[67] Translated and adapted from Ferdinand Tönnies, _Die Sitte_, pp.
7-14. (Literarische Anstalt, Rütten und Loening, 1909.)
[68] From Viscount Haldane, "Higher Nationality," in _International
Conciliation_, November, 1913, No. 72, pp. 4-12.
[69] From Th. Ribot, _The Diseases of Personality_, pp. 156-57.
Translated from the French. (The Open Court Publishing Co., 1891.)
[70] From Morton Prince, "The Unconscious," in the _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, III (1908-9), 277-96, 426.
[71] From Alfred Binet, _Alterations of Personality_, pp. 248-57. (D.
Appleton & Co., 1896.)
[72] From L. G. Winston, "Myself and I," in the _American Journal of
Psychology_, XIX (1908), 562-63.
[73] From William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp.
166-73. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1902.)
[74] Translated from V. M. Bekhterev (W. v. Bechterew), _Die
Persönlichkeit und die Bedingungen ihrer Entwicklung und Gesundheit_,
pp. 3-5. (J. F. Bergmann, 1906.)
[75] From J. Arthur Thomson, _Heredity_, pp. 244-49. (G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1908.)
[76] Adapted from C. B. Davenport, "The Method of Evolution," in Castle,
Coulter, Davenport, East, and Tower, _Heredity and Eugenics_, pp.
269-87. (The University of Chicago Press, 1912.)
[77] From Albert G. Keller, _Societal Evolution_, pp. 212-15. (Published
by The Macmillan Co., 1915. Reprinted by permission.)
[78] From Robert E. Park, "Education in Its Relation to the Conflict and
Fusion of Cultures," in the _Publications of the American Sociological
Society_, XIII (1918), 58-63.
[79] Émile Zola, _The Experimental Novel_ (New York, 1893), pp. 8-9.
Translated from the French by Belle M. Sherman.
CHAPTER III
SOCIETY AND THE GROUP
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Society, the Community, and the Group
Human nature and the person are products of society. This is the sum and
substance of the readings in the preceding chapter. But what, then, is
society--this web in which the lives of individuals are so inextricably
interwoven, and which seems at the same time so external and in a sense
alien to them? From the point of view of common sense, "society" is
sometimes conceived as the sum total of social institutions. The family,
the church, industry, the state, all taken together, constitute society.
In this use of the word, society is identified with social structure,
something more or less external to individuals.
In accordance with another customary use of the term, "society" denotes
a collection of persons. This is a vaguer notion but it at least
identifies society with individuals instead of setting it apart from
them. But this definition is manifestly superficial. Society is not a
collection of persons in the sense that a brick pile is a collection of
bricks. However we may conceive the relation of the parts of society to
the whole, society is not a mere physical aggregation and not a mere
mathematical or statistical unit.
Various explanations that strike deeper than surface observation have
been proposed as solutions for this cardinal problem of the social one
and the social many; of the relation of society to the individual.
Society has been described as a tool, an instrument, as it were, an
extension of the individual organism. The argument runs something like
this: The human hand, though indeed a part of the physical organism, may
be regarded as an instrument of the body as a whole. If, as by accident
it be lost, it is conceivable that a mechanical hand might be
substituted for it, which, though not a part of the body, would function
for all practical purposes as a hand of flesh and blood. A hoe may be
regarded as a highly specialized hand, so also logically, if less
figuratively, a plow. So the hand of another person if it does your
bidding may be regarded as your instrument, your hand. Language is
witness to the fact that employers speak of "the hands" which they
"work." Social institutions may likewise be thought of as tools of
individuals for accomplishing their purposes. Logically, therefore,
society, either as a sum of institutions or as a collection of persons,
may be conceived of as a sum total of instrumentalities, extensions of
the functions of the human organism which enable individuals to carry on
life-activities. From this standpoint society is an immense co-operative
concern of mutual services.
This latter is an aspect of society which economists have sought to
isolate and study. From this point of view the relations of individuals
are conceived as purely external to one another, like that of the plants
in a plant community. Co-operation, so far as it exists, is competitive
and "free."
In contrast with the view of society which regards social institutions
and the community itself as the mere instruments and tools of the
individuals who compose it, is that which conceives society as resting
upon biological adaptations, that is to say upon instincts,
gregariousness, for example, imitation, or like-mindedness. The classic
examples of societies based on instinct are the social insects, the
well-known bee and the celebrated ant. In human society the family, with
its characteristic differences and interdependences of the sexes and the
age groups, husband and wife, children and parents, most nearly realizes
this description of society. In so far as the organization of society is
predetermined by inherited or constitutional differences, as is the case
pre-eminently in the so-called animal societies, competition ceases and
the relations of its component individuals become, so to speak,
internal, and a permanent part of the structure of the group.
The social organization of human beings, on the other hand, the various
types of social groups, and the changes which take place in them at
different times under varying circumstances, are determined not merely
by instincts and by competition but by custom, tradition, public
opinion, and contract. In animal societies as herds, flocks, and packs,
collective behavior seems obviously to be explained in terms of instinct
and emotion. In the case of man, however, instincts are changed into
habits; emotions, into sentiments. Furthermore, all these forms of
behavior tend to become conventionalized and thus become relatively
independent of individuals and of instincts. The behavior of the person
is thus eventually controlled by the formal standards which, implicit in
the mores, are explicit in the laws. Society now may be defined as the
social heritage of _habit and sentiment_, _folkways and mores_,
_technique and culture_, all of which are incident or necessary to
collective human behavior.
Human society, then, unlike animal society is mainly a social heritage,
created in and transmitted by communication. The continuity and life of
a society depend upon its success in transmitting from one generation to
the next its folkways, mores, technique, and ideals. From the standpoint
of collective behavior these cultural traits may all be reduced to the
one term "consensus." Society viewed abstractly is an organization of
individuals; considered concretely it is a complex of organized habits,
sentiments, and social attitudes--in short, consensus.
The terms society, community, and social group are now used by students
with a certain difference of emphasis but with very little difference in
meaning. Society is the more abstract and inclusive term, and society is
made up of social groups, each possessing its own specific type of
organization but having at the same time all the general characteristics
of society in the abstract. Community is the term which is applied to
societies and social groups where they are considered from the point of
view of the geographical distribution of the individuals and
institutions of which they are composed. It follows that every community
is a society, but not every society is a community. An individual may
belong to many social groups but he will not ordinarily belong to more
than one community, except in so far as a smaller community of which he
is a member is included in a larger of which he is also a member.
However, an individual is not, at least from a sociological point of
view, a member of a community because he lives in it but rather because,
and to the extent that, he participates in the common life of the
community.
The term social group has come into use with the attempts of students to
classify societies. Societies may be classified with reference to the
rôle which they play in the organization and life of larger social
groups or societies. The internal organization of any given social
group will be determined by its external relation to other groups in the
society of which it is a part as well as by the relations of individuals
within the group to one another. A boys' gang, a girls' clique, a
college class, or a neighborhood conforms to this definition quite as
much as a labor union, a business enterprise, a political party, or a
nation. One advantage of the term "group" lies in the fact that it may
be applied to the smallest as well as to the largest forms of human
association.
