talk, and if we knew
them only by scientific writings, we could not easily tell them
apart. The resemblances that constitute national type or national
character are tricks of expression, ways of doing things, prefer-
ences and antipathies, criteria of taste, views of life and conduct.
They were not imparted at birth ; they have all been learned.
They cannot be discarded at will ; they are things of habit.
Now habits are acquired, we say, by doing things or thinking
things many times over. That is true, but it is not all. Most of
the repetitions that make up habit are imitations ; they are copies
of models or examples. Many of our elemental and most useful
habits are imitations of parents ; but plainly, if we imitated parents
only, there would be no national traits, and, in the strict sense of
the word, no nations. There would be only some millions of
220 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
families, each abiding by its own mental and moral law. National
habits, and therefore national traits and character, are copies of
those relatively conspicuous models that are widely imitated,
irrespective of kinship; imitated locally at first, perhaps, but at
length throughout a population.
If so much be granted, a further and significant truth is granted
by implication. Conspicuous or dynamic men, who become models
to thousands or millions of their fellows, are true social causes,
and centers of social control. As they think, the multitude thinks ;
as they do, the multitude does, and for the most part uncon-
sciously, every man believing that he thinks or acts spontaneously,
and because it is his nature to think or to act so, and not otherwise.
Is not the conclusion obvious? Men in positions of authority,
whether, as they believe, by divine right, or, as others think, by
human choice, are necessarily conspicuous. Often they are men
of power, and whether they would have it so or not, their decisions
become to some extent the popular decision, and their voice be-
comes in part the people's voice. Without dictation or argument,
and solely because their choice is spontaneously copied and their
course of action is uncritically followed by multitudes that swear
the choice was theirs, these men control, and controlling, direct,
the public complaisance and the public wrath. In the final throw-
ing of the dice of fate, they are causes of peace and war.
From this sober conclusion of inductive science I see no escape.
That it is in harmony with an unsophisticated moral prejudice is
not, I wish to believe, a reason for distrusting it. The conscience
of civilized mankind has never yet admitted that deliberately de-
clared war has been irresponsibly begun. Rather has it held, that
great men in all ages, as moulders of opinion and ministers of
state, have been moral agents, rightly to be branded with infamy
when, for their own aggrandizement or glory, they have drawn
the sword.
One rule of policy then, it would seem, may fairly be derived
from sociological theory for the discouragement of war. It is
right and expedient to teach that exceptional men, and especially
all emperors and presidents and ministers of state, are not puppets
of the Zeitgeist, but, in a scientific sense of the word, are true
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 221
social causes, and, as such, are morally responsible for the main-
tenance of peace.
Beyond policies to restrain the makers of war, are there policies
which might render the making of war more difficult?
The conditions preventive or inhibitive of war have been three,
namely : isolation, the inclusion of minor states within confedera-
tions or imperial systems, and the so-called balance of power.
In the past mere inaccessibility of territory has assured the
relatively peaceful development of many peoples, among whom
some have made priceless contributions to civilization. There
are no inaccessible nations now. Political integration has con-
tinually widened the areas within which domestic peace prevails,
and the work is so far done that no important lands or peoples
remain to be appropriated. Further integration will be redistribu-
tive only. There remains the balance of power, as the one im-
portant objective condition upon which the maintenance of peace
will largely depend.
I am using the term in a general or descriptive, not a technical
or diplomatic, sense. I mean by it political forces in approximate
equilibrium throughout the world. In this sense the balance of
power is a sociological phenomenon of peculiar interest, for two
reasons.
First, it is interesting because of its nature or composition.
It is a distribution of forces roughly in accordance with what the
mathematician calls "chance occurrence." If as many as a thou-
sand shots are fired at a target, those that miss the bull's-eye are
distributed about it with curious regularity. Of those that miss
it by three inches, about as many will hit above as below, about as
many to the left as to the right. Of those that miss it by six
inches, about as many will hit right as left, about as many below
as above. In like manner a balance of power is a symmetrical
distribution of forces about a central point. An international
balance of power exists when, with reference to any interest or
question upon which states may differ, as many strong powers
range themselves on one side as on the other, and the weak ones
are symmetrically distributed with reference to the strong ones.
Does this bit of exposition seem too elementary or too academic
to bring into a discussion of world-peace ? Let me then ask if a
222 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
corollary from the principle stated may be taken for granted?
The probability of a symmetrical distribution of shots or of forces
about a central point increases with their number. Fifty shots
about a bull's-eye would not be so regularly distributed as a thou-
sand. A million shots would make a nearly circular pattern. If,
then, an International Court of Arbitral Justice should be estab-
lished at The Hague, or elsewhere, would the chances that the
political forces represented there would remain in approximate
balance be increased, if, meanwhile, a number of the now inde-
pendent small states of Europe and the East should be absorbed
in one or more of the great imperial systems ? Or need we fear
that the chances of equilibrium would be diminished if one or
two of the more heterogeneous imperial systems should some day
be resolved into independent states, each relatively homogeneous
and individual?
The balance of power is of interest, secondly, because it is
correlated with government by discussion. Bagehot's chapter on
this subject deals chiefly with the nature of such government
and its consequences. Like compound evolution, government
by discussion is a slow, irregular, and unbusiness-like procedure :
and therein lies its value. It inhibits ill-considered action. It
gives passion time to cool, it makes for moderation and for
poise. Bagehot does, however, ask how government by discus-
sion arises. His answer is, on the whole, the least satisfactory
part of his book, but it is essentially correct. Government by
discussion arose, he says, in those nations that had a polity, that
is to say, a constitution. Greeks and Germans had what Aris-
totle calls the mixed government. King, aristocracy, and free-
men participated in it. Here, then, were distinct political forces
in balance, and because they were in balance they had to talk
before they could act.
Our modern account of reason and its relations to instinct
enables us to generalize Mr. Bagehot's guess and to verify it.
Government by discussion depends upon a balance of power and
necessarily proceeds from it. It is a social expansion of the
reasoning processes of the individual mind.
Reasoning begins when instinct fails or is inhibited. As long
as we can confidently act, we do not argue, but when we face
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY 223
conditions abounding in uncertainty or when we are confronted
by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way,
then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning, ac-
cordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when
the possibilities before us and about us are distributed substan-
tially according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathe-
matician would say, in accordance with "the normal curve" of
random frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed,
we decide. If it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by bias,
or interest, by prejudice, authority, or coercion, our reasoning
is futile or imperfect. So, in the state, if any interest or coalition
of interests is dominant and can act promptly, it rules by ab-
solutist methods. Whether it is benevolent or cruel, it wastes
neither time nor resources upon government by discussion. But
if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as to offset
one another, and if no great bias or overweighting anywhere ap-
pears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The interests
can get together only if they talk. So, too, in international rela-
tions. If in coming years these shall be adjusted by reason instead
of by force, by arbitration instead of by war, it will be because
a true balance of power has been attained. If any one power or
coalition of powers shall be able to dictate, it will also rule.
By what policies can an equilibrium of international power
be established? I shall name only those that the foregoing con-
siderations suggest, and not attempt to describe or to analyze
them. They must of course be policies that will tend both to
differentiate interests and to disintegrate coalitions of power
that create an overwhelming preponderance of strength. The
great superiorities that now preclude effective government by
discussion throughout the world are, (i) technical proficiency
based on scientific knowledge, and (2) concentrated economic
power. If we sincerely wish for peace, we must be willing to
see a vast equalizing of industrial efficiency between the East
and the West. We must also welcome every change that tends
to bring about a fairer apportionment of natural resources among
nations and within them, and a more equal distribution of wealth.
If these conditions can be met, there may one day be a Parlia-
ment of Man.
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS
THEOPHRASTUS SUCH was of the opinion that one teaches "a
blinding superstition" who teaches "that a theory of human well-
being can be constructed in disregard of the influences that have
made us human." Being of one mind with George Eliot's modern
ancient on this point, I have considered at length in these chap-
ters, the influences that have made us human. Incidentally, I have
been at pains to make clear what it is to be made human, discrim-
inating between heredity and heritage, and explaining how, when
mutation and selection have brought forth the reflective (or
reasoning) intelligence, experience instructs and disciplines it, and
equips it with culture. In particular, I have tried to prove that
to be made human is to be "individualized" until, attaining "per-
sonality," we become persons. Now I wish, and think it de-
sirable, to examine more closely certain conditions, named in
Chapter VII, which "practical" experimenters in social control
and in public policy ("uplifters" and professional reformers
above all) often neglect and sometimes openly contemn.
Of course the subject is not new. No humanistic problem is.
That is why I introduced it with my quotation from the modern
ancient. If inductive science has new truth to contribute to the
inherited stock of humanist wisdom, it is because we are in a posi-
tion to study more minutely than was possible in earlier days, the
forces and conditions that have made and formed us. We shall find
them to be not altogether different in kind from those that were
recognized by Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno. In fact, the Greek con-
ceptions were truer than some later ones. Most of the social
theories that have been constructed since the Protestant Ref-
ormation have dealt directly with the individual, and have at-
tempted to work from the individual to society. In this they have
been not altogether wrong. Centuries of suppression of in-
dividuality by Church and State had obscured one-half of po-
224
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 225
litical truth. Men needed to be reminded that the individual,
when he has come into existence, has a value in and for himself,
and must be counted as a force reacting on society. But as far
as theories have assumed the individual as an independent start-
ing-point of social and moral phenomena, they have been untrue.
The Greeks never failed to see that rational living is a product
of social conditions. To the Greek, says Butcher, " 'The man
versus the state' was a phrase unknown; the man was complete
in the state; apart from it he was not only incomplete, he had
no rational existence. Only through the social organism could
each part, by adaptation to the others, develop its inherent pow-
ers." 1 Nevertheless, this doctrine of the creation of man by
society was by no means completely thought out in the minds of
the writers who first formulated it, and those who last concerned
themselves about it left much to be added by the students of a later
time. Aristotle's comparative study of one hundred and fifty-
eight different communities, which enabled him first among
scientific investigators to show in detail how and why the good
life can have existence only in the organized state, was a theo-
retical no less than a practical advance beyond the speculative
insight of Plato. So, our modern study of social progress is
an advance, both theoretical and practical, beyond the work of
Plato and Aristotle, and beyond the philosophy of man as it
stood when post-Kantian idealism had achieved its task of re-
viving Hellenic moods of thought.
This assertion perhaps demands a word of explanation. They
misapprehend the work of science who think of it as incompatible
with philosophy, and suppose that one must choose between
them. It may be that inductive science can discover few great
truths of which at least glimmerings were not seen in Greece.
The doctrine of evolution is in that sense not new. But
the mission of science is a patient conversion of insight into
sight; of dialectic into knowledge. Our advantage is not in a
conviction more sure than Aristotle held, that he who can live
without society must be either a beast or a god ; it is in a minute
and relatively precise knowledge of those slow but certain proc-
esses of biological and social change by which the transformation
*Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 51.
226 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
of brutality into humanity is effected. And we cannot afford to
despise this better knowledge, as but a tedious elaboration of
ideas long since familiar and accepted. It is itself a new factor in
the social process. In the game of chess with the unseen an-
tagonist of Mr. Huxley's picture, it enables man to play with
the cool and calculating joy of one who knows the meaning and
the end of every move; knows, too, that on the other side the
play, though real and relentless, is fair.
Therefore, chief among the relations of cause and effect in
the process that has made us human, is one that brings together,
in a complete truth, the partial explanations that we owe to
Athens, with other explanations, no less partial, that have been
worked out in our own day. Mutations creative of intelligence
and character on the one hand, natural selection and social pres-
sure on the other, these influences together have created
human faculty. There came a time in the struggle for existence,
as Wallace and Darwin both saw, when mental resource counted
for more than physical strength. Anthropoid apes and simian
men, we have reason to suppose, found safety and advantage in
the pack that used wits. The intelligence that association from
the first selected and disciplined has never ceased to depend
on association for perpetuation. Deprived of comradeship by
circumstance or law, men go back to the brutality from which
they came. Wilfully rejecting companionship, they learn, with
Manfred, that man is not yet qualified to act the part of God :
. . . "There is an order
Of mortals on the earth, who do become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age,
Without the violence of warlike death."
Therefore it has been the humans best equipped with social
habit and its products that have won and maintained supremacy
in the contention with physical nature and living enemies. So-
ciety is a means to a definite end, namely, the survival and
improvement of men through a continuing selection of intelligence
and sympathy. There can be no sociology worthy of the name
which is not essentially an elaboration of this central principle. The
notion that society is an end in itself is an unthinkable proposition.
At the same time, the intelligence and the fraternity that asso-
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 227
ciation selects react in their turn on society, making it better
as a working organization, and as a medium of individual life.
So the interpretation of man as "human," and the interpreta-
tion of society as an ever-changing plexus of relationships, must
proceed together.
It is not enough, however, to know with the philosophers of
Greece that without society and social duty there can be no true
individual life. They well understood the problems of social
order and the nature of personal worthiness. They knew that
excellence is a fact of organization : Plato's demonstration that
justice in the state and goodness in the individual life are neither
more nor less than the correlated play of mutually dependent
and mutually limiting activities, in proportions harmonious with
one another, and in subordination to the unity of the whole, has
not been surpassed, in ethical analysis. They were familiar, too,
with a thousand aspects of social and of individual change. But
they did not combine these elements into a synthetic conception.
They were unable to unite the static with the kinetic factors of
their problem, and so to arrive at the peculiarly modern notion
of a moving equilibrium. Therefore they failed to achieve an
entirely true and sufficient philosophy of either man or the state.
For life is not the whirl of a constant number of jugglers' plates,
balanced on the sword-points of the players : it is a whirl in
which new plates and new motions appear at every instant, com-
pelling delicate readjustments throughout the system, and yet
without seriously disturbing the approximately perfect balance
of the whole. The large and difficult conception, then, to which
we must attain is that of a world, in which there can be no true
humanistic phenomena except through a process, at once pro-
gressive and orderly, of mutual modifications and adaptations of
man and society by each other, in which each acquires, stage by
stage, a more delicate complexity of organization. Of the many
implications of this conception we shall now examine some of
the more important.
In philosophy of every school the term personality stands for
the highest product of evolution. True personality is a unified,
self-conscious mental life, harmonious within itself, capable of ex-
228 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
pansion, and sympathetic with surrounding life because real-
izing and comprehending in itself the possibilities of life. It is
the type at once of the concrete and the universal. One who
understands this will not make the mistake of believing, on the
one hand, that utility is the fundamental word of ethics, or, on
the other hand, that ethics can be complete without including
utilitarianism. The fundamental words in ethics (there are two
of them) are integrity (unity, wholeness) and spontaneity. There
can be no utility apart from a consciousness capable of wants and
satisfactions, and apart from unity and aliveness there can
be no such consciousness. Therefore if integrity and alive-
ness come into direct conflict with utility it is utility that must
for the moment give way. Nevertheless, because there can be
no continuing life without reactions of utility, ethics must
expand into utilitarianism, and must work out the laws of a
cumulative happiness which is the reward and the confirmation
of well-doing.
If now we put this conception of personality side by side
with our view of intelligence as selected and disciplined under
social conditions, is it not evident that personality in this sense
comes into being only in the relatively advanced society, which
has passed beyond the limitations of tribal existence, and even
of a narrow nationalism, into a sympathetic relation to mankind
in all its varied phases of development? If so, it is a prod-
uct of progressive as distinguished from both stationary and
anarchistic, or disintegrating, society, and the theory of per-
sonality can be worked out only in terms of a theory of social
evolution.
In detail this means that a society in which the highest type
of mind can appear is one that has had, first, such a vigorous
ethnic or national existence, and second, such varied contact
with surrounding peoples, that it has become plastic without
losing its distinctive character. In the nomenclature of evo-
lution, it has acquired internal mobility without losing cohesion.
By mutation a variable but not unstable physical nature has
been produced. By numberless comparisons of one mode of
civilization with another, a mental temper at once critical and
catholic has been created. Prosperity and an increasing popula-
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 229
tion have brought the young and enterprising to the front in the
conduct of affairs. Selection has weeded out those who could
neither learn nor forget. Force and authority in the social organ-
ization have so far given way to spontaneous initiative that the
individual can find scope for the development of his latent pow-
ers, but not so far as to permit disintegration. Contact and
mental intercourse being the conditions of progress, its phases
are an increase of material well-being, an inclusive sympathy,
a catholic rationality, and a flexible social constitution, adapting
itself readily to changing conditions, yet of enduring strength.
And since the conservation of energy is a fact of social as of
physical phenomena, the cause of progress, beneath all conditions
and phases, is a conversion of lower that is, more simple, imper-
fectly organized modes of energy into higher. Economic ac-
tivities transform the energies of physical nature into social en-
ergies, of which there is no other source, since artistic, religious,
educational, and political activities are but a further transforma-
tion of the results of economic effort. In the medium of all these
activities is moulded their final product, the human person, who
could come into being in no other way and under no other circum-
stances.
Such are a few of the sociological facts that underlie human-
istic problems. It is interesting to reflect that in a vague way the
big truth which they contain, that without social progress there
can be no development of man has always been present in popular
consciousness. The experiences of individual life, of course,
afford a basis for it, since the years from childhood to maturity
are normally a period of increasing personal power, in which
every ambitious man believes that he was born to accomplish
a desirable transformation of the community. But social ex-
periences in the mass have built the superstructure. Faith in
ongoing and in a better state of things has been an element in
every religious belief.
What has been the genesis of the conviction? Everywhere
social advance has been brought about through successive waves
of conquest. Naturally enough, in the minds of the conquerors
the good or the right order has been identified with the new
order of things which they have undertaken to establish. The
23 o STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
evil order has been the old way of life that was followed by the
subjugated enemies who are now reduced to serfdom. Good
spirits are those who favor the plans of the enterprising and
successful, in whose control are the shaping of public policy and
the dictation of orthodox belief. It is true that orthodoxy is
no sooner born than it turns conservative and seeks to main-
tain itself against further change. But the effort is vain. An-
other conquest, or a new generation, brings forward new men
and new issues, and a new orthodoxy always stands ready to
crowd the old to the wall. The conquered and oppressed also,
on their part, have a doctrine of progress. It is belief in a
future in which justice shall be done; when they shall be de-
livered from their captivity and in their turn put their enemies
under foot. In time a closer intercourse and a finer feeling soften
and blend these conflicting faiths into a belief in the ultimate
happiness and perfection of all classes.
Crude and even visionary as it may be, perennial faith in
progress is humanistic motive power. Science must rectify it
at a thousand points, but the first word of a scientific humanism
must be an unequivocal declaration that such faith in se is the be-
ginning of achievement. The first law of life is a law of motion.
In society, as on the street, the preliminary duty is to "move on."
The nation that has no further reconstructions to effect, no new
ideals to realize in practice, has completed its work and will
disappear before the warfare or the migrations of more earnest
men. But the moving on must be developmental ; mere change
is not evolution, but confusion ; and the nature and limitations of
an evolutionary process, imperfectly recognized as yet in scientific
discussion, are practically unknown to popular thought. It is
here, then, that the rectifying work of science must begin.
Human society is not a something-for-nothing endowment
order. The vision of a completed society, lacking neither material
comfort nor any excellence, in which foolishness, want, and suf-
fering could linger only as dim memories of an imperfect past, has
had a strangely persistent fascination for speculative minds in
every age. Common sense has never accepted the dream for
reality; for common sense is a skeptic from the beginning.