2. Classification of the Materials
Society, in the most inclusive sense of that term, the Great Society, as
Graham Wallas described it, turns out upon analysis to be a
constellation of other smaller societies, that is to say races, peoples,
parties, factions, cliques, clubs, etc. The community, the
world-community, on the other hand, which is merely the Great Society
viewed from the standpoint of the territorial distribution of its
members, presents a different series of social groupings and the Great
Society in this aspect exhibits a totally different pattern. From the
point of view of the territorial distribution of the individuals that
constitute it, the world-community is composed of nations, colonies,
spheres of influence, cities, towns, local communities, neighborhoods,
and families.
These represent in a rough way the subject-matter of sociological
science. Their organization, interrelation, constituent elements, and
the characteristic changes (social processes) which take place in them
are the phenomena of sociological science.
Human beings as we meet them are mobile entities, variously distributed
through geographical space. What is the nature of the connection between
individuals which permits them at the same time to preserve their
distances and act corporately and consentiently--with a common purpose,
in short? These distances which separate individuals are not merely
spatial, they are psychical. Society exists where these distances have
been _relatively_ overcome. Society exists, in short, not merely where
there are people but where there is communication.
The materials in this chapter are intended to show (1) the fundamental
character of the relations which have been established between
individuals through communication; (2) the gradual evolution of these
relations in animal and human societies. On the basis of the principle
thus established it is possible to work out a rational classification of
social groups.
Espinas defines society in terms of corporate action. Wherever separate
individuals act together as a unit, where they co-operate as though they
were parts of the same organism, there he finds society. Society from
this standpoint is not confined to members of one species, but may be
composed of different members of species where there is permanent joint
activity. In the study of symbiosis among animals, it is significant to
note the presence of structural adaptations in one or both species. In
the taming and domestication of animals by man the effects of symbiosis
are manifest. Domestication, by the selection in breeding of traits
desired by man, changes the original nature of the animal. Taming is
achieved by control of habits in transferring to man the filial and
gregarious responses of the young naturally given to its parents and
members of its kind. Man may be thought of as domesticated through
natural social selection. Eugenics is a conscious program of further
domestication by the elimination of defective physical and mental racial
traits and by the improvement of the racial stock through the social
selection of superior traits. Taming has always been a function of human
society, but it is dignified by such denominations as "education,"
"social control," "punishment," and "reformation."
The plant community offers the simplest and least qualified example of
the community. Plant life, in fact, offers an illustration of a
_community_ which is _not a society_. It is not a society because it is
an organization of individuals whose relations, if not wholly external,
are, at any rate, "unsocial" in so far as there is no consensus. The
plant community is interesting, moreover, because it exhibits in the
barest abstraction, the character of _competitive co-operation_, the
aspect of social life which constitutes part of the special
subject-matter of economic science.
This struggle for existence, in some form or other, is in fact essential
to the existence of society. Competition, segregation, and accommodation
serve to maintain the social distances, to fix the status, and preserve
the independence of the individual in the social relation. A society in
which all distances, physical as well as psychical, had been abolished,
in which there was neither taboo, prejudice, nor reserve of any sort; a
society in which the intimacies were absolute, would be a society in
which there were neither persons nor freedom. The processes of
competition, segregation, and accommodation brought out in the
description of the plant community are quite comparable with the same
processes in animal and human communities. A village, town, city, or
nation may be studied from the standpoint of the adaptation, struggle
for existence, and survival of its individual members in the environment
created by the community as a whole.
Society, as Dewey points out, if based on instinct is an effect of
communication. _Consensus_ even more than _co-operation_ or _corporate
action_ is the distinctive mark of human society. Dewey, however, seems
to restrict the use of consensus to group decisions in which all the
members consciously and rationally participate. Tradition and sentiment
are, however, forms of consensus quite as much as constitutions, rules,
and elections.
Le Bon's classification of social groups into heterogeneous and
homogeneous crowds, while interesting and suggestive, is clearly
inadequate. Many groups familiar to all of us, as the family, the
play-group, the neighborhood, the public, find no place in his
system.[80]
Concrete descriptions of group behavior indicate three elements in the
consensus of the members of the group. The first is the characteristic
state of group feeling called _esprit de corps_. The enthusiasm of the
two sides in a football contest, the ecstasy of religious ceremonial,
the fellowship of members of a fraternity, the brotherhood of a monastic
band are all different manifestations of group spirit.
The second element in consensus has become familiar through the term
"morale." Morale may be defined as the collective will. Like the will of
the individual it represents an organization of behavior tendencies. The
discipline of the individual, his subordination to the group, lies in
his participation and reglementation in social activities.
The third element of consensus which makes for unified behavior of the
members of the group has been analyzed by Durkheim under the term
"collective representations." Collective representations are the
concepts which embody the objectives of group activity.
The totem of primitive man, the flag of a nation, a religious creed, the
number system, and Darwin's theory of the descent of man--all these are
collective representations. Every society and every social group has, or
tends to have, its own symbols and its own language. The language and
other symbolic devices by which a society carries on its collective
existence are collective representations. Animals do not possess them.
II. MATERIALS
A. SOCIETY AND SYMBIOSIS
1. Definition of Society[81]
The idea of society is that of a permanent co-operation in which
separate living beings undertake to accomplish an identical act. These
beings may find themselves brought by their conditions to a point where
their co-operation forces them to group themselves in space in some
definite form, but it is by no means necessary that they should be in
juxtaposition for them to act together and thus to form a society. A
customary reciprocation of services among more or less independent
individualities is the characteristic feature of the social life, a
feature that contact or remoteness does not essentially modify, nor the
apparent disorder nor the regular disposition of the parties in space.
Two beings may then form what is to the eyes a single mass, and may
live, not only in contact with each other, but even in a state of mutual
penetration without constituting a society. It is enough in such a case
that one looks at them as entirely distinct, that their activities tend
to opposite or merely different ends. If their functions, instead of
co-operating, diverge; if the good of one is the evil of the other,
whatever the intimacy of their contact may be, no social bond unites
them.
But the nature of the functions and the form of the organs are
inseparable. If two beings are endowed with functions that necessarily
combine, they are also endowed with organs, if not similar, at least
corresponding. And these beings with like or corresponding organs are
either of the same species or of very nearly the same species.
However, circumstances may be met where two beings with quite different
organs and belonging even to widely remote species may be accidentally
and at a single point useful to each other. A habitual relation may be
established between their activities, but only on this one point, and in
the time limits in which the usefulness exists. Such a case gives the
occasion, if not for a society, at least for an association; that is to
say, a union less necessary, less strict, less durable, may find its
origin in such a meeting. In other words, beside the normal societies
formed of elements specifically alike, which cannot exist without each
other, there will be room for more accidental groupings, formed of
elements more or less specifically unlike, which convenience unites and
not necessity. We will commence with a study of the latter.
To society the most alien relations of two living beings which can be
produced are those of the predator and his prey. In general, the
predator is bulkier than his prey, since he overcomes him and devours
him. Yet smaller ones sometimes attack larger creatures, consuming them,
however, by instalments, and letting them live that they themselves may
live on them as long as possible. In such a case they are forced to
remain for a longer or a shorter time attached to the body of their
victim, carried about by it wherever the vicissitudes of its life lead
them. Such animals have received the name of parasites. Parasitism forms
the line inside of which our subject begins; for if one can imagine that
the parasite, instead of feeding on the animal from whom he draws his
subsistence, is content to live on the remains of the other's meals, one
will find himself in the presence, not yet of an actual society, but of
half the conditions of a society; that is to say, a relation between two
beings such that, all antagonism ceasing, one of the two is useful to
the other. Such is commensalism. However, this association does not yet
offer the essential element of all society, co-operation. There is
co-operation when the commensal is not less useful to his host than the
latter is to the commensal himself, when the two are concerned in living
in a reciprocal relation and in developing their double activity in
corresponding ways toward a single and an identical goal. One has given
to this mode of activity the name of mutualism. Domestication is only
one form of it. Parasitism, commensalism, mutualism, exist with animals
among the different species.
2. Symbiosis (literally "living together")[82]
In gaining their wide and intimate acquaintance with the vegetable world
the ants have also become acquainted with a large number of insects that
obtain their nutriment directly from plants, either by sucking up their
juices or by feeding on their foliage. To the former group belong the
phytophthorous Homoptera, the plant lice, scale insects, or mealy bugs,
tree-hoppers, lantern flies, and jumping plant lice; to the latter
belong the caterpillars of the lycaenid butterflies, the "blues," or
"azures," as they are popularly called. All of these creatures excrete
liquids which are eagerly sought by the ants and constitute the whole,
or, at any rate, an important part of the food of certain species. In
return the Homoptera and caterpillars receive certain services from the
ants, so that the relations thus established between these widely
different insects may be regarded as a kind of symbiosis. These
relations are most apparent in the case of the aphids, and these insects
have been more often and more closely studied in Europe and America.
The consociation of the ants with the aphids is greatly facilitated by
the gregarious and rather sedentary habits of the latter, especially in
their younger, wingless stages, for the ants are thus enabled to obtain
a large amount of food without losing time and energy in ranging far
afield from their nests. Then, too, the ants may establish their nests
in the immediate vicinity of the aphid droves or actually keep them in
their nests or in "sheds" carefully constructed for the purpose.
Some ants obtain the honey-dew merely by licking the surface of the
leaves and stems on which it has fallen, but many species have learned
to stroke the aphids and induce them to void the liquid gradually so
that it can be imbibed directly. A drove of plant lice, especially when
it is stationed on young and succulent leaves or twigs, may produce
enough honey-dew to feed a whole colony of ants for a considerable
period.
As the relations between ants and the various Homoptera have been
regarded as mutualistic, it may be well to marshal the facts which seem
to warrant this interpretation. The term "mutualism" as applied to these
cases means, of course, that the aphids, coccids, and membracids are of
service to the ants and in turn profit by the companionship of these
more active and aggressive insects. Among the modifications in structure
and behavior which may be regarded as indicating on the part of aphids
unmistakable evidence of adaptation to living with ants, the following
may be cited:
1. The aphids do not attempt to escape from the ants or to defend
themselves with their siphons, but accept the presence of these
attendants as a matter of course.
2. The aphids respond to the solicitations of the ants by extruding the
droplets of honey-dew gradually and not by throwing them off to a
distance with a sudden jerk, as they do in the absence of ants.
3. Many species of Aphididae that live habitually with ants have
developed a perianal circlet of stiff hairs which support the drop of
honey-dew till it can be imbibed by the ants. This circlet is lacking in
aphids that are rarely or never visited by ants.
4. Certain observations go to show that aphids, when visited by ants,
extract more of the plant juices than when unattended.
The adaptations on the part of the ants are, with a single doubtful
exception, all modifications in behavior and not in structure.
1. Ants do not seize and kill aphids as they do when they encounter
other sedentary defenseless insects.
2. The ants stroke the aphids in a particular manner in order to make
them excrete the honey-dew, and know exactly where to expect the
evacuated liquid.
3. The ants protect the aphids. Several observers have seen the ants
driving away predatory insects.
4. Many aphidicolous ants, when disturbed, at once seize and carry their
charges in their mandibles to a place of safety, showing very plainly
their sense of ownership and interest in these helpless creatures.
5. This is also exhibited by all ants that harbor root-aphids and
root-coccids in their nests. Not only are these insects kept in
confinement by the ants, but they are placed by them on the roots. In
order to do this the ants remove the earth from the surfaces of the
roots and construct galleries and chambers around them so that the
Homoptera may have easy access to their food and even move about at
will.
6. Many ants construct, often at some distance from their nests, little
closed pavilions or sheds of earth, carton, or silk, as a protection for
their cattle and for themselves. The singular habit may be merely a more
recent development from the older and more general habit of excavating
tunnels and chambers about roots and subterranean stems.
7. The solicitude of the ants not only envelops the adult aphids and
coccids, but extends also to their eggs and young. Numerous observers
have observed ants in the autumn collecting and storing aphid eggs in
the chambers of their nests, caring for them through the winter and in
the spring placing the recently hatched plant lice on the stems and
roots of the plants.
In the foregoing I have discussed the ethological relations of ants to a
variety of other organisms. This, however, did not include an account of
some of the most interesting symbiotic relations, namely, those of the
ants to other species of their own taxonomic group and to termites. This
living together of colonies of different species may be properly
designated as social symbiosis, to distinguish it from the simple
symbiosis that obtains between individual organisms of different species
and the intermediate form of symbiosis exhibited by individual organisms
that live in ant or termite colonies.
The researches of the past forty years have brought to light a
remarkable array of instances of social symbiosis, varying so much in
intimacy and complexity that it is possible to construct a series
ranging from mere simultaneous occupancy of a very narrow ethological
station, or mere contiguity of domicile, to an actual fusion, involving
the vital dependence or parasitism of a colony of one species on that of
another. Such a series is, of course, purely conceptual and does not
represent the actual course of development in nature, where, as in the
animal and vegetable kingdoms in general, development has not followed a
simple linear course, but has branched out repeatedly and terminated in
the varied types at the present time.
It is convenient to follow the European writers, von Hagens, Forel,
Wasmann, and others, in grouping all the cases of social symbiosis under
two heads, the compound nests and the mixed colonies. Different species
of ants or of ants and termites are said to form compound nests when
their galleries are merely contiguous or actually interpenetrate and
open into one another, although the colonies which inhabit them bring
up their respective offspring in different apartments. In mixed
colonies, on the other hand, which, in a state of nature, can be formed
only by species of ants of close taxonomic affinities, the insects live
together in a single nest and bring up their young in common. Although
each of these categories comprises a number of dissimilar types of
social symbiosis, and although it is possible, under certain
circumstances, as will be shown in the sequel, to convert a compound
nest into a mixed colony, the distinction is nevertheless fundamental.