Philosophy has doubted if evil be not inherent in the nature of
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 231
the world, and therefore ineradicable. But doubt and skep-
ticism have fallen short of reasoned demonstration from experi-
ence that the vision is inherently absurd. Yet the elements of
demonstration are simple enough. The available energy of so-
ciety at any given moment is limited in amount. The total can
be increased only by parting with some, in the thought and labor
by which larger stores of physical energy, contained in the natural
resources of the environment, are set free and converted to human
use. All progress, therefore, is conditioned by cost, and if the law
of conservation holds good in these matters, as we have assumed
that it does, the cost will increase with the progress; not, how-
ever, necessarily in the same ratio as the gain, since riper knowl-
edge should enable us to get more from physical nature with
a given expenditure of human effort. In this simple form the
limitations of progress present an economic problem, and need
not detain us at the present time. However, inasmuch as society
is organic and behavioristic the cost of progress takes on com-
plications, out of which grow practical problems that are both
grave and difficult. As appeared in the illustration of the moving
equilibrium, society, as an aggregate that is simultaneously los-
ing and absorbing motion, experiences an incessant rearrange-
ment of its parts. This means two very important things:
First, there can be no social gain that does not entail some-
where, on the whole community or on a class, the break-up of
long-established relations, interests, and occupations, and the neces-
sity of a more or less difficult readjustment. Second, the in-
crease of social activity, which is the only phase of progress
that most people ever see at all, may so exceed the rate of con-
structive readjustment that the end is disorganization and ruin.
For the further examination of these propositions let us
translate them from physical terms into the language of feel-
ing. The destruction of familiar relations and the necessity of
establishing new ones are known immediately in consciousness
in terms of hardship or suffering; and disorganization of social
or individual life involves the pain of retrogression. The limita-
tions of progress, then, are these r First, there can be no social
progress, and therefore no development of personality, except
at the price of an absolute, but not necessarily a relative, in-
232 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
crease of suffering. Second, if the increase of social activity,
which is one phase of progress, becomes disproportionate to the
constructive reorganization of social relationships, which is the
complementary phase, the increase of suffering will become degen-
eration.
These limitations are not a cheering aspect of progress, but their
reality is established in historical and in statistical fact, and they
sharply define our obligations. The first of these sobering propo-
sitions has to be made a shade darker still. The suffering that
progress costs is borne for the most part vicariously. The classes
that are displaced, whose interests and occupations are broken up
by the relentless course of change, are not the ones who secure
the joys of richer and ampler life. That which enormously
benefits mankind is too often the irretrievable ruin of the few.
For illustration, one need not be confined to the familiar facts of
the wasting of barbarian peoples before the advance of civiliza-
tion, or the sacrifice of life in national self-defence. The history
of industrial advance affords examples quite as striking, and more
significant, since they show that after society has settled down to
the quiet occupations of peace the fundamental conditions of its
development remain unchanged. In reviewing them the sociolo-
gist expects to find that the minority which suffers the pains of
progress is composed mainly of the most unprogressive elements
of the population, and he is not disappointed. But he finds evi-
dences also that to some extent the sufferers are recruited by
victims of pure misfortune, whose undoing has been caused
neither by their nature nor by their conduct.
When in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the growth
of towns, money payments, and the commutation of week work
loosened the bonds of custom and law that had held the serf to the
manor, the entire commonwealth of England experienced an eco-
nomic prosperity never before known. Population and wealth
increased, and the free tenants, as a class, rose steadily in social
position. They could cultivate more or less land, or engage in
trade and obtain municipal charters. But the economic equality
of an earlier day had disappeared. The growth of population
brought men into the world for whom there were places enough,
and more than enough, but not places already allotted to them in
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 233
the social order. They were places that had to be discovered by
intelligence and enterprise, qualities that are not possessed by all
men equally. The full virgate of land was no longer secured by
customary law to each family. Since the energetic and strong
could control more, the easy-going and weak had to get on with
less. In the towns the far-seeing and forehanded quickly monop-
olized trade and the more profitable crafts. And so, while this
comparative freedom of enterprise stimulated activity in a hun-
dred ways that made England as a nation richer and stronger, it
destroyed the old economic footing of the less competent members
of society, and left them to struggle on, thenceforth, as a wage-
earning class.
Two hundred years later, in the sixteenth century, society was
again transformed by the results of geographical discovery. Free
capital and foreign commerce quickened industry and thought into
intense and brilliant life. "It was indeed a stirring time," writes
Hyndman, obliged to admit that this period, which he calls the
iron age of the peasantry and wage classes, was, nevertheless, one
of progress in other respects. "A new world was being discov-
ered in art and in science in Europe as well as in actual existence
on the other side of the Atlantic. . . . Never before had so great
an impulse been given to human enterprise and human imagina-
tion." 1 But the splendor had its price, which socialists like Hynd-
man have superficially described and but imperfectly understood.
Political integration had been going on. The struggle of con-
tending factions had been costly, and the reestablished national
life, with its manifold activities, was more costly. Barons dis-
charged the bands of retainers that were no longer needed in civil
strife. To better their fortunes the great lords enclosed common
lands that had been used freely by the yeomanry, and began evict-
ing tenants to convert agricultural lands into the sheep pastures
that required little labor and returned a quick money income from
sales of wool in Flanders. The misery of the people so displaced
and forced into wage labor or vagabondage cannot be attributed
to any actual lack of land or of industrial opportunity. There
remained land enough and to spare, notwithstanding enclosures
and evictions, if it had been well used ; while the development of
1 Historical Basis of Socialism in England, p. 23.
234 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
manufactures and commerce had only begun. If they had pos-
sessed the knowledge and the will to cultivate arable land more
intensively, they could not have been driven from the soil ; if there
had been a free mobility of labor, they could have found employ-
ment quickly in the best instead of tardily in the worst markets,
as too often happened; if the organizing ability of employers
had been greater, the best markets would more quickly have found
them. But the value of land had become too great for their
wasteful methods; they had to change or go. That knowledge
might increase, that freedom to come and go might be established,
that the organization of enterprise might be perfected it was nec-
essary that these economic and social changes which accomplished
so much ruin should occur. Consequently, if the world was to
become a larger and a better place for the alert, on-moving many,
the sacrifice of the sluggish had to be.
The industrial revolution at the close of the eighteenth century
again occasioned displacements of labor that bore more distinctly
the character of misfortune to those who were injured by them.
No degree of skill, enterprise, or assiduity could have enabled the
handicraftsmen to hold their own in competition with power-
machinery and the steam-engine. They could do nothing but
leave their shops to wind and weather, and begin life over, on
new terms, in factory towns. How many thousands of them
never fully reestablished themselves, how many succumbed to
illness or even to actual starvation before economic reorganiza-
tion was completed, the reports of parliamentary inquiries bear
witness. Yet an unprecedented increase of population was proof
that, on the whole, the masses of the people had never been so
prosperous. Before 1751 the largest decennial increase had been
three per cent. ; before 1781 it did not exceed six per cent. Then,
all at once, it rose, decade by decade, to nine, eleven, fourteen, and
finally, between 1811 and 1821, to eighteen per cent. In our own
time the displacement of manual labor by machinery continues, and
possibly less than in any previous period is the suffering visited
on the least valuable portion of the population, since not infre-
quently it is men of a higher standard of life who are forced
out by the competition of a lower type. Nevertheless, so large
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 235
has been the net gain from improved methods of production that
the consequences of displacement are less serious than they were
a century ago. The chance of finding reemployment quickly is,
for competent men, greater than in former times, and the period
of search is made endurable by accumulated savings and varied
forms of aid. All in all, industrial history discloses a progressive
diminution of the proportion of inevitable suffering mixed with
the gains of progress; but the absolute increase remains. The
personnel of the displaced class changes more rapidly than in
earlier times, but the class, as a class, is renewed. As a class, it
cannot disappear as long as progress continues.
Such, in its simplest statement, is the law of the cost of
progress. "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
Whatever augments well-being destroys some livelihood. As
an abstract proposition, no well-informed student of social
phenomena would call this truth in question. But, unfortu-
nately, the law-makers, the social reformers, and the moralists
have not bound it upon their fingers nor written it upon the
tables of their hearts. They legislate, reform, and advise, for-
getful that their wisest endeavors can be at the best only "some-
thing between a hindrance and a help"; and the world goes on,
therefore, not only deceiving itself with dreams, but wasting its
resources on impossible undertakings.
For this principle is one that would make the instant quietus
of many vain questionings if it were an ever-present element in
our thinking. The poor have always been with us. 'Must they
be with us always? Or may we hope that economic prosperity
and social justice will one day mete out comfort, if not abundance,
to all?
Not unless we can attain "finality in a world of change." Not
unless there is a definite limit to the humanistic progress of the
race; for the conditions that would eliminate poverty from the
earth would terminate the life that is more than meat, in society
first, and afterwards in individuals. Unless all men could be
made equally prudent, equally judicious, neither an increase of
wealth nor changes in its distribution could prevent the occasional
sweeping away of possessions by the social rearrangements that
236 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
progress demands. The relative dimensions of poverty will con-
tract and its misery will be alleviated, but there is no reason to
believe that it will ever wholly disappear.
Will multitudes of human beings remain always in practical
subjection to individual or corporate masters? Can we not abol-
ish economic slavery as we have abolished legal bondage?
Aristotle's argument that slavery inheres in civilization has
shocked the sensitive and amused the shallow, while both have
quoted it to show what foolishness a philosopher can teach. But
to the wise it will ever remain a profound though mournful truth.
Essential slavery has aptly been described as the estate of a man
who "can't get any freedom." We have changed the legal con-
ditions under which millions of men and women perform ill-
requited tasks of daily toil. To some extent we have diminished
the total magnitude of their misery, if not in every individual case
its extreme intensity. But we have not enabled them to get actual
freedom. We have made it unlawful to buy and sell their per-
sons. The master can no longer obtain control of the laborer's
time and strength, and therefore of his freedom, from any legal
principal but the laborer himself. The laborer cannot sell his own
freedom in perpetuity. But he can sell any portion of it, or all of
it subdivided into portions, for a limited period of time, or for
his whole life subdivided into periods. Practically, therefore, any
man or woman may sell his or her entire freedom for life, and
practically thousands of both men and women are compelled by
hunger to make the sale on terms that are personally degrading.
Yet that interpretation of this melancholy fact which attributes it
to the wickedness and greed of a capital-owning class is a tissue
of economic and sociological fallacies. Another interpretation,
which explains it as unavoidable misfortune, becomes a perversion
of history when, in the desire to prove that the world has grown
better, it assumes that ancient legal slavery was a consciously-
devised oppression. Neither oppression nor greed has been at
any time the first cause of legal bondage or of economic depend-
ence. Both are secondary causes, induced by experiences with a
slavery already existent.
Modern civilization does not require, it does not even need,
the drudgery of needle-women or the crushing toil of men in a
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 237
score of life-destroying occupations. If these wretched beings
should drop out of existence and no others stood ready to fill
their places, the economic activities of the world would not greatly
suffer. A thousand devices latent in inventive brains would
quickly make good any momentary loss. The true view of the
facts is that these people continue to exist after the kinds of work
that they know how to perform have ceased to be of any consid-
erable value to society. Society continues to employ them for a
remuneration not exceeding the cost of getting the work done in
some other and perhaps better way. This economic law has been
too much neglected in scientific discussion. It should be repeated
and illustrated at every opportunity. Incessantly we are told that
unskilled labor creates the wealth of the world. It would be
nearer the truth to say that large classes of unskilled labor do not
create their own subsistence. The laborers that have no adaptive-
ness, that bring no new ideas to their work, that have no suspicion
of the next best thing to turn to in an emergency, might better be
identified with the dependent classes than with the wealth-
creators.
The same economic law offers the true interpretation of ancient
slavery. In strictness civilization did not rest on slavery. It
was not in any true sense maintained by slavery. The conditions
that created the civilization created economic dependence, and
they are working in the same way, with similar results, now.
Ancient civilization accepted the dependence and utilized it in the
crude form of slavery. Modern civilization accepts and utilizes
it in the slightly more refined form of the wage system.
Certain great social tasks of creative organization have always
confronted our race. The enforced effort to achieve them has
been history's great competitive examination. The slaves and
serfs have been those who have failed. The first great necessity
was social unity, the power to act together in a disciplined
way, and the first slaves were those who could not create a
sufficiently coherent social organization to sustain a growing civil-
ization. They had to make way before others who were equal to
that achievement, and they became slaves not solely nor chiefly
because of a conqueror's tyranny, but primarily because slavery
or serfdom was practically the only economic disposition that
238 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
could be made of them. Now that social unity has been in good
measure established, and the world has entered on yet larger un-
dertakings, the condition of freedom is the ability to devise new
things, to create new opportunities, to make not only two blades
of grass grow where one grew before, but to make a hundred
kinds of grass grow where before grew none at all. Accordingly,
the practically unfree task-workers of this time are those who,
unaided, can accomplish none of these new things. They are
those who might do well in old familiar ways, but who have noth-
ing to turn to when their ways cease to be of value to the world.
To live they must force depreciated services upon society on any
terms that society can continue to allow. They are unfree task-
workers not because society chooses to oppress them, but because
society has not yet devised or stumbled upon any other dispo-
sition to make of them. Civilization, therefore, is not cruel.
Rather it is supporting and trying to utilize the wrecks and fail~
ures of its own imperfect past.
But it may be said: All these negative conclusions are based
on the assumption that the regime of individualism is to con-
tinue. Might not redemption from poverty and dependence be
possible under the reign of a beneficent socialism ?
Two systems of socialism have been proposed, if we classify
them according to plans of organization, and two if we classify
with reference to a proposed division of wealth. According to
one plan industrial administration would be centralized ; accord-
ing to the other it would be decentralized. Either of these
systems might be communistic, incomes being made equal through-
out society, or either might be non-communistic, the services of
different men being valued unequally.
Decentralized socialism would merely substitute competing com-
munities for competing private organizations. It would follow
that some communities would prosper more than others, and that
some, therefore, would presently come under subjection to the
others. A centralized socialism would probably attempt to estab-
lish a rigid and final system of occupations, in the hope of pre-
venting industrial derangements. If successful, the attempt
would make an end of progress. If no such attempt were made,
men would be thrown, as now, from time to time, out of that ideal
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 239
arrangement in which each did the work to which he was best
adapted, and therefore, if rewarded in proportion to their services,
the unfortunates would receive, as now, only the pittance that
would no more than support life. The one difference would be
that society in its corporate capacity would assume the responsi-
bility of finding new work for them ; but, rewarding them accord-
ing to performance only, it would practically have them in sub-
jection. They would only have exchanged masters, and slavery
to individuals for slavery to society.
If, vainly hoping to escape from this dilemma, society should
not only assume the responsibility of finding new opportunities
for the displaced, but should undertake to compensate them for
the buffetings and losses that they had suffered by reason of indus-
trial changes, and regardless of their resulting worth to the com-
monwealth, it would transform the character of its socialism.
Rewarding no longer according to service, the socialism would
become communism. Men of unequal power to work and to use,
of widely varying capacities to enjoy, would share alike the com-
mon product of their labor. Only one result could follow. Men
of animal natures, having as large incomes as men of a higher
development, would spend a disproportionate share of it on the
grosser sorts of gratification. Materialism of life, with its debase-
ment, would be the unprofitable substitute for economic hardship.
Income cannot be greatly disproportionate to the social value of
work, talents, culture, and virtues, without degrading the man.
If it be said that many men whose whole social value is of the
slightest do have, in fact, fabulous incomes, which socialism would
diminish, the reply is that there are not, accurately speaking, many
such men, and that there would be no apparent advantage in sub-
stituting a systematic breeding of dull sensualists for the sporadic
genesis of more brilliant 'debauchees.
Shall we then conclude that an unrestrained individualism,
working out social changes that seem advantageous to their pro-
moters, can achieve limitless progress, and that only harm could
come from any checking of the rate or intensity of its activity?
Shall we assume that the inevitable costs of progress in economic
loss and human suffering must be uncomplainingly borne by those
on whom they fall, because all private reforms are Utopian, and
240 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
all public regulation of industry or assumption of its losses in
accordance with any form of socialism or communism would
be worse than folly? Must we acknowledge that society has no
responsibility for the consequences of the processes and changes
by which its own well-being is maintained? Shall we give our-
selves over to the belief that laissez faire is the last word of social
science and the first law of ethics?
Nothing in the conditions of progress set forth in the foregoing
study hints at other than negative answers to these questions.
On the contrary, if the law of evolution exemplified in human
society has rightly been understood, we are prepared to find cer-
tain real limitations of the number and extent of the social, polit-
ical, or industrial metamorphoses which, within a given period, can
combine in genuine progress. We may expect to discover a grow-
ing necessity for integral social action. We may expect to hear
the conscience of trie race declaring that society is responsible
for the costs of its existence.
In dynamic phenomena of every kind results are a function, as
the mathematicians express it, of time. With a given amount of
energy we can go in an hour or a day a given distance. Pro-
long the time, and we can increase the distance. In the incon-
ceivably complicated dynamic phenomena of life, growth, organ-
ization, development, are functions of time. If we force the rate
of transformation, we prevent the establishment of relations of
integration, differentiation, or segregation, necessary to complete
organization. And if organization is incomplete there is a limit
to the life-possibilities of the organism. It can perform less and
enjoy less while it lives, and its dissolution will begin earlier.
Society on a great scale, as the individual life on a smaller scale,
exemplifies these laws. If social evolution is to continue, and
the life of man is to become larger, and. richer with increasing
happiness, social organization in the future will be not simpler
than it is now, but more complex. In its larger being, individual-
ism, socialism, and communism may not be the mutually exclu-
sive things that they now seem to be. There may be not a nar-
rower but a wider field for individual effort, not less but more
personal liberty. At the same time, more enterprises may be
brought under public control, and more of the good things of life
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 241
may be distributed, like the sunshine and the air, in free and
equal portions. The displaced men and women may be more
quickly reestablished than now, their services be made of greatef
value, and society may assume a larger portion of the burden
of their misfortunes. All these possibilities are implications of
the second of the limitations of progress to which attention has
been called, namely, that if the increase of social activity be-
comes disproportionate to the constructive reorganization of social
relationships, the increase of suffering will become degeneration.
A few of the facts in evidence may be noted.
Dazzled by the results of material progress already achieved,
men throw themselves into the enterprises of modern life with
the zest of an ambition that knows no bounds. The rate of in-
dustrial, professional, political, and intellectual activity becomes
proportionate to the swiftness of electricity and steam. The
struggle for success causes demographic changes which pro-
foundly modify the social conditions of existence.
One of these is a phenomenal increase of population following
upon an enormous production of wealth. We have already seen
how improved industrial conditions in England, in the first part
of this century, were followed by an unprecedented increase of
population. The expansion of the population of the United States
from 3,929,214 in 1790 to 62,622,250 in 1890, while the popula-
tion of Europe, in spite of enormous emigration, rapidly multi-
plied, was a phenomenon that Longstaff accurately described as
unique in history. 1
A second change is a rapid concentration of increasing popula-
tion in large cities, where the great prizes of worldly success are
striven for and won. More than one-half of the population of the
United States is now urban. Humanity is flowing into cities
faster than the reorganization of the manifold phases of town life,
including municipal government, is achieved. There is a contin-
uing drain upon the vitality of the country to meet the destruction
of vitality in the towns, which makes the depopulation of rural
sections a grave matter for the future of civilization. "By a curious
perversion," says Longstaff, "the advantage of towns is said to
be 'life.' There is in truth more life in a given space, more high
1 Studies in Statistics, pp. 54-55.
242 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
pressure, more rush ; but it is the rush of a clock running down." *
A displacement, in many industries, of men of a relatively high
standard of life by cheaper men of a lower standard, more rapidly
than the better men can find places in industries requiring rela-
tively intelligent labor, is a third demographic consequence of
intense activity. The normal displacement, as has been shown, is
of the dull, mechanical, non-adaptable man by a more versatile
competitor. But industries are not all of the same character.