It must be admitted, however, that both types depend in last analysis on
the dependent, adoption-seeking instincts of the queen ant and on the
remarkable plasticity which enables allied species and genera to live in
very close proximity to one another. By a strange paradox these
peculiarities have been produced in the struggle for existence, although
this struggle is severer among different species of ants than between
ants and other organisms. As Forel says: "The greatest enemies of ants
are other ants, just as the greatest enemies of men are other men."
3. The Taming and the Domestication of Animals[83]
Primitive man was a hunter almost before he had the intelligence to use
weapons, and from the earliest times he must have learned something
about the habits of the wild animals he pursued for food or for
pleasure, or from which he had to escape. It was probably as a hunter
that he first came to adopt young animals which he found in the woods or
the plains, and made the surprising discovery that these were willing to
remain under his protection and were pleasing and useful. He passed
gradually from being a hunter to becoming a keeper of flocks and herds.
From these early days to the present time, the human race has taken an
interest in the lower animals, and yet extremely few have been really
domesticated. The living world would seem to offer an almost unlimited
range of creatures which might be turned to our profit and as
domesticated animals minister to our comfort or convenience. And yet it
seems as if there were some obstacle rooted in the nature of animals or
in the powers of man, for the date of the adoption by man of the few
domesticated species lies in remote, prehistoric antiquity. The surface
of the earth has been explored, the physiology of breeding and feeding
has been studied, our knowledge of the animal kingdom has been vastly
increased, and yet there is hardly a beast bred in the farm-yard today
with which the men who made stone weapons were not acquainted and which
they had not tamed. Most of the domestic animals of Europe, America, and
Asia came originally from Central Asia, and have spread thence in charge
of their masters, the primitive hunters who captured them.
No monkeys have been domesticated. Of the carnivores only the cat and
the dog are truly domesticated. Of the ungulates there are horses and
asses, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, and reindeer. Among rodents there are
rabbits and guinea-pigs, and possibly some of the fancy breeds of rats
and mice should be included. Among birds there are pigeons, fowls,
peacocks, and guinea-fowl, and aquatic birds such as swans, geese, and
ducks, whilst the only really domesticated passerine bird is the canary.
Goldfish are domesticated, and the invertebrate bees and silk-moths must
not be forgotten. It is not very easy to draw a line between
domesticated animals and animals that are often bred in partial or
complete captivity. Such antelopes as elands, fallow-deer, roe-deer, and
the ostriches of ostrich farms are on the border-line of being
domesticated.
It is also difficult to be quite certain as to what is meant by a tame
animal. Cockroaches usually scuttle away when they are disturbed and
seem to have learnt that human beings have a just grievance against
them. But many people have no horror of them. A pretty girl, clean and
dainty in her ways, and devoted to all kinds of animals, used to like
sitting in a kitchen that was infested with these repulsive creatures,
and told me that when she was alone they would run over her dress and
were not in the least startled when she took them up. I have heard of a
butterfly which used to come and sip sugar from the hand of a lady; and
those who have kept spiders and ants declare that these intelligent
creatures learn to distinguish their friends. So also fish, like the
great carp in the garden of the palace of Fontainebleau, and many fishes
in aquaria and private ponds, learn to come to be fed. I do not think,
however, that these ought to be called tame animals. Most of the wild
animals in menageries very quickly learn to distinguish one person from
another, to obey the call of their keeper and to come to be fed,
although certainly they would be dangerous even to the keeper if he
were to enter their cages. To my mind, tameness is something more than
merely coming to be fed, and, in fact, many tame animals are least tame
when they are feeding. Young carnivores, for instance, which can be
handled freely and are affectionate, very seldom can be touched whilst
they are feeding. The real quality of tameness is that the tame animal
is not merely tolerant of the presence of man, not merely has learned to
associate him with food, but takes some kind of pleasure in human
company and shows some kind of affection.
On the other hand, we must not take our idea of tameness merely from the
domesticated animals. These have been bred for many generations, and
those that were most wild and that showed any resistance to man were
killed or allowed to escape. Dogs are always taken as the supreme
example of tameness, and sentimentalists have almost exhausted the
resources of language in praising them. Like most people, I am very fond
of dogs, but it is an affection without respect. Dogs breed freely in
captivity, and in the enormous period of time that has elapsed since the
first hunters adopted wild puppies there has been a constant selection
by man, and every dog that showed any independence of spirit has been
killed off. Man has tried to produce a purely subservient creature, and
has succeeded in his task. No doubt a dog is faithful and affectionate,
but he would be shot or drowned or ordered to be destroyed by the local
magistrate if he were otherwise. A small vestige of the original spirit
has been left in him, merely from the ambition of his owners to possess
an animal that will not bite them, but will bite anyone else. And even
this watch-dog trait is mechanical, for the guardian of the house will
worry the harmless, necessary postman, and welcome the bold burglar with
fawning delight. The dog is a slave, and the crowning evidence of his
docility, that he will fawn on the person who has beaten him, is the
result of his character having been bred out of him. The dog is an
engaging companion, an animated toy more diverting than the cleverest
piece of clockwork, but it is only our colossal vanity that makes us
take credit for the affection and faithfulness of our own particular
animal. The poor beast cannot help it; all else has been bred out of him
generations ago.
When wild animals become tame, they are really extending or transferring
to human beings the confidence and affection they naturally give their
mothers, and this view will be found to explain more facts about
tameness than any other. Every creature that would naturally enjoy
maternal, or it would be better to say parental, care, as the father
sometimes shares in or takes upon himself the duty of guarding the
young, is ready to transfer its devotion to other animals or to human
beings, if the way be made easy for it, and if it be treated without too
great violation of its natural instincts. The capacity to be tamed is
greatest in those animals that remain longest with their parents and
that are most intimately associated with them. The capacity to learn new
habits is greatest in those animals which naturally learn most from
their parents, and in which the period of youth is not merely a period
of growing, a period of the awakening of instincts, but a time in which
a real education takes place. These capacities of being tamed and of
learning new habits are greater in the higher mammals than in the lower
mammals, in mammals than in birds, and in birds than in reptiles. They
are very much greater in very young animals, where dependence on the
parents is greatest, than in older animals, and they gradually fade away
as the animal grows up, and are least of all in fully grown and
independent creatures of high intelligence.
Young animals born in captivity are no more easy to tame than those
which have been taken from the mother in her native haunts. If they
remain with the mother, they very often grow up even shyer and more
intolerant of man than the mothers themselves. There is no inherited
docility or tameness, and a general survey of the facts fully bears out
my belief that the process of taming is almost entirely a transference
to human beings of the confidence and affection that a young animal
would naturally give its mother. The process of domestication is
different, and requires breeding a race of animals in captivity for many
generations and gradually weeding out those in which youthful tameness
is replaced by the wild instinct of adult life, and so creating a strain
with new and abnormal instincts.
B. PLANT COMMUNITIES AND ANIMAL SOCIETIES
1. Plant Communities[84]
Certain species group themselves into natural associations, that is to
say, into communities which we meet with more or less frequently and
which exhibit the same combination of growth-forms and the same facies.