Some are more progressive in their methods than others because
they contribute to the satisfaction of growing wants, which cre-
ate a varying demand, while others minister to wants that are
relatively stationary. In some industries, therefore, the high-
priced man is the cheap man ; in others the low-priced man is the
cheaper man. Economists who have contended that high wages
mean a low cost of labor, and those who have affirmed the con-
trary, are alike half right and half wrong. They have been ob-
serving different classes of industries. Under a uniform, self-
regulating circulation of labor, the versatile man, of the high
standard of life, would displace the cheaper man in one class of
industries, and the duller, cheaper man would displace higher-
priced labor in the other class. Under normal progress the major
displacement would be of inferior by superior men. But unless
economic evolution, creating new wants and varying demands, and
reorganizing industry to supply them, is going on more rapidly
than the growth of social unrest, or of those political policies that
so often force hordes of destitute people into migrations that
have no definite destination, there may be a cruel and ruinous
substitution of the lower for the higher grade of workman, pre-
maturely and far beyond normal limits.
Under these circumstances the struggle for success piles up in
the community much wreckage of degeneration. Every statisti-
cian has been struck with the seemingly anomalous fact that
suicide, insanity, crime, vagabondage, increase with wealth, edu-
cation, and refinement ; that, as Morselli says, 2 they are phenomena
of civilization. But the fact is not altogether anomalous after
all. These things are a part of the cost of progress, forms that
1 Longstaff, Ibid., p. 35.
'Suicide, p. 16.
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 243
the cost of progress takes when the rate of social activity exceeds
the rate of constructive reorganization. Quicken the pace of a
moving army, and the number of the unfortunates who will fall
exhausted by the way will be increased disproportionately. Besides
quickening the pace let discipline lapse and organization break
up, and the number of stragglers will be more than doubled. In-
crease the strain of any kind of competitive work and derange the
conditions under which it is done, and the percentage of failures
will rise.
Practical solution of the problems of responsibility and policy
that are presented by the conditions and tendencies which we have
looked at depends on a difficult combination of two very difficult
things. The first is to convince one set of men and women that
society ought to assume the costs of its progress, and, as far as
possible, take openly the responsibility for replacing the displaced.
This is the element of truth in socialism. We have made progress
in this direction. Practicality and theoretically society admitted
the obligation when, in the reigns of the Tudors, it began to
supplement private and ecclesiastical charity by systems of public
relief. In a hundred forms of legislation and administration, in
public education, in the multiplication of asylums and hospitals,
in a thousand modes of private beneficence, the duty is being more
adequately discharged by each later generation. But we are yet
far from comprehending its full extent. We realize but faintly
how far the incompetent and impoverished have been made so
by social movements that have cut them off from possibility of
personal improvement. A second difficulty is to convince another
set of men and women of the fallacy of a cardinal socialistic no-
tion, namely, that industrial derangements can be prevented in
a progressive world ; to convince them, therefore, that at all times
a portion of mankind must be relatively useless to the community,
and, for that reason, relatively poor ; and that their greatest pos-
sible utilization and compensation depend on their being held for
the while in practical subjection to other individuals or to the
commonwealth.
Sooner or later there will have to be a courageous facing of the
fact that one portion of every community is inherently progressive,
resourceful, creative, capable of self-mastery and self-direction,
244 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
while another portion, capable of none of these things, can be
made useful, comfortable, and essentially free, only by being
brought under bondage to society and kept under mastership and
discipline until, if ever, they acquire power to help and govern
themselves. If one should say that we all believe this doctrine,
that it is in no sense new, the necessary reply would be that we
nevertheless habitually disregard it in every matter save the jurid-
ical distinction between the law-abiding and the criminal. We
accept laissez faire as the expedient rule for all men and all indus-
tries alike, or we denounce it as bad for all alike. We advocate
socialistic methods for the entire field of industry, or we pro-
nounce them impracticable for any part of it. We denounce
compulsory education for any class in the community, or we insist
on forcing it on all classes. In all which sayings and doings we
confound unlike things, and show ourselves irrational in the last
degree.
What, then, in concrete detail, are some of the obligations
placed upon individuals and upon society by the conditions of
social progress?
The law that progressive, self-governing members of society
should lay on themselves includes at least three groups of duties.
First, they should resist, personally and in their influence, the
tendency to subordinate higher considerations to that mere quick-
ening of competitive activity which goes beyond its normal func-
tion of means to end, to become an irrational, unjustifiable end in
itself. Especially in the education of ambitious children should
competition be tempered. Second, they should resort more freely,
as fortunately they are beginning to do, to country life, and
especially should they study and experiment with the ways and
means of revitalizing it. Third, they should cultivate that true
individuality in the consumption of wealth, which is not only a
mark of genuine manliness or womanliness, but which acts on
economic demand in ways that give a competitive advantage to
the industrial qualities of men whose standard of life is high.
The duties that society should discharge in its relation to the
general conditions of progressive activity, and to its members
who are undeveloped or degenerate, fall also into three groups.
First, society should assume the regulation of international migra-
THE COSTS OF PROGRESS 245
tion. Each nation should bear the burden of pauperism, ig-
norance, and degeneracy caused by its own progress or wrong-
doing. Society should also assume the regulation, by industrial
and labor legislation, of industries in which free competition dis-
places the better man by the inferior. Perhaps in time some
of these industries could advantageously come directly under pub-
lic management, as socialism proposes. Second, society should
act on the fact that a proportion of its population must be always
practically unfree, by extending compulsory education to the chil-
dren of parents who are unable or unwilling to provide in their
own way a training that the commonwealth can approve. This
education should be as well adapted as knowledge, money, and
sincerity of purpose can make it, to the work of fitting the children
of the poor for life in a changing world. Third, society should
enslave, not figuratively, but literally, all men and women who
voluntarily betake themselves to a life of vagabondage.
These are the obligations of individuals and of the state that
seem to be disclosed by a study of social progress. But we must
not forget that the same conditions impose a negative duty also,
an obligation of restraint. For all reform, all philanthropic work,
is itself a phase of social progress, and, like all others, has a cost
in effort and suffering. Therefore, if philanthropic reform is
hurried, or pursued by too radical methods, it may convert the
absolute increase of evil, which progress costs, into a relative
increase, and so wholly defeat itself. Lombroso and Laschi once
contended that political crime (the crime, that is, of those who
unsuccessfully resist governmental authority) consists essentially
in an attempt to accomplish in crude and violent ways desirable
changes or reforms for which society is not yet ready. 1 Devotion
to the cause of progress these authors proposed to call by the name
"philoneism" ; the dread of change by the name "misoneism."
Society is, on the whole, misoneistic ; and we can mend its ways
but slowly.
For, whatever happens, we must keep in touch with our fellow-
men. It was Marcus Aurelius, one of the most modern-minded
men of the first great western civilization, who said :
"The intelligence of the universe is social. Accordingly it has
1 Le Crime politique et les Revolutions.
246 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has
fitted the superior to one another. Thou seest how it has sub-
ordinated, coordinated, and assigned to everything its proper
portion, and has brought together into concord with one another
the things which are the best." *
That was nearly two thousand years ago. The aspect of the
world has changed, but the essential nature and the fundamental
structure of human society have not.
l Marci Antonini Imperatoris De Rebus Suis. V, xxx.
PART III
SYNTHETIC
CHAPTER XV
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR
I. THE DYNAMICS OF PLURALISTIC STRUGGLE
i. LIFE AS PLURALISTIC
OUTSIDE my window seven belligerent sparrows make a
machine-gun din as they fight over a crust bequeathed to them
by an unscientific philanthropist. While I watch them, a motor-
cycle policeman charging into the street arrests a speeding auto-
mobile flying blue flags and laden with violets and girls. In two
minutes the boy "bunch" of the block has assembled to learn
whether the car will be permitted to go on to New Haven, in
time for "the game."
Of occurrences fundamentally like these life largely consists.
Living bodies "carry on" to sustain and to perpetuate themselves.
On occasion they fight. Their activity is more, however, than a
struggle for bare existence. It is an endeavor to enlarge life and
to enrich it. Conscious life is a struggle for satisfactions, includ-
ing individuation, and for achievement.
Perpetuating itself, life multiplies itself, and the multiplication
of individual lives complicates and intensifies the struggle for
existence. The casualties are countless. The organisms that
are most "fit," in the sense of being best adapted to their circum-
stances and best equipped to meet crises, survive. There is a
natural selection.
The activity of a living body is reaction to stimulus, and
reaction is behavior.
All reaction is a physiological behavior, and many reactions of
tracts and organs are physiological only ; but whatever the entire
organism does as a unit is also behavior in a psychological mean-
ing of the word.
249
2 so STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
The behavior of plants and of the lowlier animals is uncon-
scious, or perhaps infinitesimally conscious : it is subinstinctive.
Such, for example, is the turning of the leaves of heliotropic
plants to the sunlight. Truly instinctive behavior begins with
organisms that have acquired an automatically reacting nervous
mechanism. It is accompanied by awareness, including sensa-
tions, with which, in the vertebrates (the higher ones, at least)
are associated also emotions, simple ideas, and memories.
These higher animals behave instinctively, and also by habit: in
the individual span of life between birth and death they learn
much by haphazard trial and elimination. The behavior of man-
kind is instinctive, habitistic, and rational. Self-consciousness
has appeared, speech has been acquired, and hit-or-miss trial has
been overlaid and brought under control by experimentation in
thought, which ranges from guessing to systematic induction.
Ideas, accordingly, have been correlated and coordinated.
The sum of behavior is the total struggle for existence and
achievement. By far the greater part of it consists of effort to
meet instant needs. A lesser but large part consists of efforts
to obtain desired but not imperative satisfactions. The remainder
is a free expenditure "for the fun of it," not at the moment pro-
ductive, but tending always to become experiment, including ex-
ploration of the environment ; and experiment leads to discovery,
without which there could be no achievement.
In a world of limited inhabitable area the multiplication of
individuals (whether cells or organisms), living by trial and error
and tending to explore their environment, causes contacts and
creates groupings of living units.
The earliest and simplest groupings are an incident of birth.
Usually an organism in its lifetime reproduces itself more than
once. Until they scatter, plural offspring are in form a group.
They share good and bad fortune.
The cells that compose and constitute a plant or an animal are
united in the intimacies of structure and process. Their collective
life is physiological. Usually they cannot break away from the
organic whole, or live apart from it.
The coelenterate polyps that secrete coral are attached directly,
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 251
or through branches, to a parent stem. They cannot get asunder,
but one of them torn away by violence could be the parent of a
new zoophyte. They do not constitute an organism. Their col-
lective life is conjunctive only.
The bees of a swarm, the beasts of a herd, the beavers of a
dam, the men of a community, move about in individual detach-
ment. Any one of them could live a hermit life for a while ; but
usually individuals of a kind act with reference to one another
and keep near one another.
Keeping near one another, notwithstanding physical detach-
ment, is behavior, and the collective life of physically detached
individuals is behavioristic only.
Accordingly, the multiplication of lives not only intensifies the
struggle of each individual for existence and complicates its con-
ditions; it also in certain instances creates for all or nearly all
individuals of the kind a physically collective life, and in other
instances it complicates and organizes behavior and creates for all
or nearly all individuals of the kind a behavioristically collective
life.
The behavior that constitutes the collective life of swarm, herd,
pack, or community is pluralistic. Any one or any combination
of behavior-inciting stimuli may on occasion be reacted to by more
than one individual ; as the bread crust is by the seven sparrows,
and as the "cop" and the car are by the gangster boys of the
block.
The reactions of the individuals of a plurel to a stimulation
common to them all in the sense that it reaches all may be similar
or they may be dissimilar. To the same stimulus or to like stimuli
like organisms normally react in like manner, as crows in the corn-
field take wing at a gunshot and boys in the street run after the
fire engine.
Alike or unlike, pluralistic reactions may be simultaneous or
they may "string out" from prompt to dilatory. They may be
substantially equal in strength, or unequal. They may be equally,
or unequally persistent.
Like acts by detached individuals may be competitive, or they
may fall into combinations, as when animals in a pack follow the
252 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
same quarry or beat off a common enemy. When it is often
enough repeated, combined action becomes habitual group action.
Whether they are dissimilar or similar, rivalistic or combined,
simultaneous or not, equal or unequal, pluralistic reactions to a
common stimulation make a strictly individualistic struggle for
existence impossible. Above all is this true of the human struggle
for achievement. It is a pluralistic struggle.
Pluralistic behavior, in distinction from individual behavior,
has its own conditions, forms, and laws.
In early youth I often drove cattle on the highway, and I
learned that the secret of keeping them moving in good form lay
in the "crack" of the stimulus that I relied on. In later youth,
conducting and teaching a rural school, I learned that there also
one secret of orderly cooperation lay in the cogency of the stim-
ulation applied. Whether physical, utilitarian, or moral, it must
be adequate. From these experiences, however, I learned also
another thing not less interesting. It was that the part played by
resemblances (or differences) among nervous systems is always
significant and may be determinative. Two or three unruly steers
in a herd could tax the powers of any driver. Two or three con-
ceited morons in a school could tax the ingenuity and the patience
of any teacher.
These instances are not oddities ; they are representative rela-
tions. Always the character of pluralistic reactions (as similar or
dissimilar, simultaneous or not, equal or unequal) is determined
by two variables, namely, (i) the strength of the stimulation,
and (2) the similarity (or the dissimilarity) of the reacting mech-
anisms.
Pluralistic behavior is the subject-matter of the psychology of
society, otherwise called sociology, a science statistical in method,
which attempts, first, to factorize pluralistic behavior, and sec-
ond, to explain its genesis, integration, differentiation, and func-
tioning by accounting for them in terms of the variables (i)
stimulation, and (2) the resemblance (more or less) to one
another of reacting mechanisms. 1
J The psychology of society and social psychology are different things,
as I pointed out in the article on "The Psychology of Society," in Science,
January 6, 1899. One is identical with sociology, the other is not-
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 253
2. REGIONAL INFLUENCE
Stimuli are infinitely various. In character they range from
compulsions, impulsions, and constraints to inducements and
allurements.
Among stimuli that all living bodies react to are phenomena of
the surface of the earth, including its life-sustaining resources,
and of the atmosphere, including variations of temperature and
of precipitation. All these are unevenly distributed. Geography
is a variegated thing. There are regions that forbid, repel, starve,
and kill, and there are regions that nourish and attract. There-
fore, the teeming life of the earth is apportioned and segregated,
here in energetic aggregations, there in sporadic, ineffective exam-
ples according to the regional dispersion of environmental bounty
and exaction, incitement, and constraint.
The distribution of inhabitable areas on the earth's surface is
neither haphazard nor uniform. It is a grouping by coastal
plains, river basins, and mountain systems, or in relation to them.
The river deltas and the tide-water lowlands are relatively acces-
sible. The bottom lands and lower levels of the watershed are
abundantly productive of primary means of subsistence, the re-
moter plains and plateaus less so. Least bountiful in primary
food products, least accessible, and, in general, least inhabitable
are the high altitudes, in particular the continental divides, where
river systems take their rise.
For brief periods of time the physical environment is normally
static approximately but if its permutations throughout long
periods are observed, it is seen to be highly kinetic. It "breaks
out" in volcanic disturbances and in earthquakes. Variations of
climate from cold to hot, from wet to dry, range from enormous
revolutions consequent upon subsidences and elevations of the
earth's crust, or upon the advance or retreat of the polar ice cap,
down to minor fluctuations that are measured by familiar peri-
odicities of maximum and minimum rainfall.
The relative advantageousness of physical environments for
sustaining, energizing, and stimulating pluralistic life is a factor
of all social phenomena. It determines the density and the com-
position of every population. It provokes and limits collective
effort. It fixes the possibilities of organization and of collective
254 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
effectiveness. Directly, and indirectly through collective effort
and effectiveness, it makes and limits the possibilities of well-being
and of individuation.
3. CIRCUMSTANTIAL PRESSURE
If the foregoing propositions are undeniable, the physiographic
or "environmental" theory of history is true, as far as it goes. It
is an inadequate and unsatisfactory philosophy, however, because
it fails to perceive and to explain the media through which a
physical environment acts upon conduct. We are creatures of
circumstance.
For among the stimuli that incite and sustain behavior are vari-
ous annoyances, hardships, dangers, and adversities that bear
so heavily upon individuals living in isolation or unaided by
neighboring fellow-beings that they constrain great numbers of
animals of various species and great numbers of men to live in
aggregations ; and constrain great numbers of group-dwelling men
to overlook many of their differences, to minimize many of their
antagonisms, and to combine their efforts. These constraining
circumstances may be conceived as constituting a circumstantial
pressure upon living beings.
In its totality circumstantial pressure, like chance (as the
mathematicians define chance), comprises innumerable small
causes. Rain drives beasts and human beings into momentary
assemblages. So does the glare of noonday sunlight. When
winds are cold some creatures hogs, notoriously, and sheep
huddle together for warmth. Drought, drying many springs and
streams commonly resorted to, and compelling assemblage at
those that remain, is often a pressure of extreme intensity.
Darkness with its fearsome uncertainties occasions recurrent con-
sorting of individuals (animal or human)- that feel sure of one
another. These pressures are not in themselves causes of co-
operation, whereas accidents and attacks upon persons and posses-
sions commonly are.
The curve, however, of circumstantial pressure is not a normal
frequency distribution. It is skewed by relatively large causes of
various magnitudes. Of these the most general, perhaps, is a
diminishing return to effort in the struggle for existence. Dimin-
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 255
ishing return in the economist's meaning of the phrase is a special
case. Economic adversity or threat is another. An important
instance is an extensive dessication, like that which periodically
recurs in Western Asia. 1 Little if any less general and more
unremittent is the pressure exerted by the hardships and dangers
of isolation. Continuous but highly variable is the pressure of
foreign economic competition, the reaction to which is protective
tariff legislation. Intermittent but most tremendous of circum-
stantial pressures, and in its consequences the most far-reaching,
is war, and war is a product of countless factors of more than one
category, as the failure of all attempts to account for the European
war of 1914 by any one cause, for example, economic interest,
has abundantly made clear.
The hardships and dangers of isolation are measured by urbani-
zation, namely, the percentage of the population of a given area
that dwells in towns and cities of a designated number, or more,
inhabitants. Urbanization is the best basic measure of circum-
stantial pressure. The chiefly important phenomena of society
are more highly correlated with it than with mere density of pop-
ulation. Supplementary measures are fluctuations of prices, 2 the
foreign exchanges, and the statistics of war.
4. DEMOTIC FACTORS OF LIKE-MINDEDNESS
Regional and urban aggregations of human beings increase in
two ways: (i) by births in excess of deaths; (2) by immigration
in excess of emigration. A population growing chiefly by births
in excess of deaths is predominantly a genetic aggregation. A
population growing chiefly by immigration in excess of emigra-
tion is predominantly a congregation. A normal population is
both a genetic aggregation and a congregation.
Normally, a population is composite. It is composed of the
young, the middle-aged, and the old ; of males and females ; of
the native- and the foreign-born. It may comprise more than one
color-race, and the foreign-born usually comprise more than one
ethnic stock and more than one nationality.
1 Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia.
2 The newspapers reported in 1919 that the Sultan and pashas of Turkey
had cut down their harems to one wife each, because of the high cost
of living!
256 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Normally, as time goes on, there is intermarriage among
nationalities of the same color-race, with resulting amalgamation.
There is a tendency toward ethnic homogeneity within the limits
of the numerically dominant color-race.
As reacting mechanisms, the nervous systems of individuals of
the same color-race are in general more nearly alike than are the
nervous systems of individuals of different color-races ; and within
the limits of the same color-race the nervous systems of individ-
uals of the same ethnic stock (for example, the Germanic)
are in general more nearly alike than are the nervous systems of
individuals of different ethnic stocks (for example, the Germanic
and the Celtic) . The proof is, that it takes a stronger stimulation
to obtain like reactions from individuals of different color-races or
of different ethnic stocks of the same color-race than it does to
obtain like reactions from individuals of the same stock or race.
Try the experiment and repeat it until you are satisfied.
The young, however, react, in most cases, more readily to
novel stimulation than the old do. An amazing example (as most
observers regard it) is the world-wide interest of youth in revolu-
tionary radicalism. The phenomenon is not new, however. It
has been witnessed in every century. A significant and important
consequence of it is that it is easier to obtain like reactions from
the young of intermingled stocks or races than from the old.
Revolutionary radicalism and internationalism go together.
The sum of like reactions, instinctive, habitistic, and rational,
is like-mindedness.
The measure of basic like-mindedness is an index number,
obtained by decreasing the weight of successive increments that
diminish the homogeneity of their sum ; for example : white,
native-born of native parents ; plus white, of parents foreign-born,
divided by two; plus white, foreign-born, divided by four; plus
all colored, divided by eight.
The chiefly important phenomena of society for example, per
capita taxation, per capita expenditure for schools, and a habitual
exercise of the political franchise are not highly correlated posi-
tively or negatively with basic like-mindedness. The meaning of
this extremely significant statistical fact is that alert and progres-
sive social life is associated not with strict and exclusive similarity,
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 257
or with extreme dissimilarity, but with that intermediate degree
of mental and moral homogeneity which is an adequate meeting of
minds for practical purposes and yet is tolerant of individual
difference and dissent.
The best measure of radical like-mindedness is the percentage
number of individuals of the numerically dominant color-race
whose ages fall between the limits twenty and thirty-nine years.
The best measure of conservative like-mindedness is the percent-
age number of individuals native-born of native parents whose
ages fall in the class forty years and above. The radically like-
minded are normally more numerous than the conservatively
like-minded because they are indifferent (as the conservatives
are not) to the distinction "native-born," or, going a step farther,
"native-born of native parents." War tends to consolidate rad-
icals with conservatives and to merge these measures.
When the stimuli to which living bodies react have become a
circumstantial pressure, and the resemblances of reacting mechan-
isms have become like-mindedness, every social phenomenon
thenceforth and every social situation is a function of two vari-
ables, namely, (i) circumstantial pressure, and (2) like-minded-
ness, each of which varies under the influence of the other, under
influences that affect them differently, and under influences that
affect them similarly.
II. THE REACTIONS OF ASSEMBLED LIFE
5. COMPLEX PLURALISTIC RESPONSE
Simple pluralistic behavior is complicated and developed by
interstimulation and response. Each individual of a group or
assemblage is a complex of stimuli to his fellows, and each re-
sponds to fellow-stimulation.
The interstimulation of similar organisms differs from stimula-
tion otherwise arising. It has a distinct character. Normally it
is not repellent. It does not cause shrinking, recoil, or retreat.
The reactions also of resembling individuals to one another are
significantly different from the reactions of non-resembling indi-
viduals to one another.
Organisms of like kind stimulate each other non-repellently
258 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
not only because, first, they are similar complexes of stimuli, and
because, secondly, they are similar complexes of reaction, but also,
thirdly (and this is important), because the behavior of one organ-
ism a which functions as stimulation to another organism of like
kind d (for example, the caw of a crow, the yelp of a dog, or the
whinny of a horse) normally calls forth from that other a among
various reactions a behavior (there is an answering caw, or yelp,
or whinny) that is so like the initial behavior of a that it might
have arisen in a by self -imitation. Such interstimulation cannot
be repellent in a high degree, although in a degree it may be antag-
onistic. Two dogs may bristle and fight on first acquaintance,
but they do not hasten to part company, as the horse shies from
the rattlesnake or from the bumblebee. The fight ends in tolera-
tion or in the submission of one dog to the other.
Reactions of either similar or dissimilar individuals to one
another may be unconscious or may be conscious. Unconscious
pluralistic reactions of similars to one another are factors of vari-
ous herd instincts and of numerous herd habits, all of which
combine in gregariousness.
The synthesis turns upon and proceeds from the distinctive
peculiarities of stimulation of kind by kind and of reaction of
kind to kind, above set forth. The movements of organisms, like
the motions of inorganic bodies, follow lines of relatively low
resistance. Repellent stimulation and recoiling reaction open
lines of relatively high resistance. Non-repellent stimulation and
forthgoing action open lines of relatively low resistance. Also
reactions to stimuli that resemble self-stimuli are relatively facile.
These reactions include automatic imitations innumerable. On
mechanistic principles, therefore, a reacting locomotor organism
tends to go toward or to go with objects (including other loco-
motor organisms) from which non-repellent or otherwise non-
resistent stimulation proceeds.
In distinctive stimulations of kind by kind, then, and in char-
acteristically facile reactions to kind we discover relatively simple
mechanistic factors of innate gregariousness or "herd instinct,"
the chief manifestations of which are a matter-of-course tolera-
tion of one another by individual units of a kin group, an auto-
matic tendency to go with kind or at least to avoid separation
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 259
from kind, an automatic imitation of kind, and an unhesitating
reaction to herd stimulation.
This account of gregariousness is opposed to a commonly
accepted one which makes characteristic reaction to kind a mani-
festation of an unexplained herd instinct, so putting cause and
effect the other way around. 1
In the processes of interstimulation and its reactions pluralistic
behavior is dramatized. Action which, in the first instance, is
performed without reference to possible reaction by fellow -beings,
but which in fact is followed by fellow-reaction, is likely in subse-
quent performance to be affected thereby. In the presence of
fellow-beings action becomes acting, and thenceforward things
are not merely done, they are enacted.
Under common danger, and often under common opportunity,
similarities of behavior more or less dramatized develop into
spontaneous collective action. The individuals participating in it
may not be, or they may be, aware that they are combining their
efforts ; and they may not be, or they may be, aware that by com-
bination they are producing results; but whether conscious or
unconscious, cooperation commonly produces results advanta-
geous to the individuals participating in it.
The probability of collective action increases with circumstantial
pressure.
6. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF KIND
In mankind interstimulation and its reactions have developed
into communication by means of vocal signs. Everything is
talked about. Pluralistic behavior having been dramatized is now
also conversationalised.
Not only outward behavior and material things are talked
about. "Ideas" and "feelings" as "states of consciousness" also
are talked about. Thenceforth a conversationalised consciousness
and its states may legitimately be included in a study of be-
havior, viewed as an objective phenomenon.
Stimulation and reaction are accompanied by sensation. Dif-
ferences and similarities among stimuli, differences and similarities
among reactions, are "felt" in consciousness, and presently are
1 See William McDougall, Social Psychology, ch. xii, and W. Trotter,
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, pp. 1-23.
260 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
perceived. Differences and similarities among objects, among
the activities of things, and among behavioristic acts are felt and
perceived. Differences of individuals one from another and sim-
ilarities of individuals one to another also are felt and perceived.
The idea of "kind" arises. Individuals become aware of them-
selves as a "kind," and as being of one, or of more than one
"kind." This consciousness in human individuals of their differ-
ences one from another, of their similarities one to another, and
of their "kind" is the "consciousness of kind." More precisely,
the consciousness of kind is awareness of a concrete case or pos-
sibility of like-mindedness, and of such physical traits as are
commonly associated with it.
The consciousness of kind allays fear and engenders comrade-
ship. It converts instinctive consorting into a consciously dis-
criminative association. Without it there is no society; there is
only gregariousness. Of the instinctive herd it may be said as
Rousseau said of the state created by force, "C'est une agregation,
s'il vous plait, mais c'est non pas une association." The mem-
bers of a society are aware of themselves as preferentially asso-
ciating similars. For example, if they are Presbyterians, Repub-
licans, and Americans, they consciously prefer to associate in
religious communion with Presbyterians like-minded with them-
selves rather than with Methodists or with Episcopalians; to
associate in politics with Republicans like-minded with themselves
rather than with Democrats ; and to associate in nationality with
Americans like-minded with themselves rather than with the
people of any European land. The consciousness of kind is be-
coming not less but more potent in large affairs. Perhaps the
greatest manifestation of it ever seen is the nation-wide demand
in the United States at present for the Americanization of alien
residents. They must be made like-minded with Americans.
Odd as it may seem to the uninitiated, the statistical study of
the consciousness of kind to the extent of obtaining excellent
measurements of it, on either a small or a large scale, is not diffi-
cult. The data are frequency-distributions of preferences. The
curves which these approximately fit are in form like the familiar
curves of utility, demand, and price.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 261
7. CONCERTED VOLITION
In the course of pluralistic behavior above the instinctive level
conscious agreements arise. Propositions are put forth and are
"talked over." There begins to be "a meeting of minds." Col-
lective choices or decisions are made. There is a concert of wills,
a concerted volition.
Like the volition of an individual, concerted volition is of
various degrees of completeness. There may be only an incipient
impulse, that dies out before behavior is visibly affected and that
is known in consciousness only as an unexpressed choice or per-
haps only as a wish. Or there may be a consciously apprehended
decision, which is expressed in words or in gestures or through
other media. As the vote of a committee or of an assembly or,
on a larger scale, as a political election, concerted decision ex-
pressed in words is an important behavior. Finally, concerted
will may be expressed in collective action, brief or persisting.
In a normal population there are individuals of every grade of
mentality, and more individuals of each intermediate grade than
of the lowest or of the highest. Inasmuch, however, as all highly
reflective individuals are also dogmatic, sympathetic, and instinc-
tive, and all dogmatic individuals are also emotional and instinc-
tive, and all emotional individuals are also instinctive, there are
always in a normal aggregation more individuals that are alike
in motor reactions and in appetites than are alike in sympathies,
more who are alike in sympathies than are alike in beliefs, and
more who are alike in beliefs than are alike in critical intelligence.
From these facts a law of concerted volition follows, namely:
In a normal population the percentage number of individuals
participating in a collective decision diminishes as the intellectual
quality of the decision rises. 1
This law does not mean that "the intellectuals" and the
"masses" cannot get together. They can and do concur for prac-
tical purposes, but only as one element yields to the other. The
masses may "believe" that it is expedient to follow a lead that they
do not understand but do trust ; or the intellectuals may compro-
1 In New York City the East Side vote on constitutional amendments
is light. The heavy vote is in the election districts of Greenwich Village,
Morningside Heights, and Washington Heights.
262 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
mise with a crowd that stubbornly holds an antagonistic belief.
Conviction of the expediency of yielding, trusting, or compro-
mising strengthens and extends as circumstantial pressure
increases.
Circumstantial pressure determines the amount of concerted
volition in an aggregation in any respect heterogeneous. In a
homogeneous group, a majority of all individuals may alike react
to varied stimuli, and the stimuli are not necessarily powerful. In
the heterogeneous group a majority of all individuals can react in
identical or resembling ways to but few stimuli, and these must be
powerful ; but the more powerful they are, the larger will be the
absolute and the percentage number of individuals in like manner
reacting to them. This law holds good of conscious decisions as
of instinctive acts.
If one hundred or more persons vote "yes" or "no" on each of
twenty-five or more propositions, and the number of "yes" votes
for two propositions, for three, for four, for five, and so on, is
plotted, the resulting frequency-distribution is a skew, whether
the voting group is homogeneous or heterogeneous. In many ex-
periments I have not obtained a "normal" (or "chance") distri-
bution. Into the "infinite number of small causes" operative in
politics and in legislation a few big influences intrude; which
means that great interests always can be and always are manipu-
lated by the purposive will of man. The proposition means,
further, that for great historical calamities, like wars, a few
individuals are morally responsible. Statisticial sociology affords
no basis for historical fatalism.
Concerted volition working itself out in combined action is
a conscious and reasoned cooperation, a pluralistic behavior in
which like activities or complementary activities are correlated
and directed upon a useful achievement through conscious plan-
ning.
8. SOCIETY
The commingling and the pluralistic activities of individuals
who are conscious of themselves and of their behavior, and whose
consciousness is conversationalized, is association.
The consciousness of kind, becoming sensitive especially to
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 263
resemblances and differences that please or displease, converts
association into society, in the elementary sense of the word.
The associating unit -becomes the socius, loving and seeking ac-
quaintance, forming friendships and alliances with other socii like
himself, imitating them and setting examples for them, teaching
them and learning from them, and engaging with them in many
forms of common activity. Every human being is at once an
animal, a conscious individual mind, and a socius.
Association takes on the quality and the color of the prevailing
like-mindedness, which may be ideo-instinctive only, and charged
with suggestibility; or sympathetic, explosive with contagious
emotion and undisciplined imagination; or dogmatic, compact of
uncritically accepted beliefs; or reflective, wherein belief is dis-
placed by knowledge and by judgments based on evidence. The
concerted behavior of associates, therefore, may be a turbulent
"direct action" or an orderly procedure.
Reacting to circumstantial pressure, association generates a
social pressure, which increases with the multiplication of like
responses to common stimulations, as the pressure of a gas in-
creases with the number and the velocity of its molecules.
Reacting in its turn upon the pluralistic behaviors that have
created it, social pressure assembles and combines them in new
products, through which it distributes itself. The reacting indi-
viduals it constrains to type conformity.
Subjected to social pressure, pluralistic behavior of any kind
may become habitual. It may be imitated by one group from
another. It may be learned by one generation from another.
The accompanying ideas, histories, explanations, and instructions
are transmitted from group to group, and from one to another
generation in "talk." They become folklore. To the countless
cooperations and other pluralistic behaviors that "everybody"
participates in and that continue through generations, Sumner
gave the appropriate name "folkways," which immediately found
place in sociology and soon became a folk noun.
Folklore and folkways are comprehensive. There is no phase
of the struggle for existence that they do not enter into and more
or less affect.
In its original mode social pressure is not consciously willed.
264 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
It is not planned or intended. It is only an inevitably arising
product (or by-product) of pluralistic behavior.
But having, as a force devoid of intent, created folkways,
social pressure, elemental yet, converts folkways into mores and
themistes, which in turn distribute and apply social pressure and
through these reactions develop it into an intended, planned, and
consciously concerted pressure.
Mores are folkways that have been selectively affected by emo-
tion, belief, reflection, and conscious inculcation, and that to
some extent are socially enforced. Like primary folkways the
mores, chiefly by penalties of disapprobation and neglect, bear on
individuals as such and primarily with reference to their own well-
being ; but also they are thought of and are made to serve as media
of social pressure affecting fellow-beings. The sanctions that
enforce them are informal, but may include the use of force in
private vengeance.
Themistes are important mores, of religion, for example, and
above all, of justice. They are mores of concerted volition and
apply social pressure through boycotting, outlawry, and other
social dooms, including death. 1
In mores and themistes under the reactions of the social pres-
sure which they themselves gather and distribute, pluralistic
behavior is traditionalized.
Folkways of every kind, including mores and themistes, are the
most stable syntheses of pluralistic behavior ; yet they are not un-
changing. Under new and widening experience they suffer
attrition and are modified. 2 Instincts, and with them emotion,
1 See Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis.
3 Numerous ballotings on hypothetical candidates for admission to social
organizations have been taken at my request in colleges, merchants' asso-
ciations, and labor organizations. The grounds of exclusion are offenses
against morals and manners and certain personal matters. They are
named in a list of twenty-seven items made in advance and submitted
to the voters. The method of proceeding has been carefully explained
and controlled. More than 50 per cent of the voters blackball for noto-
rious cruelty, dishonesty, frequent drunkenness, gambling, sexual immo-
rality, and personal uncleanliness of body and dress. Less than 50 per
cent of the voters blackball for habitual borrowing of money from
acquaintances, ungrammatical speech, atheism, inability to write a cor-
rectly worded letter, questionable political affiliations, and shabby dress.
Notorious cruelty is the vice most objected to by both men and women.
Dishonesty ranks second in offensiveness to men and sixth to women.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 265
and imagination, which largely fills the vast realm between in-
stinct and reason, are reconditioned. The word means simply
that reflexes and higher processes subjected to new experiences
are in a degree or entirely detached from old stimuli and associated
with new ones. 1
From time to time also traditions are invaded and habits are
broken down by crisis. Pluralistic behavior then is scrutinized,
criticized, estimated, discussed. It is rationally deliberated.
Viewed broadly as reaction instead of strictly as reflection,
deliberation arises in the individual mind as a conflict of reactions
to stimulation. On the larger scale of social phenomena delibera-
tion arises when there are conflicting group or class reactions to
a common stimulation.
Therefore the probability of deliberation in a social population
increases with the multiplication of groups that react differently
to a common stimulation and with the approximation of the dif-
fering groups to numerical equality.
The members of a group in which pluralistic behavior is both
traditionalized and deliberated talk much about the group as a
group, and of their membership relation to it. They converse
about their common lot of danger or opportunity. They profess
to think about common interests, to care for group performance
and achievement, and to be sensitive to group prestige.
There is, accordingly, a complex of pluralistic behavior facts
which includes common situation and common stimulation,
similarity of reaction, a consciousness of kind, cooperation, tra-
dition, discussion, a proclaimed concern for the group, and sensi-
tiveness to its prestige. This complex is the social solidarity.
Otherwise named, the social solidarity is the social mind. This
name does not denote any other consciousness than that of indi-
Frequent drunkenness ranks second in offensiveness to women and thir-
teenth to men. More men than women object to personal uncleanliness
of body and dress.
1 A piece of meat in a dog's mouth causes a flow of saliva. A Russian
psychologist, Pawlow, tried the experiment of tinkling a bell when the
dog was fed. In course of time the tinkling of the bell without the
presence of the meat called forth the reflex and produced the salivation
(Robert Sessions Woodworth, Dynamic Psychology, p. 82). Hundreds
of similar experiments suggested by Pawlow's have demonstrated that
simple reflexes and elementary instincts can be reconditioned, practically
at will. This possibility is the basis of our power to learn.
266 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
vidual minds ; it does denote a consciousness of individual minds
similarly reacting, and reacting in reference to and upon one
another. The social mind is the phenomenon of individual minds
in communication with one another, acting upon one another, and
acting concurrently. The self-consciousness of a class or of a
group is the consciousness of each individual that there is a group,
that he is a member of the group, and that the other members of
the group are feeling toward it as he feels, and thinking of it as he
thinks.
The decision of the social mind is social purpose. The momen-
tum of the social solidarity is a consciously controlled social
pressure of almost irresistible power. It may constrain pluralistic
behavior and curtail individual liberty to any degree. The indi-
vidual himself it both constrains and disciplines. It makes the
many individuals upon whom it bears increasingly alike in nurture
and in habits. It produces conformity to a type.