As examples in northern Europe may be cited a meadow with its grasses
and perennial herbs, or a beech forest with its beech trees and all the
species usually accompanying these. Species that form a community must
either practice the same economy, making approximately the same demands
on its environment (as regards nourishment, light, moisture, and so
forth), or one species present must be dependent for its existence upon
another species, sometimes to such an extent that the latter provides it
with what is necessary or even best suited to it (Oxalis Acetosella and
saprophytes which profit from the shade of the beech and from its humus
soil); a kind of symbiosis seems to prevail between such species. In
fact, one often finds, as in beech forests, that the plants growing
under the shade and protection of other species, and belonging to the
most diverse families, assume growth-forms that are very similar to one
another, but essentially different from those of the forest trees,
which, in their turn, often agree with one another.
The ecological analysis of a plant-community leads to the recognition of
the growth-forms composing it as its ultimate units. From what has just
been said in regard to growth-forms it follows that species of very
diverse physiognomy can very easily occur together in the same natural
community. But beyond this, as already indicated, species differing
widely, not only in physiognomy but also in their whole economy, may be
associated. We may therefore expect to find both great variety of form
and complexity of interrelations among the species composing a natural
community; as an example we may cite the richest of all types of
communities--the tropical rain-forest. It may also be noted that the
physiognomy of a community is not necessarily the same at all times of
the year, the distinction sometimes being caused by a rotation of
species.
The different communities, it need hardly be stated, are scarcely ever
sharply marked off from one another. Just as soil, moisture, and other
external conditions are connected by the most gradual transitions, so
likewise are the plant-communities, especially in cultivated lands. In
addition, the same species often occur in several widely different
communities; for example, Linnaea borealis grows not only in coniferous
forests, but also in birch woods, and even high above the tree limit on
the mountains of Norway and on the fell-fields of Greenland. It appears
that different combinations of external factors can replace one another
and bring into existence approximately the same community, or at least
can satisfy equally well one and the same species, and that, for
instance, a moist climate often completely replaces the forest shade of
dry climates.
The term "community" implies a diversity but at the same time a certain
organized uniformity in the units. The units are the many individual
plants that occur in every community, whether this be a beech forest, a
meadow, or a heath. Uniformity is established when certain atmospheric,
terrestrial, and other factors are co-operative, and appears either
because a certain defined economy makes its impress on the community as
a whole, or because a number of different growth-forms are combined to
form a single aggregate which has a definite and constant guise.
The analysis of a plant-community usually reveals one or more of the
kinds of symbiosis as illustrated by parasites, saprophytes, epiphytes,
and the like. There is scarce a forest or a bushland where examples of
these forms of symbiosis are lacking; if, for instance, we investigate
the tropical rain-forest we are certain to find in it all conceivable
kinds of symbiosis. But the majority of individuals of a plant-community
are linked by bonds other than those mentioned--bonds that are best
described as _commensal_. The term _commensalism_ is due to Van Beneden,
who wrote, "Le commensal est simplement un compagnon de table"; but we
employ it in a somewhat different sense to denote the relationship
subsisting between species which share with one another the supply of
food-material contained in soil and air, and thus feed at the same
table.
More detailed analysis of the plant-community reveals very considerable
distinctions among commensals. Some relationships are considered in the
succeeding paragraphs.
_Like commensals._--When a plant-community consists solely of
individuals belonging to one species--for example, solely of beech,
ling, or Aira flexuosa--then we have the purest example of like
commensals. These all make the same demands as regards nutriment, soil,
light, and other like conditions; as each species requires a certain
amount of space and as there is scarcely ever sufficient nutriment for
all the offspring, a struggle for food arises among the plants so soon
as the space is occupied by the definite numbers of individuals which,
according to the species, can develop thereon. The individuals lodged in
unfavorable places and the weaklings are vanquished and exterminated.
This competitive struggle takes place in all plant-communities, with
perhaps the sole exceptions of sub-glacial communities and in deserts.
In these _open communities_ the soil is very often or always so open and
so irregularly clothed that there is space for many more individuals
than are actually present; the cause for this is obviously to be sought
in the climatically unfavorable conditions of life, which either prevent
plants from producing seed and other propagative bodies in sufficient
numbers to clothe the ground or prevent the development of seedlings. On
such soil one can scarcely speak of a competitive struggle for
existence; in this case a struggle takes place between the plant and
inanimate nature, but to little or no extent between plant and plant.
That a congregation of individuals belonging to one species into one
community may be profitable to the species is evident; it may obviously
in several ways aid in maintaining the existence of the species, for
instance, by facilitating abundant and certain fertilization (especially
in anemophilous plants) and maturation of seeds; in addition, the social
mode of existence may confer other less-known advantages. But, on the
other hand, it brings with it greater danger of serious damage and
devastation wrought by parasites.
The bonds that hold like individuals to a like habitat are, as already
indicated, identical demands as regards existence, and these demands are
satisfied in their precise habitat to such an extent that the species
can maintain itself here against rivals. Natural unmixed associations of
forest trees are the result of struggles with other species. But there
are differences as regards the ease with which a community can arise and
establish itself. Some species are more social than others, that is to
say, better fitted to form communities. The causes for this are
biological, in that some species, like Phragmites, Scirpus lacustris,
Psamma (Ammophila) arenaria, Tussilago, Farfara, and Asperula odorata,
multiply very readily by means of stolons; or others, such as Cirsium
arvense, and Sonchus arvensis, produce buds from their roots; or yet
others produce numerous seeds which are easily dispersed and may remain
for a long time capable of germinating, as is the case with Calluna,
Picea excelsa, and Pinus; or still other species, such as beech and
spruce, have the power of enduring shade or even suppressing other
species by the shade they cast. A number of species, such as Pteris
aquilina, Acorus Calamus, Lemna minor, and Hypnum Schreberi, which are
social, and likewise very widely distributed, multiply nearly
exclusively by vegetative means, rarely or never producing fruit. On the
contrary, certain species, for example, many orchids and Umbelliferae,
nearly always grow singly.
In the case of many species certain geological conditions have favored
their grouping together into pure communities. The forests of northern
Europe are composed of few species, and are not mixed in the same sense
as are those in the tropics, or even those in Austria and other southern
parts of Europe: the cause for this may be that the soil is geologically
very recent, inasmuch as the time that has elapsed since the glacial
epoch swept it clear has been too short to permit the immigration of
many competitive species.
_Unlike commensals._--The case of a community consisting of individuals
belonging to one species is, strictly speaking, scarcely ever met with;
but the dominant individuals of a community may belong to a single
species, as in the case of a beech forest, spruce forest, or ling
heath--and only thus far does the case proceed. In general, many species
grow side by side, and many different growth-forms and types of
symbiosis, in the extended sense, are found collected in a community.