The degree or intensity of social constraint, however, is not
determined by reasoned choice. It is governed by circumstantial
pressure, to which it is elastic. When we entered into the
European war many timid souls feared that we should lose our
liberties. They believed that we should become militaristic and
Prussianized. They were right in part but largely they were
wrong. The war restricted liberty, as the Civil War did. Peace
removes restraints as it did after 1865. And war is not the only
circumstantial pressure that limits liberty. Herbert Spencer was
right in his insistence upon the constraining effect of war, but he
did not adequately measure the importance of other circumstances
that also curtail freedom. To mention one of recent occurrence,
when infantile paralysis became epidemic in 1916, hundreds of
American towns and cities established local quarantines. Guards
stationed on highways stopped and searched automobiles, and
suspicious parties were turned back. Furthermore, the social
pressure through which circumstantial pressure constrains is not
only political and legal and brought to bear by government; it
appears and develops also as a spontaneous pluralistic action, un-
organized at first but tending to become organized. For example,
the modes that it has assumed in money-raising drives are numer-
ous and many of them are highly coercive.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 267
Society not only constrains its members, but also by disciplining
them and forcing them to conform to type it selects, conserving
some and rejecting others.
Biology unaided by sociology cannot show where, when, or how
the "better" may be the "fit" that survive. Darwin saw the prob-
lem and its solution, but he did not work it out. 1
Society favors individual units that have team-work value and
directs its adverse pressures upon units that obstruct or imperil
the collective struggle.
Tolerance, sympathy, and intelligence have team-work value in
a preeminent degree and, therefore, survival value in a preeminent
degree, in society.
Society, therefore, converts the "survival of the fit" into the
survival of the "better," if by the "fit" we mean individuals who
by organization and instinct are adapted to a situation as nature
has made it, and by "better" we mean individuals who by feeling
and intelligence are adapted to a situation modified and being
modified by combined effort guided by reflection.
How much the social community may achieve, transforming the
"fit" into the "better" and, in its pursuit of happiness, obtaining
substantial results, is a problem in the utilization of energy.
The strength, or potential energy, of a group is the product of
the number of individuals composing it, by various weighting
coefficients, among which are vigor, intelligence, and knowledge.
The working efficiency of a group of given strength is a func-
tion of certain arrangements which may have had an accidental
origin, which in part are products of a merely random experi-
mentation, but which in a large and always increasing measure
are brought about intentionally by superior individuals.
These arrangements are the social organization.
III. THE ORGANIZATION OF COLLECTIVE INTERESTS 2
9. PROTOCRACY
Not all individuals react to a given stimulation with equal
promptness, or completeness, or persistence. Therefore in every
1 The Descent of Man, chs. iii, iv, v.
2 Gustav Ratzenhofer and Albion W. Small, who has interpreted him
to the English-speaking public, have most fully discussed the general
aspects of "interests."
268 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
situation there are individuals that react more effectively than
others do. They reinforce the original stimulation and play a
major part in interstimulation. They initiate and take respon-
sibility. They lead : they conduct experiments in a more or less
systematic fashion.
Those individuals that react most effectively command the
situation and create new situations to which other individuals must
adjust themselves. Few or many, the alert and effective are a
protocracy: a dominating plurel from which ruling classes are
derived. Protocracy is always with us. We let George do it,
and George to a greater or less extent "does" us.
Where two or three in quick or daring reaction are gathered
together to "start something" a dance or a revolution, or any-
thing between there is protocracy, and it gathers power if the
enterprise succeeds; for then protocracy recognizes or ignores,
gives out invitations or denies them, opens or bars opportunity,
protects or attacks, rewards or punishes, and so surrounds itself
with beneficiaries and retainers through which it works its will.
Protocracy may owe authority and power to the majority
that it dominates, but it has obtained them and it holds them
by psychological ascendancy. 1 The majority may withdraw au-
thority and power from a protocracy that it has trusted, but only
if another and rival protocracy arises and becomes ascendant.
Domination may amount to rule or it may not get beyond
leadership and direction.
Rule may be imposed and maintained by force, or by inspiring
fear, or through purchase, bribery, or bestowal of favors. The
protocracy has advanced knowledge of opportunities, and is in a
position to dispense offices and perquisites. If it does not actually
rule, it dominates by winning the uncoerced and unbought ap-
proval of the mass, often through a manifestation of ability,
integrity, or beneficent purpose. The methods of minority domi-
nation are commonly found in combination, but the proportions
are variable.
The concentration of controlling power in society is a function
(in the mathematician's sense of the word) of the behavioristic
'We owe to Edward Alsworth Ross the significant technical connota-
tions of this word in sociology.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 269
solidarity. The more homogeneous the behavior and the greater
the like-mindedness, the broader is the basis of protocratic domi-
nation and the less autocratic is its authority.
The degree of domination and the extent and the rigor of con-
trol are functions of circumstantial pressure.
10. THE ORGANIZATION OF RELATIONS
The more or less definite arrangements of position and of
activity into which individuals fall in the collective struggle for
existence are shaped at first by a hit-or-miss trial of possibilities
that amounts to little more than a haphazard "fitting in." In
the long run they are shaped by a thought-out trial and correction
proposed and systematized by protocratic minorities. Ultimately,
after much experimenting and with frequent reconsideration, they
are approved by the social mind expressing its will through major-
ities. So arising and established, arrangements of individual
position and of individual activity are a mechanism through which
social reactions work aggressively, defensively, productively, and
with controlling incidence.
Described concretely, the social mechanism is a social com-
position, a product of integration; and a social constitution, a
product of differentiation.
The smallest and simplest arrangement of individuals by posi-
tion is the "bunch." It may be a genetic product, its units having
been born into proximity, or it may be a casual assemblage. A
relatively large bunch or a cluster of bunches, especially if identi-
fied with a place or region, is a group.
The smallest and simplest arrangement by activity of individuals
that go or work or play together is the "gang." It is a product of
like reaction by nervous mechanisms that are alike in a specific (or
differential) way. They have the same specific aptitude or
interest.
They are a "gang," however, only if, reacting to a common
stimulation or necessity, they "carry on" together.
Whether assembled or scattered, going in gangs or not, indi-
viduals of like aptitude and interest and therefore functioning in
like fashion are a class. As an observed fact, a class is usually
made up of both gangs and isolated individuals.
270 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
In the creation of bunch or gang, of group or class, alert leader-
ship plays an essential part. In every group and in every class
there is a dominating protocracy.
By combination and recombination groups become the social
composition.
Sex mating and the birth of children create families. Numer-
ous families hold or drift together in residential relations ; others
drift apart. Those that hold together compose the horde (of
savage men) or the village (of civilized men). Hordes combine
in tribes, and tribes in tribal federations : the ethnic series. Vil-
lages grow into towns, and towns into cities. Towns or cities
compose provinces, departments, or commonwealths, and com-
monwealths hold together in federal nations : the demotic series.
Ethnic societies are genetic aggregations. Either a sacred
power or "mana" manifest in totem and regarded in taboo or a
real or a fictitious blood kinship is their chief social bond. They
are otherwise known as tribal societies and they include all com-
munities of uncivilized races which maintain a tribal organization.
They are of two general types, namely, the matronymic, or matri-
linear, in which names and relationships are traced in the mother-
line, and the patronymic, or patrilinear, in which names and
relationships are traced in the father-line. Demotic societies,
otherwise known as civil societies, are products in some degree of
genetic aggregation, but they are largely congregate associations.
They are groups of individuals that are bound together by habitual
intercourse, mutual interests, and cooperation. They emphasize
their mental and moral resemblance and give little heed to origins
or to genetic relationships.
The evolution of the social composition has been a double
process. As small groups have combined into larger ones, they
also have subdivided into smaller ones. The unit of composition
has become both smaller and more definite.
When small hordes combined to form tribes, they commonly
at the same time subdivided into polyandrian families. When
tribes, in their turn, banded together in confederations, the poly-
andrian household underwent changes which converted it into the
patriarchal kindred or compound family. Later on, when federa-
tions of tribes became the political state, the compound family
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 271
broke up into single families, each consisting of father and mother
and their immediate children, but no longer including, as in the
patriarchal kindred, married children and grandchildren. Each
family remained, however, an industrial unit, parents and children
earning livelihood together, and each in a large proportion of
states remained legally indissoluble.
Now, when political nations are combining into world-empires,
the single family, like its predecessors, has ceased to be an
industrial unit, and has nearly everywhere become legally dis-
soluble. More and more it depends for its integrity on unforced
personal choice. Human society is becoming humanity, and its
unit is no longer the legally indissoluble family but is the freely
choosing individual.
At every step in this long developmental process, three things
have happened. The dominant social group has entered as a com-
ponent into a larger social grouping. The smallest social group
has subdivided, thereby establishing a new social unit. The inter-
mediate social groups, losing their identity, have tended to atrophy
and in many instances have disappeared.
At every step in the evolution protocratic example or proposal
has incited or restrained and protocratic intelligence has directed.
Gangs and classes by multiplication and increasing interde-
pendence following upon increasing specialization become the
social constitution, a scheme of working or otherwise functioning
arrangements which makes a cross-classification with the resi-
dential arrangements of the social composition. Familiar exam-
ples of working arrangements become too dignified to be called
"gangs," except for purposes of scientific analysis (although that
is what in strict scientific analysis they are) and making number-
less cross-classifications with residential groupings are, business
partnerships and corporations, political parties, churches, philan-
thropic societies, schools, universities, and scientific associations,
social clubs, and societies for recreation and pleasure.
Each of these associations is obliged to exchange services or
products with others. It could not otherwise exist. The function-
ing of all of them in their several ways is the social (including the
economic) division of labor. Interdependence increases with
every new specialization in skill and in occupation. Because of
272 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
their interdependence they are accurately described as constituent
societies.
Inasmuch as the constituent society has a defined object in
view it is purposive in character. Its members are supposed to be
aware of its object and to put forth effort for its attainment.
Purposive grouping, therefore, may be described as functional
association, and the mutual aid of purposive associations is not
limited to a mere increase of mass and power, as is the mutual aid
of component society. It is effected also through an advantageous
division of labor.
Psychologically the social constitution is an almost precise
opposite of the social composition. Component societies require
mental and moral like-mindedness, but within the limits of a
common morality there may be no insistence upon any one point
of similarity as long as the aggregate of resemblances remains
large and varied. Subject to these conditions, the differences
among the members of a component society may be of any imagi-
nable kind. The social constitution, on the contrary, is an alli-
ance, within each simple association, of individuals who in respect
of the purpose of the association must be mentally and morally
alike, but who in all other respects may be unlike ; supplemented,
in the relations of associations to one another and to integral
society, by toleration and by correlation of the unlike.
As the social constitution develops, the membership of con-
stituent societies falls into hierarchical arrangements, thereby
creating new complexities. Priests, bishops, archbishops, and
cardinals in the church ; teachers, principals, and superintendents
in the schools, are examples. In more technical words, through-
out the social constitution there may be observed superordination
(superiority of rank), coordination (equality of rank), and
subordination (inferiority of rank). The one word "coordina-
tion" is commonly used to designate the phenomena of subordina-
tion, coordination and superordination, in their totality.
Correlations and coordinations are products of relations of
units to one another and of modes of activity that are unchanging,
or nearly so. They are static phenomena of structure. But the
activities of social as of plant or animal units are not without
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 273
exception or always unchanging. There are adjustments and
adaptations in crises as well as in tranquil circumstances.
Activities of adaptation and of adjustment involve points of
contact (the neurons ramifying in a bit of muscle are a good
example) and actual contact. They involve lines of communica-
tion and arteries of transmission, and actual communications and
transmissions. They involve central or focal points of accumula-
tion and distribution, and actual centralizings and decentralizings,
storings, and distributions of materials and energies.
Corresponding to the morphological aspect of arrangements is
the functional aspect. Through accumulation and distribution,
through correlation and coordination, activities go on in an or-
derly and measured way. Even the increase and the decrease
of intensity, the enlargement or the diminution of volume, the
swifter or the slower rate, are facts of order and measure ; they
are facts of control.
When spontaneously formed relations and thought-out arrange-
ments devised by protocracy have become so well established that
they challenge the attention of all members of the community,
they become subjects of common discussion and of general ap-
proval or disapproval. Subjected then to analysis and criticism,
and finally by concurrent opinion pronounced good, evil, or doubt-
ful, they are thenceforth tolerated and their development is en-
couraged, or they are discouraged or even stamped out by a
concerted action more general than that which created them.
Described abstractly, therefore, the social mechanism is a
correlation and a coordination of socially reacting units.
Both as correlation and as coordination the social composition
and the social constitution develop with increasing necessity for
collective action. Under this necessity organization becomes more
extended and more hierarchical.
Yet mere intensity of the struggle for existence does not develop
complexity of organization as long as the struggle can be carried
on by individual effort or by small independent groups. Perhaps
nowhere in the world is the life of a population subsisting by agri-
culture harder than in China, yet the agricultural population there
is relatively unorganized. By individual effort, unremitting and
274 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
intense, the individual applying himself to labor on the land has
been able to wrest from it a meager living.
Any social group, component or constituent, may be a privileged
and closed group, or a selectively open group, or an indiscrimi-
nately open group.
Eligibility to membership in a privileged and closed group is
governed by consideration of source. Descent from members of
the group in a former generation is one of the oldest and best-
known requirements. Membership in an antecedent group or
category may be the requirement: an example from modern
industry is the closed-shop requirement of membership in an
orthodox labor union.
Eligibility to membership in the selectively open group is
determined by the functioning value of members individually for
the functioning of the group collectively.
In the indiscriminately open group there are no eligibility tests.
Increasing circumstantial pressure substitutes closed or select-
ive groups for indiscriminately open groups ; a phenomenon which
always appears during war, in periods of religious enthusiasm,
and in times of industrial strife.
The social organization may become flexible while developing
strength and stability. When circumstantial pressure is not more
intense than it is in modern times in days of peace, the individual
can go freely from occupation to occupation. He can dissolve a
partnership and enter into another. He can be a director in one
and another corporation this year and in entirely different ones
next year. He can move freely from township to township, from
city to city, and from state to state. He can leave his church or
his political party at will.
Yet the social constitution does not suffer. The organization
that loses certain individuals from its membership gains others in
their place. Like organs of the living body, each is composed of
changing units, yet each maintains its integrity as a whole and per-
forms its function without interruption.
From this plasticity and mobility two great advantages arise.
Sooner or later individuals find the place where their maximum
efficiency as contributors to the social well-being is realized. And
at all times an increase of working force can be secured at any
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 275
point in the social system where the demand is exceptionally great,
by withdrawing units from points where the demand is for the
time being relatively small.
ii. THE ORGANIZATION OF ACTION
Woodworth's clarifying generalization that all the phenomena
of the individual mind may be assigned to one or the other of the
two categories, "mechanisms" and "drives," 1 is applicable also in
the psychology of society. The organization of social relations is
a mechanism, as has been shown. The organization of action is
a correlation and coordination of drives, and the product is a
procedure. Collective struggle tends to become an orderly pro-
cedure.
Wherever behavioristic groups are found, collective struggles
are seen to fall into one or the other of two series of drives. There
are conflicts of group with group, inter-group conflicts ; and within
each group there are conflicts of faction with faction, intra-group
conflicts.
Both component and composite groups hordes, tribes, towns,
and nations contend with one another for possession and control
of advantageous regions. From the moment that increasing popu-
lations begin to press upon food-producing resources, there is a
struggle for dominion and subsistence. Hungry populations
throw -off colonies, which go forth as invaders, to conquer ; the
invaded populations resist.
The major conflicts of inter-group struggle are foreign wars,
and these extend and consolidate the social composition. Success-
ful invaders, having conquered, annex lands and populations.
Threatened communities, especially if of one blood and speech,
combine by federation.
In peace and in war, gangs, including protocracies, contend
with one another for ascendancy and revenue. Under circum-
stantial pressure gangs of like kind and like function tend to con-
solidate, and thereby to become a class. In the struggle with
powers of earth and sky for safety and food, religious secret soci-
eties become a priesthood. In war, fraternities of braves become
an army and a military class.
1 Dynamic Psychology.
276 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
With the rise of these two classes a succession of class struggles
begins. The shallowness of the Marxian philosophy of history is
in nothing more concretely shown that in its naive assumption of
the class struggle, as if the clash between capitalist and proletarian
were a phenomenon unique. The first class conflict is between
army and priesthood, and the army wins. In exchange for relig-
ious sanction military adventurers then 'let in" the priesthood and
create, by the combination, a landlord class to exploit free tenants
and serfs. Free tenants (some of them) become a merchant class,
and the next class struggle is between it and the landlords. The
merchants win, and in exchange for social recognition "let in" the
landlords. This new consolidation creates the capitalist class, to
make profits by organizing and employing the labor of emanci-
pated serfs.
The major intra-group conflicts, accordingly, are revolutions.
Conflicts among groups, including national groups, and con-
flicts between classes are the major phenomena of history.
In the drives of war and revolution protocratic rule broadens
into sovereignty: "the dominant human power, individual or
pluralistic, in a politically organized and politically independent
population." 1 Sovereignty is never under any circumstances the
absolute power to compel obedience babbled of in political meta-
physics. It is finite and conditioned. It is not even an indivisible
unit of power ; it is a composition of forces. The forces are vari-
able and their composition is variable.
A group in which protocratic rule has become sovereignty, and
which is independent to the extent that it is not subject .to the
sovereignty of any other group, is a state. Outside of the meta-
physical mind the state is never an abstraction. It is a politically
organized population, and altogether concrete.
Conflict between or among petty sovereignties creates the local
state ; conflict between or among local states creates the regional
state ; conflict between or among regional states creates the nation ;
conflict between or among nations creates the empire.
The local state is supreme until the regional state supersedes it.
The regional state is supreme until the nation supersedes it. The
nation is supreme until the empire supersedes it.
1 Giddings, The Responsible State, p. 50.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 277
Individuals are not absolved from responsibility to the small
component groups to which they have belonged when they become
responsible also to large groups of which they are made members
through social integration; but responsibility to a large group
which, as a mutual benefit association, is relatively effective and
important, tends to override responsibility to its component lesser
groups and to constituent societies.
Nevertheless, individuals do not in a majority of instances give
highest allegiance to the largest organization that they might help
to form, and which may be thought of as in the making. There is,
therefore, a major number of instances of highest allegiance to the
largest existing aggregate. At the present time the largest existing
aggregates are nations, and more individuals give highest allegi-
ance to the nation than give it to the commonwealth, the province,
the city, the village, or the family, or to any hereditary caste or
rank, or to any social class, or than are yet prepared to give it to a
league of nations.
Sovereignty may be concentrated in an individual, a monarch,
or a dictator, or in a lesser degree concentrated in a class or in an
amorphous mass or majority, or it may be diffused throughout a
democracy. The degree of concentration is a function of the
social like-mindedness, more or less, and of the circumstantial
pressure.
The supreme will of a state (in whatever mode of sovereignty
manifested) expresses itself and achieves its end in various ways,
but chiefly through government, which may be defined as the
requisition, direction, and organization of obedience. It is the
most important and, all in all, most systematically ordered
procedure known to society.
The sovereign may govern directly or may delegate the function
of governing to authorized ministers or agents. Direct govern-
ment by the sovereign is necessarily an absolute rule. Indirect or
delegated government may be an absolute or a limited rule. Limi-
tations, however carefully embodied in written constitutions, are
actually observed only in those states whose populations are so
far like-minded that even their governmental activities are in
reality more like forms of spontaneous cooperation than like an
overruling direction. The real limitations are certain well-stabi-
278 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
lized popular habits. Minorities bow to the will of a majority,
but in the understanding and on condition that they have liberty
by speech, publication, meeting, and all other peaceful and reason-
able ways of campaigning to increase their numbers and, if pos-
sible, become majorities.
The range and severity of government are determined by cir-
cumstantial pressure.
Sovereign power may act fitfully, unexpectedly, or at random;
or it may act methodically, after a declaration of purpose and
adhering to promulgated rules. Sovereign purpose formulated,
promulgated, and enforced is law, and governmental action within
the bounds of law is "due process of law."
Law is a form and a content. A large part of the content of
law is a body of rights. In large measure the basic substance of
legal (or positive ) rights is drawn from the "natural rights" of the
mores. 1
A further content of law is a more or less consistent and organ-
ized group of policies, becoming, as time goes on, a series of poli-
cies intended to assure and to further collective achievement.
First in time and in importance are policies of growth and
expansion, and of safeguarding against enemy attack or other
immediate calamity. When formulated and put into execution by
an absolute monarch bent upon perpetuating and extending the
rule of a dynasty or by an adventurer-despot or despotic group,
these policies become militarism, a rationalistic and quite cold-
blooded attempt to organize collective power for aggressive action
and to apply aggressive action relentlessly to the task of subjuga-
tion. Republics have to wage wars, but no republic, so called
or described by any one using words responsibly, has ever been
militaristic.
Mankind has not been able to enjoy peace by wishing it, ap-
proving it, or even by willing it or planning it.
The rise and the decline of militarism conform to the laws of
increasing and of diminishing return. For a time it may bring
in more than it costs; but a point is reached beyond whic'i the
costs increase faster than the returns. In the rivalry of nations
for territory, the lands available for annexation by any one of
1 See Giddings, ibid., ch. iii.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 279
them become fewer in number and more difficult to obtain. The
frontier is extended, and its defense becomes more difficult and
more costly. The maintenance of armies of increasing size entails
a relative diminution of the industrial population available to sup-
port them. Nations vie with one another in perfecting the en-
ginery of war, and the cost of all military operations is thereby
increased. 1
Observe, however, that this argument applies only to militarism,
a rationalistic phenomenon. It does not hold true without quali-
fication of war merely as war. As individuals fight in sheer rage,
or in scorn of one another, or in resent of insult, so nations also
fight in fear and in hatred, in insolent contempt of one another,
and in vindication of their honor. Utilitarian considerations do
not apply to these tempests of wrath.
Successful war prepares the way for exploitation and stimulates
it. The annexation of territory, the creation of colonies, and the
establishment of dependencies bring lands and peoples hitherto
foreign into direct relations with the conquering nation. Exclusive
or preferential trade relations are established. Conquered people
may be enslaved, or compelled to toil as serfs, or as a nominally
free labor force be kept under strict subjection by economic or
other means.
Like militarism, exploitation is governed by the laws of increas-
ing and diminishing return. A point is found beyond which
slavery or any mode of enforced labor becomes unprofitable in
competition with free labor, and beyond which exclusiveness and
privilege in commercial relations provoke an increasingly costly
antagonism. Moreover, exploitive industry and commerce tend
to exhaust natural resources, and they are consistent with rela-
tively crude economic methods only.
In the most advanced modern civilization there is a partial
superseding of policies, both of subjugation and of exploitation, by
policies of assistance. Strong peoples extend educational advan-
tages, relief of acute distress, and to some extent economic oppor-
tunity to backward races and to dependent peoples. Great Britain
has performed this task and rendered this service on a vast scale
1 Compare William Graham Sumner, War and Other Essays and Earth
Plunger and Other Essays.
280 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
and with a patience, common sense, and success that the world,
now envious, will one day recognize. America has fed a starving
Europe, and cared for her sick and injured, and helped to restore
her devastated areas.
Miscellaneous in character and of slow growth are policies of
conservation, development, and efficiency to prevent future want
or failure. Among these, policies of conservation of material
resources and of accumulation of material goods are fundamental.
They appear in a small way at the dawn of civilization in conser-
vation of water supply, in drainage and irrigation, but they de-
velop slowly and it is only in great modern nations and empires
that they are systematically organized. Yet more slowly grow
policies of conservation and efficiency of human resources and for
the prosperity of the population. These comprise policies of
sanitation, of education, and of economy, including (a) policies
primarily for property-owning classes, (&) policies primarily for
service-rendering classes, (c) policies primarily for the poor, the
unsuccessful, the relatively weak, and the unfortunate.
The execution of these policies may be undertaken by govern-
ment or committed to - private agencies subject to conditions and
limitations fixed by law.
It comes to pass, therefore, that governments and private
organizations in a measure duplicate each other's functions. The
actual distribution of functions between public and private agen-
cies is a varying one. It changes with changing circumstances,
that is to say, with the degree of like-mindedness and with circum-
stantial pressure.
Not only security and resources but also the composition of the
community, the equalities of its individual units, and their relations
to one another, to the several minor groups to which they belong,
and to the integral society, are factors of effectiveness. To con-
trol these and to improve them, policies of selection, of unification
and standardization, of liberty, and of equality are devised and
tried.
Policies of unification and standardization include attempts to
standardize and unify language, religion, behavior, opinion, com-
munication, education, business, law, politics. They aim to per-
fect the behavioristic solidarity of the group. Assimilation is
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 281
watched with concern. Laws are enacted or edicts are promul-
gated to hasten on the change. One language must be spoken
throughout the community. One religious faith must be embraced
by all. One consistent economic policy must be followed. One
standard of conduct and of legality must be established for all
citizens. Within the voluntary organization, a religious denomi-
nation, for example, or a trade union or a political party, an at-
tempt is made to persuade or to compel all members to believe the
same thing and to conduct themselves in like manner. A creed,
a body of rules, or a platform is imposed. An orthodoxy or regu-
larity is insisted upon as a primary obligation.
The extent to which these policies are pushed is determined by
circumstantial pressure.
Policies of liberty are reactions against the restraints, amount-
ing often to intolerable coercion, of excessive unification. They
aim at a toleration of variety, of individual initiative, of freedom
of thought, speech, and conduct. They take legal form in bills of
rights and constitutional guaranties of liberty.
Policies of equality are reactions against the abuse of liberty
by men and parties that take advantage of their freedom to curtail
the opportunities of their fellows and to exploit them. They aim
to establish an equality of liberty and, as far as possible, of oppor-
tunity. They include the establishment of political equality
through universal suffrage, equal standing before the law, the
abolition of state-created privileges in the realm of economic
interests, equality of educational opportunity, and measures for
the protection of the weak, particularly women and children, in
the economic struggle.
Not only do policies of security, conservation, selection, and
standardization start reactions toward liberty, and policies of
liberty provoke reactions toward equality; but also the process
reverses: experiments in equality provoke reactions toward lib-
erty, and experiments in liberty provoke reactions toward unifica-
tion and selection.
The static state of perfect adjustment and consequent equi-
librium is unattainable because of an inherent contradiction be-
tween personal or subjective equality and objective or social
equality. The conditions that tend to create subjective inequality
282 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
tend to establish objective equality, and, conversely, the creation
of objective equality tends to increase subjective inequality.
Therefore social evolution, like organic evolution, creates increas-
ing inequality of personality. At the same time, however, it
creates increasingly large classes of individuals that as persons are
substantially equal within the same class.
"Social justice," as the term is popularly understood, comprises
an equalization of both rights and opportunities. Justice in a
larger sense of the word comprises all adjustments of social fac-
tors: individuals' interests, relations and actions to one another
and to the social whole. It includes, as those who have defined it
in the main agree, the definition and enforcement of rights, the
redress of injuries, the maintenance of sanctions, the equalization
of rights and opportunities, the adjustment of rewards to per-
formances; but it includes also much more and the "more" is
immeasurably delicate and difficult. It consists in unceasing read-
justment.
Readjustment is made necessary by ceaseless changings of cir-
cumstance and by continuing change in demotic composition and
in pluralistic behavior. The social population fluctuates about a
kind or type. Behavior fluctuates about a mode or norm. The
range of variation at one time is narrow; at another time it is
wide.
Policies of selection, unification, and equilibration recognize
and sanction modalities. Policies of liberty recognize and sanc-
tion variation. Readjustments change the range of permissible
variation.
Therefore justice in its highest and most delicate development
is a ceaselessly changing adjustment of equalities and modalities
to immunities and liberties, and of immunities and liberties to
modalities and equalities.
No arrangement of finite affairs is finally and forever just.
Through its policies and its readjustments of policy organized
society in a measure controls variation about its own modes. It
exercises self-control.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 283
12. ORGANIZED SOCIETY
The reaction of social organization upon the interplay of like-
and unlike-mindedness and upon the consciousness of kind re-
shapes the social mind, as Cooley * has contended.
The process is experimental, and highly concrete. Unorganized
pluralistic reactions are simple and direct in form. Human energy
explodes in trial and error. But turmoil and riot, like the hit-or-
miss assaults of an untrained fighter, are wasteful expenditures.
If, however, the flow of energy keeps up, it finds points of low
resistance and begins to follow channels that branch and cross.
Social organization, like the individual nervous system, correlates
and coordinates these branchings and crossings, and more and
more diverts energy into them. Thereby it transforms much
direct and simple action into indirect and complex action.
The transformation normally goes so far that direct pluralistic
action becomes subordinate to indirect action, as instinct in the
individual mind normally becomes subordinate to reason. General
strikes and revolutionary violence give way to constructive policies
and to due process of law. Direct action is primitive, and un-
subordinated direct action is uncivilized.
Yet this evolution can begin and continue only if there is direct
action (crude pluralistic reaction to stimulus) to transform; and
only if the inequalities and diversities of reaction that are neces-
sary for differentiation, and so for any organization whatsoever,
are normally subject to a dominating like-mindedness in matters
of major importance. This proposition is perhaps less obtrusively
true of the economic division of labor that Adam Smith ex-
pounded than it is of the "division of social labor" that Durk-
heim 2 expounded ; but it is demonstrably true of both.
Adam Smith apparently never saw the true relation of The
Wealth of Nations to The Theory of Moral Sentiments, although
he was looking directly at it all his days. When in The Wealth of
Nations he had demonstrated that an increase of wealth is made
possible by division of labor, that the division of labor is limited
by the extent of the market, and that extent of the market is
extent of demand, he did not then by resolving extended demand
1 Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organisation.
'Emile Durkheim, De la Division du Travail social.
284 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
into pluralistic demand discover its identity with like-mindedness,
of which, without so naming it, he had discoursed in The Theory
of Moral Sentiments. Therefore he did not appreciate, he prob-
ably did not quite see, the broad social fact that the differentiation
of productive effort is limited by the extent of like-mindedness in
respect of consumption.
As for the larger division of social labor, a population that is
not prevailingly like-minded is collectively ineffective (and usually
chaotic) or it is ruled and organized by the strong arm. Only like-
minded communities are capable of democratic self-government,
and only the like-mindedness that is enlightened and deliberative
can create and maintain a liberal democracy. Proof is superabun-
dant. Mexico is the great modern example. Without a meeting
of minds on large and fundamental issues Mexico submitted to
order and made material progress under the despotism of Diaz,
only to fall into a chaos of conspiracies when despotic rule ended.
As a mechanism organized society is good or bad. A good
machine is coherent and elastic to pressure. An organic machine
namely, a plant, an animal, or a man is also adaptable to crisis
or change. Man has succeeded in making machines adaptable in
a small way; the clock with a pendulum, the turbine and the
steam engine equipped with automatic cut-off to control the feed
of water or of steam, are familiar examples ; but he has not yet
made a machine comparable in adaptability to a living organism
or to a society. Adaptability turns upon the variability of units ;
cohesion upon the typicalness, uniformity, or standardization of
units. Anarchism, or lawless individualism, is excessive variabil-
ity and non-cohesion. Socialism is excessive standardization and
deficient adaptability. Individualism is theoretically a working
combination of enough like-mindedness for collective effectiveness*
with enough unlike-mindedness for organization and progress.
Theoretically, therefore, individualism at its best is the best social
system because, more adequately than any other, it combines
cohesion, elasticity, and variability ; but individualism at its worst
may be as bad as anarchism which is anti-social. Socialism is a
revolt against anti-social individualism. Socialistic policies may
be expedient as restraints of anti-social conduct and to supplement
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 285
private cooperation ; but on the whole and in the long run they are
justified only to the extent that they develop a social individualism.
IV. THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF ORGANIZED ENDEAVOR
13. AMELIORATION
The immediate business of organized endeavor is to mitigate
the struggle for existence in a large way and effectively and to
make life worth while. Its ulterior business and supreme function
are to develop human personality.
Organized endeavor mitigates the struggle for existence by
accumulating knowledge, amassing capital, and conducting gov-
ernment. By means of these activities and achievements life is
made relatively secure, comfortable, and satisfying.
The accumulation of knowledge has been the work of unnum-
bered generations tirelessly groping and exploring through ages
measured presumably by millions rather than by thousands of
years, as the world once thought. No argument is necessary to
prove that without society and organized endeavor the achieve-
ment of knowledge would have been impossible. Folkways, folk-
lore, and tradition have been necessary. Education has been
necessary. Organized investigation, writing, printing, libraries,
and laboratories have been necessary.
Without society the capital acquired by man could not have
exceeded the bees' store of honey, the beavers' dam, the apes' club,
the savages' chipped flint. There could have been no agriculture,
no domesticated animals, no exchangeable goods, and no money.
Without organized endeavor there could have been no mechan-
isms, no boats, no roads, no mines, no mills, no banks.
Without multiple and differentiated societies and organized
endeavor on a big scale there could have been no governments;
for among them all there is not one that is not a product of foreign
wars. and domestic revolutions.
Knowledge, capital, and government are necessary for security
against armed enemies, against tempest and flood and fire, against
pestilence, against famine and pitiless cold. They are necessary
to establish equity by balancing equality against liberty. They are
286 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
necessary to expand and to clarify thought and to diminish fear. 1
Organized endeavor has achieved these things ; it has progres-
sively ameliorated the human lot.
14. MUTATION AND VARIATION
Variant organisms are relatively unstable: they are relatively
frail, and they perish more easily than do their kindred competi-
tors that more closely conform to type. All depends, therefore, on
the severity of the struggle. Whatever mitigates the struggle
multiplies the survival chances of variants that may develop a high
degree of individuality. It is because the social organization of
endeavor has ameliorated the life of man that the human race is
above all other species variable and adaptable ; capable of extraor-
dinary differentiation of aptitude and able to meet crises with
amazing skill. This is not the result of any physical transmission
of acquired traits. It is, as far as we can see, altogether a conse-
quence of the social mitigation of natural selection. Protected and
sustained by society, frail and unstable individuals, cranks and
oddities, crooks and martyrs, idiots and geniuses, who would
miserably perish in a "state of nature," survive and pass on their
qualities in Mendelian distributions. The problem of disposing
of the crooks and the idiots, or of enduring them, is the price we
have to pay for the geniuses and their contributions to our joy.
The study of human variation in its sociological aspect is a
statistical investigation.
There is a range of structural and physiological adequacy be-
tween extremes of defect or deformity and of completeness or
balance. Vitality as measured by energy, health, fecundity, and
longevity ranges from relatively low to relatively high extremes.
Mentality ranges from idiocy to genius, and character from de-
pravity to magnanimity.
Hardship and a standardizing social pressure, elastic to an
increasing circumstantial pressure, shorten all these ranges. Ame-
lioration and increasing freedom (intellectual, moral, and politi-
cal) lengthen them.
Organized endeavor can always shorten these ranges, and the
1 Lester Frank Ward's Dynamic Sociology remains the most compre-
hensive study of this field.
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 287
temptation to do so is great because stupidity and wickedness
annoy us and often anger us, an easy thing to do, while the value
of genius we can neither see nor weigh unless we can think (not
everybody can) and will take the trouble to think (most of us
won't) . Probably in no other enterprise has human wisdom made
so sorry an exhibition of itself as in its attempts to standardize
thought and morals.
15. SOCIALIZATION
Remembering that with conscious intent and by unconsciously
exerted pressure society eliminates much human material that
proves to be unfit for social life, we clarify the idea of socializa-
tion : a phenomenon of discipline and education, brought to bear
upon the socially possible. Socialization is the opposite of muta-
tion and supplementary variation. It is an aggregate of acquisi-
tions, in distinction from native traits. It cannot be transmitted
through heredity, but by teaching it can be handed on with com-
pounding interest from generation to generation.
The socialized members of organized society "play the game" ;
the non-socialized survivors from savagery and interlopers from
barbarism do not. The socialized are tolerant and regardful of
the rights (natural and legal) of their fellowmen; they are by
habit helpful; they value and observe manners; and they can
cooperate.
The zero point of socialization is criminality, that degree of
departure from prevailing and approved behavior which the com-
munity by process of law and with relative severity punishes.
If the range of socialization from zero up be divided into four
parts or grade quarters, we get the following distribution of habits
and persons:
In the lowest grade quarter are the predatory, aggressors upon
person and property, law-breakers.
In the second grade quarter (counting from the lowest up) are
the intentionally or willingly dependent, wholly or in part; the
self-seeking, intent on getting more than they give; the incon-
siderate and irresponsible.
In the third grade quarter are the dependable, the helpful, the
considerate, and the responsible, who are also type-conforming,
conventional, uninventive, and non-innovating.
288 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
In the fourth and highest quarter are the dependable and the
helpful who are mindful of the value of social usage but are also
independent in thought, courageous, willing to experiment, but
cautiously, and with full responsibility for results.
This distribution into quarters is artificial, but it makes obser-
vation and recording possible. With competent assistance I have
obtained observations of 1,888 individuals comprised in 428
families and all personally known by the observers. The distri-
bution by socialization is :
Grade Quarter Number of Individuals
I 52
II 317
III 1044
IV 475
16. INDIVIDUATION
Original nature (inherited traits, variations) and acquired
nature (habits, socialization) are mingled, perhaps blended, in
individuation.
Individuation begins in the chromatin and proceeds through
Mendelian combinations of units. Probably no individual is an
exact duplicate of another, and inasmuch as the life-circumstances
of each living body are different in a great or a small degree from
those of every other body, life would soon cease if there were no
organic variability. And inasmuch as the life-circumstances of
each individual are in a degree peculiar (in other words, the
stimuli that play upon each individual are in a degree peculiar),
the behavior of each individual is differential. Among these
stimuli in the experience of the human race are social influences
and among the reactions are socialization. So by instinct in like
measure with lower animals and by habit in amazing measure
surpassing the experience of any other species, mankind is in-
dividuated.
The range of individuation is upward from a zero point at
instinct little above the animal level. Dividing it into grade
quarters we get the following distribution of original and acquired
traits, and of persons :
PLURALISTIC BEHAVIOR 289
In the lowest quarter : instincts strong and not much controlled ;
sympathy deficient or narrow in range; cruel (when cruelty is
manifested) in an unfeeling and brutal rather than in a deliberate
and ingenious way ; tastes low and crude ; ideas elementary, primi-
tive, and limited in number and in range.
In the second quarter (counting from the lowest up) : motor
impulses variable in strength; instincts infused with abundant
emotion, variable from grave to gay ; sympathy quick but super-
ficial and unstable ; imaginative but without sufficient intellectual
power to be creative in literature or in art beyond the simpler
products; without strong convictions or a controlling sense of
responsibility; ideas relatively abundant and varied but only
loosely organized.