For even when one species occupies an area as completely as the nature
of the soil will permit, other species can find room and can grow
between its individuals; in fact, if the soil is to be completely
covered the vegetation must necessarily always be heterogeneous. The
greatest aggregate of existence arises where the greatest diversity
prevails. The kind of communal life resulting will depend upon the
nature of the demands made by the species in regard to conditions of
life. As in human communities, so in this case, the _struggle between
the like_ is the _most severe_, that is, between the species making more
or less the same demands and wanting the same dishes from the common
table. In a tropical mixed forest there are hundreds of species of trees
growing together in such profuse variety that the eye can scarce see at
one time two individuals of the same species, yet all of them
undoubtedly represent tolerable uniformity in the demands they make as
regards conditions of life, and in so far they are alike. And among them
a severe competition for food must be taking place. In those cases in
which certain species readily grow in each other's company--and cases of
this kind are familiar to florists--when, for instance, Isoetes, Lobelia
Dortmanna, and Litorella lacustris occur together--the common demands
made as regards external conditions obviously form the bond that unites
them. Between such species a competitive struggle must take place. Which
of the species shall be represented by the greatest number of
individuals certainly often depends upon casual conditions, a slight
change in one direction or the other doubtless often playing a decisive
rôle; but apart from this it appears that morphological and biological
features, for example, development at a different season, may change the
nature of the competition.
Yet there are in every plant-community numerous species which _differ
widely_ in the demands they make for light, heat, nutriment, and so on.
Between such species there is less competition, the greater the
disparity in their wants; the case is quite conceivable in which the
_one species should require exactly what the other would avoid_; the two
species would then be complementary to one another in their occupation
and utilization of the same soil.
There are also obvious cases in which different species are of service
to each other. The carpet of moss in a pine forest, for example,
protects the soil from desiccation and is thus useful to the pine; yet,
on the other hand, it profits from the shade cast by the latter.
As a rule, limited numbers of definite species are the most potent, and,
like absolute monarchs, can hold sway over the whole area; while other
species, though possibly present in far greater numbers than these, are
subordinate or even dependent on them. This is the case where
subordinate species only flourish in the shade or among the fallen
fragments of dominant species. Such is obviously the relationship
between trees and many plants growing on the ground of high forest, such
as mosses, fungi, and other saprophytes, ferns, Oxalis Acetosella, and
their associates. In this case, then, there is a commensalism in which
individuals feed at the same table but on different fare. An additional
factor steps in when species do not absorb their nutriment at the same
season of the year. Many spring plants--for instance, Galanthus nivalis,
Corydalis solida, and C. cava--have withered before the summer plants
commence properly to develop. Certain species of animals are likewise
confined to certain plant-communities. But one and the same tall plant
may, in different places or soils, have different species of lowly
plants as companions; the companion plants of high beech forests depend,
for instance, upon climate and upon the nature of the forest soil; Pinus
nigra, according to von Beck, can maintain under it in the different
parts of Europe a Pontic, a central European, or a Baltic vegetation.
There are certain points of resemblance between communities of plants
and those of human beings or animals; one of these is the competition
for food which takes place between similar individuals and causes the
weaker to be more or less suppressed. But far greater are the
distinctions. The plant-community is the lowest form; it is merely a
congregation of units, among which there is no co-operation for the
common weal, but rather a ceaseless struggle of all against all. Only in
a loose sense can we speak of certain individuals protecting others, as
for example, when the outermost and most exposed individuals of scrub
serve to shelter from the wind others, which consequently become taller
and finer; for they do not afford protection from any special motive,
such as is met with in some animal communities, nor are they in any way
specially adapted to act as guardians against a common foe. In the
plant-community egoism reigns supreme. The plant-community has no higher
units or personages in the sense employed in connection with human
communities, which have their own organizations and their members
co-operating, as prescribed by law, for the common good. In
plant-communities there is, it is true, often (or always) a certain
natural dependence or reciprocal influence of many species upon one
another; they give rise to definite organized units of a higher order;
but there is no thorough or organized division of labor such as is met
with in human and animal communities, where certain individuals or
groups of individuals work as organs, in the wide sense of the term, for
the benefit of the whole community.
Woodhead has suggested the term _complementary association_ to denote a
community of species that live together in harmony, because their
rhizomes occupy different depths in the soil; for example, he described
an "association" in which Holcus mollis is the "surface plant," Pteris
aquilina has deeper-seated rhizomes, and Scilla festalis buries its
bulbs at the greatest depth. The photophilous parts of these plants are
"seasonably complementary." The opposite extreme is provided by
_competitive associations_, composed of species that are battling with
each other.
2. Ant Society[85]
There is certainly a striking parallelism between the development of
human and ant societies. Some anthropologists, like Topinard,
distinguish in the development of human societies six different types or
stages, designated as the hunting, pastoral, agricultural, commercial,
industrial, and intellectual. The ants show stages corresponding to the
first three of these, as Lubbock has remarked.
Some species, such as _Formica fusca_, live principally on the
produce of the chase; for though they feed partially on the
honey-dew of aphids, they have not domesticated these insects.
These ants probably retain the habits once common to all ants.
They resemble the lower races of men, who subsist mainly by
hunting. Like them they frequent woods and wilds, live in
comparatively small communities, as the instincts of collective
action are but little developed among them. They hunt singly,
and their battles are single combats, like those of Homeric
heroes. Such species as _Lasius flavus_ represent a distinctly
higher type of social life; they show more skill in
architecture, may literally be said to have domesticated
certain species of aphids, and may be compared to the pastoral
stage of human progress--to the races which live on the
products of their flocks and herds. Their communities are more
numerous; they act much more in concert; their battles are not
mere single combats, but they know how to act in combination. I
am disposed to hazard the conjecture that they will gradually
exterminate the mere hunting species, just as savages disappear
before more advanced races. Lastly, the agricultural nations
may be compared with the harvesting ants.
Granting the resemblances above mentioned between ant and human
societies, there are nevertheless three far-reaching differences between
insect and human organization and development to be constantly borne in
mind:
a) Ant societies are societies of females. The males really take no
part in the colonial activities, and in most species are present in the
nest only for the brief period requisite to secure the impregnation of
the young queens. The males take no part in building, provisioning, or
guarding the nest or in feeding the workers or the brood. They are in
every sense the _sexus sequior_. Hence the ants resemble certain
mythical human societies like the Amazons, but unlike these, all their
activities center in the multiplication and care of the coming
generations.
b) In human society, apart from the functions depending on sexual
dimorphism, and barring individual differences and deficiencies which
can be partially or wholly suppressed, equalized, or augmented by an
elaborate system of education, all individuals have the same natural
endowment. Each normal individual retains its various physiological and
psychological needs and powers intact, not necessarily sacrificing any
of them for the good of the community. In ants, however, the female
individuals, of which the society properly consists, are not all alike
but often very different, both in their structure (polymorphism) and in
their activities (physiological division of labor). Each member is
_visibly_ predestined to certain social activities to the exclusion of
others, not as a man through the education of some endowment common to
all the members of the society, but through the exigencies of structure,
fixed at the time of hatching, i.e., the moment the individual enters on
its life as an active member of the community.
c) Owing to this pre-established structure and the specialized
functions which it implies, ants are able to live in a condition of
anarchistic socialism, each individual instinctively fulfilling the
demands of social life without "guide, overseer, or ruler," as Solomon
correctly observed, but not without the imitation and suggestion
involved in an appreciation of the activities of its fellows.
An ant society, therefore, may be regarded as little more than an
expanded family, the members of which co-operate for the purpose of
still further expanding the family and detaching portions of itself to
found other families of the same kind. There is thus a striking analogy,
which has not escaped the philosophical biologist, between the ant
colony and the cell colony which constitutes the body of a Metazoan
animal; and many of the laws that control the cellular origin,
development, growth, reproduction, and decay of the individual Metazoan,
are seen to hold good also of the ant society regarded as an individual
of a higher order. As in the case of the individual animal, no further
purpose of the colony can be detected than that of maintaining itself
in the face of a constantly changing environment till it is able to
reproduce other colonies of a like constitution. The queen-mother of the
ant colony displays the generalized potentialities of all the
individuals, just as the Metazoan egg contains _in potentia_ all the
other cells of the body. And, continuing the analogy, we may say that
since the different castes of the ant colony are morphologically
specialized for the performance of different functions, they are truly
comparable with the differentiated tissues of the Metazoan body.
C. HUMAN SOCIETY
1. Social Life[86]
The most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that
the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists.
If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it
remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller
bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may
maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a
contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing
may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn
the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence.
If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least
in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing.
As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its
own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To
say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own
conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus
turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the
return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this
sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and
controls for its own continued activity the energies that would
otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon
the environment. Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the
environment to the needs of living organisms.
We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms--as a physical thing.
But we use the word "life" to denote the whole range of experience,
individual and racial. When we see a book called the _Life of Lincoln_
we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We
look for an account of social antecedents; a description of early
surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the
chief episodes in the development of character; of signal struggles and
achievements; of the individual's hopes, tastes, joys, and sufferings.
In precisely similar fashion we speak of the life of a savage tribe, of
the Athenian people, of the American nation. "Life" covers customs,
institutions, beliefs, victories and defeats, recreations and
occupations.
We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And to it,
as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of
continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical
existence goes, in the case of human beings, the re-creation of beliefs,
ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The continuity of any
experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact.
Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity
of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a
modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without
language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each
unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time
passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.
Society exists through a process of transmission, quite as much as
biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of
habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.
Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards,
opinions from those members of society who are passing out of the group
life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive.
Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_ transmission,
_in_ communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words
common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue
of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in
which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in
common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs,
aspirations, knowledge--a common understanding--like-mindedness, as the
sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to
another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie
by dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures
participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar
emotional and intellectual dispositions--like ways of responding to
expectations and requirements.
Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more
than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or
miles removed from others. A book or a letter may institute a more
intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles
from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof.
Individuals do not even compose a social group because they all work for
a common end. The parts of a machine work with a maximum of
co-operativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community.
If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all
interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view
of it, then they would form a community. But this would involve
communication. Each would have to know what the other was about and
would have to have some way of keeping the other informed as to his own
purpose and progress. Consensus demands communications.
We are thus compelled to recognize that within even the most social
group there are many relations which are not as yet social. A large
number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the
machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired
results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition
and consent of those used. Such uses express physical superiority, or
superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools,
mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of parent and child,
teacher and pupil, employer and employee, governor and governed, remain
upon this level, they form no true social group, no matter how closely
their respective activities touch one another. Giving and taking of
orders modifies action and results, but does not of itself effect a
sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.
Not only is social life identical with communication, but all
communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be a
recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed
experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt, and in so
far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the one
who communicates left unaffected. Try the experiment of communicating,
with fulness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it
be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your
experience changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and
ejaculations. The experience has to be formulated in order to be
communicated. To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as
another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the
life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can
appreciate its meaning. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch
phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's
experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience.
All communication is like art. It may fairly be said, therefore, that
any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared,
is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast
in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power.
In final account, then, not only does social life demand teaching and
learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together
educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience; it stimulates and
enriches imagination; it creates responsibility for accuracy and
vividness of statement and thought. A man really living alone (alone
mentally as well as physically) would have little or no occasion to
reflect upon his past experience to extract its net meaning. The
inequality of achievement between the mature and the immature not only
necessitates teaching the young, but the necessity of this teaching
gives an immense stimulus to reducing experience to that order and form
which will render it most easily communicable and hence most usable.
2. Behavior and Conduct[87]
The word "behavior" is commonly used in an interesting variety of ways.
We speak of the behavior of ships at sea, of soldiers in battle, and of
little boys in Sunday school.
"The geologist," as Lloyd Morgan remarks, "tells us that a glacier
behaves in many respects like a river, and discusses how the crust of
the earth behaves under the stresses to which it is subjected.
Weatherwise people comment on the behavior of the mercury in the
barometer as a storm approaches. When Mary, the nurse maid, returns with
the little Miss Smiths from Master Brown's birthday party, she is
narrowly questioned as to their behavior."
In short, the word is familiar both to science and to common sense, and
is applied with equal propriety to the actions of physical objects and
to the manners of men. The abstract sciences, quite as much as the
concrete and descriptive, are equally concerned with behavior. "The
chemist and the physicist often speak of the behavior of the atoms and
the molecules, or of that of gas under changing conditions of
temperature and pressure." The fact is that every science is everywhere
seeking to describe and explain the movements, changes, and reactions,
that is to say the behavior, of some portion of the world about us.
Indeed, wherever we consciously set ourselves to observe and reflect
upon the changes going on about us, it is always behavior that we are
interested in. Science is simply a little more persistent in its
curiosity and a little nicer and more exact in its observation than
common sense. And this disposition to observe, to take a disinterested
view of things, is, by the way, one of the characteristics of human
nature which distinguishes it from the nature of all other animals.
Since every science has to do with some form of behavior, the first
question that arises is this: What do we mean by behavior in human
beings as distinguished from that in other animals? What is there
distinctive about the actions of human beings that marks them off and
distinguishes them from the actions of animals and plants with which
human beings have so much in common?
The problem is the more difficult because, in some one or other of its
aspects, human behavior involves processes which are characteristic of
almost every form of nature. We sometimes speak, for example, of the
human machine. Indeed, from one point of view human beings may be
regarded as psycho-physical mechanisms for carrying on the vital
processes of nutrition, reproduction, and movement. The human body is,
in fact, an immensely complicated machine, whose operations involve an
enormous number of chemical and physical reactions, all of which may be
regarded as forms of human behavior.
Human beings are, however, not wholly or merely machines; they are
living organisms and as such share with the plants and the lower animals
certain forms of behavior which it has not thus far, at any rate, been
possible to reduce to the exact and lucid formulas of either chemistry
or physics.
Human beings are, however, not merely organisms: they are the home and
the habitat of minuter organisms. The human body is, in a certain sense,
an organization--a sort of social organization--of the minute and simple
organisms of which it is composed, namely, the cells, each of which has
its own characteristic mode of behavior. In fact, the life of human
beings, just as the life of all other creatures above the simple
unicellular organisms, may be said to consist of the corporate life of
the smaller organisms of which it is composed. In human beings, as in
some great city, the division of labor among the minuter organisms has
been carried further, the interdependence of the individual parts is
more complete, and the corporate life of the whole more complex.