In the third quarter : motor impulses of any degree of strength
from weak to violent ; instincts and passions strong, but controlled
by convictions ; emotion strong, blended with beliefs, and partisan ;
convictions tenacious, and a dominant factor in mental processes
'and in behavior; may be ruthless and cruel under influence of
fanaticism; intolerant of doubt, impatient of hesitation, scornful
of weakness.
In the fourth and highest quarter: motor impulses, instincts,
and passions of any degree from weak to very strong ; emotions
abundant and varied, may or may not be well controlled; beliefs
subject to review and modification; ideas abundant and organized ;
open-minded, of investigating turn, insistent upon .evidence;
judicially critical rather than fault-finding or denunciatory; may
make discoveries ; may be inventive or creative.
With assistance I have obtained observations of 1,536 indi-
viduals comprised in 294 families and personally known by the
observers. The distribution by individuation is : *
Grade Quarter Number of Individuals
I 82
II 334
III 763
IV 357
*Cf. Giddings, "A Provisional Distribution of the Population of the
United States into Psychological Classes," The Psychological Review, Vol.
VIII, No. 4, July, 1901.
2QO STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
In the degree that a human being is individuated he has per-
sonality, he is a person.
A person is unique but also social. In a million ways like other
persons, he is in many ways unlike any other that lives or that
ever has lived. Conforming to type in much, he also significantly
varies from type, and variability within race limits there must be,
if personality is to develop. Furthermore, the variant must sur-
vive and hand on his race. In this necessity lie all the possibilities
of achievement and of tragedy.
CHAPTER XVI
FURTHER INQUIRIES OF SOCIOLOGY
IN the same large sense in which economics is the science of the
production and distribution of wealth, for man, sociology is the
science of the production and distribution of adequacy, of man
and in man. Economics tells us Bow, as far as it is possible, we
can get the things that we desire to have; sociology tells us how,
as far as it is possible, we can become what we desire to be. It
tells us by what gropings and fumblings, through what relations
with one another, and through what experiments in mutual aid
mankind has acquired power to survive under varied and changing
conditions, power to achieve, and capacity for happiness. Ade-
quacy comprises endurance, health, reproductive vigor, intelli-
gence, self control, ability to make adjustments with others and to
get on helpfully with others in cooperation. Society produces
these factors of adequacy in the same sense in which the breeder
produces desired qualities in animals, namely, by selecting them
and providing the conditions under which they can survive. The
practical manifestations of adequacy are: individual initiative,
individual responsibility, and an individual participation that is
efficient and helpful in collective endeavor.
It will not surprise my co-workers in sociology that I as an
individual so conceive of our science, because in all my writings
for twenty-five years I have insisted, perhaps tiresomely, that
society is comprehensible only if we know what it does, and that
what it does is to convert a biologicaf survival of the fit for the
jungle into a historical survival of the better for human purposes.
In other words, as I argued in The Principles of Sociology and
have since maintained, the function of society is to develop and to
safeguard the higher types of human personality.
If I can be said to have a system of sociology it is briefly this :
I. A situation or stimulus is reacted to by more than one indi-
291
292 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
vidual ; there is pluralistic as well as singularistic behavior. Plu-
ralistic behavior develops into rivalries, competitions, and con-
flicts, and also, into agreements, contracts, and collective enter-
prises. Therefore social phenomena are products of two varia-
bles, namely, situation (in the psychologist's definition of the
word) and pluralistic behavior.
2. When the individuals who participate in pluralistic behavior
have become differentiated into behavioristic kinds or types, a con-
sciousness of kind, liking or disliking, approving or disapproving
one kind after another, converts gregariousness into a consciously
discriminative association, herd habit into society ; and society, by
a social pressure which sometimes is conscious but more often,
perhaps, is unconscious, makes life relatively hard for kinds of
character and conduct that are disapproved.
3. Society organizes itself for collective endeavor and achieve-
ment, if fundamental similarities of behavior and an awareness of
them are extensive enough to maintain social cohesion, while dif-
ferences of behavior and awareness of them in matters of detail
are sufficient to create a division of labor.
4. In the long run organized society by its approvals and dis-
approvals, its pressures and achievements, selects and perpetuates
the types of mind and character that are relatively intelligent,
tolerant, and helpful, that exhibit initiative, that bear their share
of responsibility and that effectively play their part in collective
enterprise. It selects and perpetuates the adequate.
This, I think, is an intelligible and rather straightforward way
of explaining society. But society is the most intricate tangle of
happenings and relationships that the scientific mind can investi-
gate. It can be approached in many ways. It has been described
in many formulas, not obviously identical. It is, therefore, quite
in order to ask whether the definition of sociology that I have
submitted is anything more than a personal reaction. Can it be
found elsewhere ? Are other definitions substantially identical, or
at least consistent, with it?
I am glad to answer this question, or, rather, to bring forward
an answer that other men have made. It is interesting and inspir-
ing. Without explicitly telling us so the founders of sociology
have, in fact, it would seem, without exception conceived of the
FURTHER INQUIRIES OF SOCIOLOGY 293
science of society as a systematic study of the increase and dis-
tribution of human adequacy to exist and achieve.
How otherwise can we interpret Comte's major contention that
social dynamics is an account of the advance, or progress, that
mankind has made from theological through metaphysical to posi-
tive thinking, and that positive thinking has put him in command
of his destiny? How otherwise can we interpret Spencer's in-
sistence that mankind has begun to go right after having tried all
the possible ways of going wrong, chief of which has been mili-
tarism, which has selected authority-revering types of character;
and that only under a voluntaristic, cooperative industrialism,
which selects peace-loving and self-reliant natures, can our race
become humane ; inasmuch as, until then, we shall not be able to
educe golden conduct from leaden human natures. Certainly no
other interpretation can be put upon Lester F. Ward's Dynamic
Sociology as it is expounded in the volumes bearing that title and
in later writings. Its thesis is that society not only grows but also
is made, consciously and for a purpose. It is a product of telic
effort. And to what end is it made ? What is the purpose ? I do
not know that Ward anywhere uses the word, but he unmistak-
ably identifies and describes the thing ; society is made to the end
that it may produce human adequacy, and, above all, increase the
ratio of adequate individuals to the inadequate. Therefore, he
contends, it is the supreme duty of society to disseminate existing
knowledge and to educate everybody. Finally (and I say finally
because I limit my survey to four writers, one French, one Eng-
lish, and two American who are no longer living), no other in-
terpretation can be put upon the teaching of William Graham
Sumner whom, now that he is gone, we are beginning to recognize
as perhaps the most consistently sociological if not the greatest of
sociologists. In folkways Sumner finds the most characteristic of
social reactions and products. They are the primary mechanism
of pluralistic control and adjustment. The state is a secondary
and far more artificial mechanism. The folkways mediate be-
tween individual impulse and the conditions to which life must
adapt itself. They discipline the individual and hold him to his
obligations. He in turn reacts upon them by innovating experi-
ment and occasional rebellion. Products of trial and error, by trial
294 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
and error they are changed. In such ceaseless conflict between
individual impulse and pluralistic habit individual adequacy dis-
covers itself and is discovered. It is tried and tempered. The
unsuccessful innovator is eliminated. His idea may have been
true and valuable but "untimely born" or ineffectively presented.
The successful innovator survives, and with him adequacy.
If, looking further, we could compare all known systems of
sociology, we should discover, I am confident, that their funda-
mental agreement lies precisely in this matter, namely, that, like
their ancient prototypes The Republic of Plato and The Politics of
Aristotle, they view society as functioning to produce human
adequacy. Their disagreements arise out of their differing as-
sumptions as to means or method. Systems that have taken for
granted a Lamarkian biology have laid emphasis on environment
and education. Systems that have anticipated or accepted a later
biology (built upon facts of mutation and predictable heredity)
lay emphasis on a social selection that is continuous with natural
selection and supplementary to it. At the present moment sociol-
ogy like psychology is quietly abandoning errors that it took over
from a biology now discredited. We are beginning to discriminate
between heredity, a physiological transmission of traits to off-
spring, and heritage, a sum total of knowledge, pattern, technique,
and property handed on by teaching and surrender, and we shall
cease to confuse habits, which each generation must acquire, with
original or instinctive nature which is the equipment that we are
born with. Having made these corrections, in our thinking we
shall probably stop kicking against the pricks, forget that we once
believed in the inheritance of acquired traits, and no longer feel
obliged to deny that character and intelligence are facts of original
nature, while behavior and knowledge are facts of habit. Charac-
ter cannot fundamentally be made over after birth any more than
bodily constitution can be, but behavior, including moral conduct,
can be improved until old age just as health can be. Intelligence
regarded as mental power cannot be increased after birth, but its
functioning can be speeded up and knowledge can be increased
indefinitely.
These elementary teachings of the new biology to which sociol-
ogy will have to adapt itself, if it has not already done so, throw a
FURTHER INQUIRIES OF SOCIOLOGY 295
clear light upon adequacy. Plainly we now see, adequacy is partly
a fact of original nature or equipment ; that is to say, it is partly
a fact of ability; but also, it is partly a fact of acquisition or
habit ; that is to say, it is partly a fact of morale.
In so factorizing adequacy we have, I now suggest, the starting-
point from which certain further inquiries in sociology apparently
should and probably will proceed. They will explore possibility,
asking how and how far civilized communities now existing can
discover, select and develop adequacy in human beings ; as group
dwellers to participate in the opportunities, obligations and enter-
prises of society, and as individuals to profit by them. In my own
mind these further inquiries take form and arrangement somewhat
like this :
1. What regional and circumstantial influences antecedent to
society select, as elements of a local or a regional population,
individuals and stocks (i) superior in point of ability, (2) medi-
ocre, (3) inferior.
2. What circumstances and pluralistic reactions (including dis-
ciplines and selections, an inclusion which is to be understood
wherever the word "reactions" appears in these paragraphs)
develop (i) preference, (2) aptitude for (a) rural life, (b) vil-
lage or small town life, (c) the intense life of congested urban
areas ?
3. What circumstances and reactions (i) prevent or hinder
the amalgamation of differing stocks in a local or a regional popu-
lation, (2) facilitate indiscriminate amalgamation, (3) facilitate
a selective amalgamation?
4. What circumstances and reactions develop (i) preference,
(2) aptitude for (a) rivalistic and competitive behavior, (b) co-
operative behavior ?
5. What circumstances and reactions, when inequalities of
promptness, persistence and effectiveness are increasing, develop
admiration for intellect and strengthen a disposition to trust in-
tellectual ability?
6. What circumstances and reactions increase sensitiveness to
interstimulation, and develop orderliness (of sequence, correla-
tion, and coordination) of response to it?
7. What circumstances and reactions increase sensitiveness to
296 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
behavioristic differences and resemblances among individuals,
among groups, among stocks, and so develop the consciousness of
kind?
8. What circumstances and reactions inhibit the inferior modes
of concerted volition, restraining a disposition to rely on coercive
direct action taking form, for example, in the boycott and the
strike, in slacking, in property-destroying sabotage, in bullying
or intimidation, or in physical violence, for attaining desired ends ?
What circumstances and reactions develop deliberative like-mind-
edness ?
9. What circumstances and reactions strengthen a disposition
to rely on religion, education, folkways and mores more than on
law and government to improve human behavior ?
10. What circumstances and reactions strengthen a disposition
to standardize behavior and to require conformity to standards
and types? Conversely, what circumstances and reactions
strengthen a love of liberty and a disposition to extend it ?
11. What circumstances and reactions strengthen minority rule
( i ) established and maintained by the use of force, or by inspir-
ing fear, or through protection, purchase, bribery, or bestowal of
favors; (2) established and maintained by winning and holding-
the uncoerced and unbought approval of the majority through
proof of ability, character and beneficent purpose?
12. What circumstances and reactions develop a predilection
for (i) strictly monogamic relations of the sexes; (2) relations
usually monogamic but with toleration or approval of (a) excep-
tions, (b) divorce; (3) relations of any individually preferred
degree of simplicity, complexity, or variety, and of duration de-
termined by private agreement; (4) large families, unlimited by
birth control; (5) families large or small or unions childless, as
determined by birth control ; (6) families (or children reared by
other than parental care) that are products of eugenic experimen-
tation ?
13. What circumstances and reactions develop a stronger at-
tachment and loyalty to a local or a minor regional group (hamlet,
village, small town, large town, or city, or province) than to a
major regional group (nation or empire) ? Conversely, what
circumstances and reactions develop a stronger attachment and
FURTHER INQUIRIES OF SOCIOLOGY 297
loyalty to a major regional group than to any minor regional or
local group?
14. What circumstances and reactions develop stronger attach-
ments and loyalties to the town, the nation, or the empire than
to occupational and class organizations? Conversely, what cir-
cumstances and reactions develop stronger attachments and loy-
alties to occupational and class organizations than to the empire,
the nation or the town ?
15. What circumstances and reactions develop a predilection
for authoritative types of organization? Conversely what cir-
cumstances and reactions develop a predilection for free types of
organization ?
16. What circumstances and reactions develop a predilection
for (i) closed organization, from which non-privileged individ-
uals (e. g. persons not of a designated lineage, or birthplace, or
not of a stipulated fortune) are excluded; (2) indiscriminately
open organization (e. g. "the open shop") ; (3) selectively closed
or open organization (e. g. the church in which assent to a creed
is demanded, the closed shop, the trade union) ?
17. What circumstances and reactions develop a predilection
for militarism? Conversely, what circumstances and reactions
strengthen antagonism to militarism?
18. What circumstances and reactions develop a predilection
for communism? Conversely, what circumstances and reactions
develop a predilection for individualism ?
19. What circumstances and reactions develop a predilection
for (i) democratic society, (2) the democratic state?
20. What circumstances and reactions strengthen a predilection
to conserve resources and to accumulate surplus? Conversely,
what circumstances and reactions strengthen a predilection to
squander and waste ?
21. What circumstances and reactions (i) increase (a) non-
hereditary variability, (b) hereditary variability; (2) diminish
(a) non-hereditary variability, (b) hereditary variability?
22. What circumstances and reactions by discipline improve
the morale of an increasing proportion of the population?
23. What circumstances and reactions impair morale, and if
persistent destroy it?
298 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY
24. What circumstances and reactions acting selectively in-
crease (i) the absolute number, (2) the relative number, (3) both
the absolute and the relative number of able men and women in
the community, a standard of ability being taken, and the limits
of the community being defined?
25. What circumstances and reactions ( I ) both increase ability
and improve morale, (2) both diminish ability and impair morale?
26. Are the reactions of ability upon, pluralistic behavior (a)
more profound, (b) more dependable and enduring, than the
reactions of morale?
27. What are the reactions upon pluralistic behavior of im-
proved morale when there is no increase of ability?
28. What are the reactions upon pluralistic behavior of more
ability, when morale is not improved ?
29. How does the relative numerical increase of adequate men
and women react upon the drives, the mechanisms, and the
achievements of collective endeavor?
30. What measures of the phenomena that have been designated
in these paragraphs can be found or devised ?
If the limits of this book permitted I should be glad to present
these inquiries more concretely. I must be content to indicate
the concrete aspect of two of them.
Number twenty-six is the question that everybody asked when
the European war began in 1914. The civilized world was stunned.
It had believed that science, communication, commerce, acquaint-
ance, humane feeling, and reasonableness had made a general war
impossible. Therefore "when the thing that couldn't" had occurred
we asked whether civilization was more than a veneer of habit
laid upon a character of savagery. Is it more? Has it ever been
more than a morale which at any moment might break down?
Has it ever selected or does it now select for survival trust-
worthy characters and the far-seeing intelligences that can be re-
lied on to weather political storms of envy and hate ? This ques-
tion has not been answered. Should we not try to find the answer ?
Number twenty-nine is the question that the world at present is
asking about Russia. Since prehistoric times the inadequate have
said "Let George do it, we should worry," and George, accepting
FURTHER INQUIRIES OF SOCIOLOGY 299
the commission, has made himself a boss, a capitalist, a ruler, and
exploiter. Now, the inadequate, having learned how by sabotage
and violence to bully, are saying: "Make George do it. Make
those who have been adequate enough to acquire wealth divide
with us who have not been. Make the expert take orders from
us the non-expert." Dictation by the incompetent is no more
democracy, however, than monarchy is, and it tends to work out
as despotism. Society is democratic only when men, saying
neither "Let George do it," nor "Make George do it," say, rather,
"We will do it," and proceed to make good. But this saying and
this doing presuppose a diffusion or distribution of adequacy.
How extensive must the distribution be ? To what extent do the
intellectually inferior spontaneously trust and follow, to what
extent do they obstinately distrust, the intellectually superior?
Can we alter the ratio, or might one as well attempt by taking
thought to add a cubit to his stature? These questions have not
been answered. Should we not try to find the answers?
These inquiries sharpen the distinction between sociology and
economics, with which we set forth. Studies of actual or possible
betterment of the conditions under which and by which people
live are economic investigations in substance, if not in form.
Studies of actual or possible improvement of the people themselves
are sociological investigations. It would conduce to efficient co-
operation between economists and sociologists, if this discrimina-
tion were made in teaching and in the organization of university
departments. Studies of housing, cost of living, family budgets,
wages, hours and conditions of labor, insurance, and pensions can
be well taught only by economists. Studies of folkways, social
pressure by taboo and bullying, social selection, organization, and
morale can best be taught by sociologists. The sociologist should
know his economics well enough to avoid making a fool of him-
self when he talks about economic problems. A more technical
knowledge of the subject he does not need unless, besides being a
sociologist he is also professionally an economist. As a sociologist
he must be technically trained and proficient in the behavioristic
psychology and in statistics ; and he must keep in touch with the
workers in eugenics, who inquire how the human race can be im-
300 STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY,
proved in heredity, and with the workers in religion, in ethics, and
in education, who are the technicians of morale.
How shall the further inquiries of sociology be made? What
method or methods can be used and relied on ?
The method must be inductive and there is only one inductive
method that sociology can use. It consists of three steps. First,
accurate first-hand observations must be made in great number
and carefully checked up. The second-hand observation of the
interviewer has been overworked; it can yield us nothing but a
journalistic sociology. Second, observations must painstakingly
be recorded and intelligently classified. Third, the data so ob-
tained and prepared must be subjected to statistical analysis for
the purpose of discovering ratios, modalities, coefficients of varia-
tion, and correlations.
What facts shall be observed? Not static conditions only or
chiefly. The survey has its place and its value, but it can never
give us the laws of social change. To discover these we must
observe and analyze social experiments. Social evolution has pro-
ceeded by trial and error. Mankind has made more experiments
on and in society than on or in any other medium. They have
been imperfect, errant, often erratic, and there is not much ground
for hope that in the future they will become scientifically more
satisfactory, because the sociologist cannot, like the physicist or
the biologist, isolate one factor of a situation after another either
by changing it while all other factors are kept unchanged, or by
keeping it unchanged while all other factors are changed. Dis-
couraged by this difficulty Mill in his Logic mistakenly tells us
that the social sciences cannot successfully employ induction to
any great extent, and must rely on the deductive reasoning used
by the classical political economy. Mill apparently knew nothing
of statistical theory or practice. Happily it is often possible
statistically to isolate a factor and measure its value even when,
from a laboratory viewpoint experimentation has been inconclu-
sive. Scientifically imperfect social experimentation is going on
at present throughout the world. It is the duty of the sociologist
to observe and analyze it.
INDEX
INDEX
Achaeans, of Homer, a Danubean
stock, 73.
Adams, Brooks, interpretation of
history by, 67.
Adams, Henry and Brooks, brothers,
their theories of history, 66.
Adequacy, selection and develop-
ment of, the function of society,
291 seq.
Alpine race, 73.
Althusius, Johannes, on sovereignty,
106.
Amelioration, 285 seq.
Aquitani, of Caesar's Gaul, a Medi-
terranean stock, 73.
Aristocracy, definition of, 87.
Aristotle, on early institutions, 87 ;
his theory of society, 102, 103 ; on
likemindedness, 168; as scientific
investigator, 225; on slavery, 236;
on adequacy, 294.
Augustine, Saint, social philosophy
of, 104.
Aurelius, Marcus (Aurelius) Anto-
ninus, quoted, 245, 246.
Baarda, M. J., van, cited, 48.
Bagehot, Walter, on problems of so-
cial causation, 5 seq. ; on most ter-
rible of tyrannies, 6, 18; on pre-
liminary age, 27 ; on custom, 191 ;
on public polity, 210; methods and
achievements of, 211, 212; on war,
213, 214, 219; on government by
discussion, 222.
Balance of power, 221, 222.
Baldwin, Mark, on concept of self,
161, 162, 163.
Baltic race, 73.
Behavior, subinstinctive, 156, 250;
herd, 156, 158; instinctive, 156, 157,
250; pluralistic, 145, 152 seq., 251
seq., 292, 298.
Belgae, of Caesar's Gaul, a Danu-
bean stock, 73.
Benini, Rodolfo, on statistical meas-
ure of consciousness of kind, 120,
121.
Bodin, Jean, on sovereignty, 106.
Boehmond, of Tarentum, Crusader,
170.
Bradford, William, belief of in di-
vine providence in New England
history, 52.
Breasted, James Henry, quoted, 72.
Brehm, Alfred Edmund, contribu-
tion of to study of instinct, 39.
Brunetiere, Ferdinand, on failure of
science, no.
Brythonic Celts, a Danubean stock,
73-
Buckle, Henry Thomas, interpreta-
tion of history by, 67, 112; on re-
gional influences, 146.
Budge, Ernest Alfred, on "Constitu-
tion of Athens" as work of Aris-
totle, 87.
"Bunch," as simplest of social
groups, 269.
Butcher, S. H., on Greek concept of
the individual, 225.
Caesar, Julius, his discrimination of
races, 73; his studies in ethnic
character, 104.
Carnegie, Andrew, his interest in
peace, 213.
Cause and causation, 130, 131.
Celts, of Caesar's Gaul, an Alpine
stock, 73.
Chance, its significance, 141-143.
Cicero, on laws, 104; his definition
of a people, 123.
Circumstantial pressure, 254-256.
Clark, John Bates, on utility and
value, 33. ^
Class, scientific definition of, 131.
Clifford, William Kingdon, his con-
ception and definition of term
"eject", 161, 162.
Clinias, the Cretan, his questionings
as to source of laws, 94.
Collective life, modes of, 84-87.
303
304
INDEX
Composition, social, 269.
Comte, Auguste, his interpretation
of history, 66, 67; "la sociologie",
no, in; his hierarchy of the sci-
ences, 134; on public polity, 210,
21 1 ; on human progress, 293.
Concerted volition, 261, 262, 296.
Condorcet, Jean Antoine, on nature
of man, 112.
Congregation, 255.
Consciousness, of kind, 17, 61, 62,
163, 164-169, 203, 205, 260, 262, 265,
283, 292, 296; conversationalized,
161, 259; social, 62, 283.
Constitution, social, 269.
Constraint, social, 203 seq.
Consumption, standardization of, 61.
Conversationalized consciousness,
161, 259.
Cooley, Charles Horton, on social
consciousness, 62, 283.
Cooper, James Fenimore, cited, 50.
Correlation, definition of, 132, 133.
Coordination, definition of, 272.
Cournot, Augustine, on utility and
value, 33.
Crusades, psychological character of,
170, 171.
Culture, as an economy, 21 seq. ;
conflicts of, 175 seq.
Curthose, Robert, Crusader, 170.
Curve, of error, 109; normal, 223.
Danubean race, 73.
Dante, his vindication of the rational
claim of the secular empire, 105;
on imitation, 115, 116.
Darwin, Charles, Darwinism and
social philosophy, 3 seq. ; on strug-
gle for existence, 13, 14; utility,
33; organic economy, 37; collec-
tive action, 39; mental resource,
226 ; better and fit, 267.
Degradation, of energy, 136 seq.
Democracy, definition of, 88.
Demosthenes, quoted, 209.
Demotic factors of likemindedness,
255 seq.
Determinism and free will, 141-143.
De Vries, Hugo, on mutations and
fluctuations, 7.
Discipline, as product of social self-
control, 206, 207.
Dramatization, in pluralistic behav-
ior, 161, 259.
Durkheim, Emile, on relation of
consciousness of kind to social or-
ganization, 62; his social theory,
115; on division of social labor,
283.
Economy, consumption and produc-
tion, 27-32; concepts of, 34, 35;
four stages of, 23, 24, 30, 36 seq. ;
organic, 36-38, 53, 54; instinctive,
38-40, 53, 54; apprehensive and
ceremonial, 36, 42-54; luck, 42-46;
magic, 46-50, 53, 54; sacrificial, 51-
54 ; ascertaining, 36, 54 seq. ; busi-
ness, 36, 54, 55; slave, 55; trade,
55; capitalistic, 55.
Ego, Baldwin's concept of, 162, 163 ;
socialized, 166.
Eliot, George, quoted, 224.
Empedocles on likemindedness, 168.
Environment, physical, effect on hu-
man behavior of, 145-150; and nat-
ural selection, 202; physical, as a
stimulus, 253.
Epicurus, his theory of society, 107.
Equilibration of energy, 137 seq.
Evolution, Spencerian account of, 3,
113; social, Bagehot's account of,
6; social, Kidd's account of, 9, 10;
mechanistic, 139, 140.
Fact, scientific definition of, 131.
Feminism, 186 seq.
Festus, quoted, 218.
Fiske, John, on sociality, 8, 9; on
prolongation of infancy, 8, 9.
Folkways, 18, 159, 191 seq., 206, 263,
264, 285, 293, 296.
Fourier, Jean Baptiste, on popula-
tion of Paris, 108.
Fowler, W. Warde, on magic econ-
omy, 49, 51.
Frazer, J. G., on magic, 46, 48.
Free will, and determinism, 141-143.
Frequency, statistical, 207.
"Gang", simplest arrangement of in-
dividuals that go, work or play to-
gether, 269.
Galton, Francis, on natural inher-
itance, 12; on sources of Greek
genius, 76.
Genetic aggregation, 255, 270.
Germans, of Caesar's Gual, a Baltic
stock, 73.
Gillen, F. J., on magic, 46, 48.
Godfrey of Bouillon, Crusader, 170.
Goidelic Celts, an Alpine stock, 73.
Good life, Plato's concept of, 102.
Gottschalk, the priest, unorganized
crusade of, 171.
INDEX
305
Government by discussion, 222, 223.
Grant, U. S., on how to abolish a
bad law, 194.
Graunt, John, on statistics of mor^
tality, 108.
"Great man", in relation to public
policy and social order, 105.
Gregariousness, S, 156-158, 163, 166,
258-260, 292.
Grinnell, G. B., cited, 48.
Gubernatis, Angelo de, on magic, 49.
Habits, of the herd, 157, 158, 201,
251, 252, 254, 259.
Halley, Edmund, on birth and death
rates, 108.
Happiness, Herbert Spencer on, in.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, cited, 264.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, his
philosophy of history, 66.
Hellenes, a Danubean stock, 73.
Herd, behavior of, 8, 156-158, 163;
vs. society, 166; cooperation in
the, 201 ; pluralistic reactions in
the, 258; instinct of, 259; habits
of the, 157, 158, 201, 251, 252, 254,
259-
Hesiod, on luck economy, 44, 45.
History, interpretations of, 66, 67, 89
seq.
Hobbes, Thomas, on sovereignty,
106.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, quoted,
1 60.
Hugh the Great, Crusader, 170.
Huntington, Ellsworth, on influence
of environment on behavior of
man, 67, 80, 147, 255.
Huxley, Thomas Henry, on moral
freedom, 142, 143, 226.
Hyndman, Henry Mayers, quoted,
233-
Imitation, 116.
Individual, as creator of society, 104,
107 ; as product of society, 102-104,
107.
Indiyiduation, 288, 289.
Instincts, in gregariousness, 156-158,
258, 260.
Interstimulation, 257-259, 295.
Irritability, as quality of living mat-
ter, 154, 160.
"It", as mana, 46.
James, William, contrary impulses,
42, 212; psychological constitution
of the individual, 161.
Jennings, H. S., behavior of lower
organisms, 156.
Jevons, W. Stanley, his theory of
consumption, 28; on utility, 33, 34;
on causation, 131.
Johnson, Edward, belief of in divine
providence in New England his-
tory, 52.
Justice, Plato's conception of, 102,
in; Spencer's conception of, in;
as adjustment and readjustment,
282.
Kakistocracy, definition of, 88.
Kepler, Johann, on planetary orbits,
131.
Kidd, Benjamin, on social evolution,
9, 10, n.
Kingsley, Mary H., on magic in
West Africa, 46.
Kinship, matrilinear and matrojiy-
mic, 85-87, 270; patrilinear and
patronymic, 85-87, 270.
Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert, his defini-
tion of mechanics, 127, 128.
Kropotkin, Prince Peter Aleksee-
vich, on mutual aid among ani-
mals, 7, 8, 39.
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste, on adapta-
tion, 112, 113.
Laplace, Pierre Simon, on quanti-
tative method in sociological re-
search, 1 08, no.
Laschi, R., on political crime, 245.
Leaders, as causes of war, 220,
221.
Likemindedness, 167, 168, 256, 257,
260, 263, 280, 283, 284, 296.
Lloyd, John Uri, on changing luck,
49-
Locke, John, on sovereignty, 107.
Lombroso, Cesare, on political
crime, 245.
Longstaff, G. B., quoted, 241, 242.
Lowie, Robert, on primitive society,
85, 86.
Luck, belief in as factor in primi-
tive economy, 42-46.
McDougall, William, on gregarious-
ness, 259.
Mach, Ernst, on nature of science,
127 seq.
Machiavelli, Nicolo, on leadership,
105, 106, 115.
MacMillan, George Blundell, on
structure of the atom, 89.
306
INDEX
Magic, in early economy, 29, 46-54;
Frazer on, 46, 55, 182.
Maine, Henry Sumner, on early in-
stitutions, 86; on custom, 191.
Mallock, William Hurrell, on strug-
gle for domination, n, 12.
Malthus, Thomas Robert, death
rates, theory of population, 3, 7.
Mana, 22, 46, 47, 85, 270.
Mannhardt, W., on ceremonial
magic, 48.
Marshall, Alfred, his theory of con-
sumption, 28.
Marshall, Henry Rutgers, on hesita-
tion in reasoning, 42.
Marx, Karl, his theory of history,
66, 67, 83.
Masculinism, 186.
Mather, Cotton, belief of in divine
providence in New England his-
tory, 52.
Mather, Increase, belief of in divine
providence in New England his-
tory, 52.
Matrilinear and matronymic descent
and kinship, 85, 86, 87, 270.
Maudsley, Henry, cited, 164.
Mayo-Smith, Richmond, on statis-
tical methods, 120.
Mediterranean race, 73.
Megillus of Lacedaemon, his ques-
tionings as to source of law, 94.
Mendel, Johann Gregor, on law of
heredity, 7.
Menger, Carl, on utility and value, 33.
Mentalized organism, 155.
Militarism, as stage in social evolu-
tion, 114.
Mill, John Stuart, concept of causa-
tion, 131; on laissez-faire, 190; on
use of deductive method in social
sciences, 300.
Mind, of the many, 154 seq. ; medi-
aeval, 154; as activity of men-
talized organisms, 155, 162; social,
265, 266, 283.
Misoneism, 245.
Mobmindedness, 170, 171.
Mode, statistical, 202, 207, 282.
Moelmud, Dyvnwal, quoted, 159.
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat,
his^theory of history, 67; his use
of inductive method, 107, 108; on
the nature of man, 112; on the
effects of climate, 146.
Morale, as product of social self-
control, and of other factors, 206,
295, 297, 298.
Mores, 18, 31, 192, 264, 278, 296
Morselli, Henry, on suicide as a phe-
nomenon of civilization, 242
Natural selection, as factor in hu-
man progress, 4, 5; vs. progress,
9, 10; in society, 202
Nature, scientific interpretation of,
62, 63 ; state of, 106, 107 ; original,
112; second, 112; human, improv-
ability of, 112
Newton, Isaac, on law of gravita-
tion, no
Norm, 202, 282
Ollivier, Emile, quoted, 217
Orenda, 46.
Ovid, on magic, 48, 49.
Panic, likemindedness as factor of,
164, 165.
Patrilinear and patronymic descent
and kinship, 85-87, 270.
Patten, Simon N., on consumption
economy, 27, 28.
Paul, the Apostle, on likeminded-
ness, 167, 168.
Pawlow, Ivan Petrovitch, on condi-
tioned reflex, 155, 265.
Payne, Edward John, on evolution
of language, 53.
Pearson, Karl, progress by selection
and inheritance, 12 ; on social the-
ory, 107; on science, 130.
Peter, the Apostle, on likeminded-
ness, 168.
Peter, the Hermit, his Crusade, 171.
Petroff, I., cited, 47.
Philoneism, 245.
Picts, a Danubean stock, 73.
Plato, his interpretation of history,
66, 67; theory of laws, 95, 96;
theory of society, 102, 103, in;
on likemindedness, 168; on specu-
lative method, 225 ; on individual
and the state, 227; on adequacy,
294.
Platonism, its view of the nature of
man, 112.
Pluralistic behavior, 144, 152 seq.,
250 seq., 292, 298.
Plurel, 92, 251, 268.
Plutocracy, definition of, 88.
Political force, 105.
Post-Darwinism, its influence on so-
cial theory, 7.
Power, contagious, as mana, 46, 47.
INDEX
307
Preferential association, as begin-
ning of society, 166.
Pressure, social, 121, 200 seq., 263
seq. ; circumstantial, 254-256, 263.
Probability curve, 109, no.
Progress, 119.
Prolongation, of infancy, John
Fiske's theory of, 8.
Protocracy, 267, 268, 270, 273, 375,
276.
Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe Jacques,
on statistical methods, 108, 109.
Races, European, 73, 91.
Ratzell, Friedrich, on effects of geo-
graphical features on m'an, 147.
Ratzenhofer, Gustav, on "interests",
267.
Raymond, of Toulouse, Crusader,
170.
Read, Carveth, his theory of hu-
man origins, 158.
Reason and reasoning, nature and
processes of, 47, 50, 53, 54, 55, 154-
156.
Reconditioned reflex, 155.
Religion, elemental, original fac-
tors of, 9, 10, ii.
Ribot, Theodule Armand, on psy-
chological constitution of the in-
dividual, 161.
Robert of Flanders, Crusader, 170.
Ross, Edward Alsworth, on social
control, 200; on psychological as-
cendancy, 268.
Ross, Frank A., example of psycho-
logical group cited from, 159.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, on the so-
cial contract, 260.
Russell, Bertrand, on perceptions
and conceptions, 130.
Saint Simon, Claude Henri, social
revolutionist, his influence on
Comte, 211.
Schaffle, Albert Eberhard Friedrich,
his theory of society, 115.
Seebohm, Frederick, on inequalities
in early society, 87.
Seebohm, Hugh, on Greek tribal
society, 87.
Semple, Ellen Churchill, on influ-
ence of environment on behavior
of man, 67, 147.
Seneca, on Roman civilization, 57.
Sensitivity, discriminated from irri-
tability, 154, 155, 160.
Sewall, Samuel, belief of in divine
providence in New England his-
tory, 52.
Skeat, W. W., on magic in Malay
Peninsula, 46, 48.
Small, Albion W., on "interests",
267.
Smith, Adam, on division of labor,
62, 283, 284.
Smith, Robertson, on primitive
leadership, 86.
Social composition, 269.
Social consciousness, 62, 283.
Social constitution, 269.
Social constraint, 203 seq.
Social evolution, 6, 9, 10.
Social pressure, 121, 200 seq., 263
seq.
Social solidarity, 265, 266.
Sociality, John Fiske's discrimina-
tion of, 8.
Socialization, 287, 288.
Society, Bagehot's theory of, 6; Sen-
eca on Roman, 57 ; types of, 85-
88 ; Aristotle's theory of, 102, 103 ;
Plato's theory of, 102, 103, in;
Epicurus's theory of, 107 ; Schaf-
fle's theory of, 115; function of,
in, 112, 291, 292; Spencer's the-
ory of, 113,115,121; as preferen-
tial association, 166; material of,
167, 168; changes in, 169-171; as
constraining force, 201-208; as
means to end, 226, 227 ; and the
individual, 224-229; progress of,
230 seq. ; duties of, 244, 245 ; con-
sciousness of kind as factor in,
263; as selective force, 267.
Solidarity, group and collective con-
flict, Bagehot's theory of, 5, 6 j in
the gregarious group, 8; in Amer-
ica, 60, 61 ; from like response,
116; creation of by police power,
185 ; industrial, 201 ; social, 265,
266; behavioristic, 268, 269, 280.
Sovereignty, conceptions of, 106,
107, 194, 276, 277, 278.
Spencer, Baldwin, on magic in Cen-
tral Australia, 46, 48.
Spencer, Herbert, on evolution, 3-5 ;
his interpretation of history, 67;
on function of society, in, 112;
on social theory, 113-115, 121; on
mechanistic evolution, 139, 140;
environment, 146, 147; laissez-
faire, 190; folkways, 191; public
polity, 210, 211 ; war, 213 seq., 266;
human progress, 293.
308
INDEX
State, of nature, 106, 107; definition
of, 276; vs. folkways, 293.
State ways, 192 seq., 206.
Stoicism, its view of the nature of
man, 112.
Subordination, 272.
Sumner, William Graham, on folk-
ways, 18, 191, 263, 293; on war,
279.
Superordination, 272.
Sutherland, Alexander, on origin
and growth of moral instinctj 9.
Taboo, 22, 23, 28, 182, 270.
Tacitus, descriptive studies of ethnic
character, 20, 104.
Tarde, Gabriel, on imitation, 6, 116,
212.
Taylor, Henry Osborn, on the medi-
aeval mind, 154.
Themistes, 264.
Thorndike, Edward L., on original
nature, 112.
Totemism, 22, 85.
Trial and error, 155, 156, 293, 204.
Trotter, W., on instincts of the herd,
259-
Turbulence, its relation to evolu-
tion, to free will, 143.
Type, society as a, 202, 206, 208,
282.
Utility, Wallace's conception of, 33,
34; Jevons's conception of, 33, 34.
Van Hook, La Rue, on Athenian
democracy, 76.
Virtue, as mana, 46, 85.
Wakunda, 46.
Wallace, Alfred Russel, on prin-
ciple of utility, 33, 34, 39; on men-
tal resource, 226.
Walras, Leon, on utility and value,
33-
Walter the Penniless, his Crusade,
170.
War, as integrating force, 213-217;
causes of, 218-221.
Ward, Lester Frank, on education
and knowledge as means to social
amelioration, 286, 293.
Weismann, Auguste, on continuity
of germ plasm, 7, 112.
Wells, H. G., his Outline of His-
tory, 93.
Wieser, Friedrich von, on utility and
value, 33.
Woodworth, Robert Sessions, on in-
stinct, 155 ; on drive and mechan-
ism, 275.
Zeno, his social theory, 103.
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