It is not strange, therefore, that Lloyd Morgan begins his studies of
animal behavior by a description of the behavior of the cells and
Thorndike in his volume, _The Original Nature of Man_, is led to the
conclusion that the original tendencies of man have their basis in the
neurones, or nerve cells, and in the changes which these cells and their
ancestors have undergone, as a result of the necessity of carrying on
common and corporate existences as integral parts of the human organism.
All acquired characteristics of men, everything that they learn, is due
to mutual stimulations and associations of the neurones, just as
sociologists are now disposed to explain civilization and progress as
phenomena due to the interaction and association of human beings, rather
than to any fundamental changes in human nature itself. In other words,
the difference between a savage and a civilized man is not due to any
fundamental differences in their brain cells but to the connections and
mutual stimulations which are established by experience and education
between those cells. In the savage those possibilities are not absent
but latent. In the same way the difference between the civilization of
Central Africa and that of Western Europe is due, not to the difference
in native abilities of the individuals and the peoples who have created
them, but rather to the form which the association and interaction
between those individuals and groups of individuals has taken. We
sometimes attribute the difference in culture which we meet among races
to the climate and physical conditions generally, but, in the long run,
the difference is determined by the way in which climate and physical
condition determine the contacts and communications of individuals.
So, too, in the corporate life of the individual man it is the
association of the nerve cells, their lines of connection and
communication, that is responsible for the most of the differences
between the ignorant and the educated, the savage and civilized man. The
neurone, however, is a little unicellular animal, like the amoeba or the
paramecium. Its life consists of: (1) eating, (2) excreting waste
products, (3) growing, (4) being sensitive, and (5) movement, and, as
Thorndike expresses it: "The safest provisional hypothesis about the
action of the neurones singly is that they retain the modes of behavior
common to unicellular animals, so far as consistent with the special
conditions of their life as an element of man's nervous system."
In the widest sense of the term, behavior may be said to include all the
chemical and physical changes that go on inside the organism, as well as
every response to stimulus either from within or from without the
organism. In recent studies of animal behavior, however, the word has
acquired a special and technical meaning in which it is applied
exclusively to those actions that have been, or may be, modified by
conscious experience. What the animal does in its efforts to find food
is behavior, but the processes of digestion are relegated to another
field of observation, namely, physiology.
In all the forms of behavior thus far referred to, human and animal
nature are not fundamentally distinguished. There are, however, ways of
acting that are peculiar to human nature, forms of behavior that man
does not share with the lower animals. One thing which seems to
distinguish man from the brute is self-consciousness. One of the
consequences of intercourse, as it exists among human beings, is that
they are led to reflect upon their own impulses and motives for action,
to set up standards by which they seek to govern themselves. The clock
is such a standard. We all know from experience that time moves more
slowly on dull days, when there is nothing doing, than in moments of
excitement. On the other hand, when life is active and stirring, time
flies. The clock standardizes our subjective tempos and we control
ourselves by the clock. An animal never looks at the clock and this is
typical of the different ways in which human beings and animals behave.
Human beings, so far as we have yet been able to learn, are the only
creatures who habitually pass judgment upon their own actions, or who
think of them as right or wrong. When these thoughts about our actions
or the actions of others get themselves formulated and expressed they
react back upon and control us. That is one reason we hang mottoes on
the wall. That is why one sees on the desk of a busy man the legend "Do
it now!" The brutes do not know these devices. They do not need them
perhaps. They have no aim in life. They do not work.
What distinguishes the action of men from animals may best be expressed
in the word "conduct." Conduct as it is ordinarily used is applied to
actions which may be regarded as right or wrong, moral or immoral. As
such it is hardly a descriptive term since there does not seem to be any
distinctive mark about the actions which men have at different times and
places called moral or immoral. I have used it here to distinguish the
sort of behavior which may be regarded as distinctively and exclusively
human, namely, that which is self-conscious and personal. In this sense
blushing may be regarded as a form of conduct, quite as much as the
manufacture of tools, trade and barter, conversation or prayer.
No doubt all these activities have their beginnings in, and are founded
upon, forms of behavior of which we may find the rudiments in the lower
animals. But there is in all distinctively human activities a
conventional, one might almost say a contractual, element which is
absent in action of other animals. Human actions are more often than not
controlled by a sense or understanding of what they look like or appear
to be to others. This sense and understanding gets itself embodied in
some custom or ceremonial observance. In this form it is transmitted
from generation to generation, becomes an object of sentimental respect,
gets itself embodied in definite formulas, is an object not only of
respect and reverence but of reflection and speculation as well. As such
it constitutes the mores, or moral customs, of a group and is no longer
to be regarded as an individual possession.
3. Instinct and Character[88]
In no part of the world, and at no period of time, do we find the
behavior of men left to unchartered freedom. Everywhere human life is in
a measure organized and directed by customs, laws, beliefs, ideals,
which shape its ends and guide its activities. As this guidance of life
by rule is universal in human society, so upon the whole it is peculiar
to humanity. There is no reason to think that any animal except man can
enunciate or apply general rules of conduct. Nevertheless, there is not
wanting something that we can call an organization of life in the animal
world. How much of intelligence underlies the social life of the higher
animals is indeed extremely hard to determine. In the aid which they
often render to one another, in their combined hunting, in their play,
in the use of warning cries, and the employment of "sentinels," which is
so frequent among birds and mammals, it would appear at first sight that
a considerable measure of _mutual understanding_ is implied, that we
find at least an analogue to human custom, to the assignment of
functions, the division of labor, which mutual reliance renders
possible. How far the analogy may be pressed, and whether terms like
"custom" and "mutual understanding," drawn from human experience, are
rightly applicable to animal societies, are questions on which we shall
touch presently. Let us observe first that as we descend the animal
scale the sphere of _intelligent activity_ is gradually narrowed down,
and yet behavior is still regulated. The lowest organisms have their
definite methods of action under given conditions. The amoeba shrinks
into itself at a touch, withdraws the pseudopodium that is roughly
handled, or makes its way round the small object which will serve it as
food. Given the conditions, it acts in the way best suited to avoid
danger or to secure nourishment. We are a long way from the intelligent
regulation of conduct by a general principle, but we still find action
adapted to the requirements of organic life.
When we come to human society we find the basis for a social
organization of life already laid in the animal nature of man. Like
others of the higher animals, man is a gregarious beast. His interests
lie in his relations to his fellows, in his love for wife and children,
in his companionship, possibly in his rivalry and striving with his
fellow-men. His loves and hates, his joys and sorrows, his pride, his
wrath, his gentleness, his boldness, his timidity--all these permanent
qualities, which run through humanity and vary only in degree, belong to
his inherited structure. Broadly speaking, they are of the nature of
instincts, but instincts which have become highly plastic in their mode
of operation and which need the stimulus of experience to call them
forth and give them definite shape.
The mechanical methods of reaction which are so prominent low down in
the animal scale fill quite a minor place in human life. The ordinary
operations of the body, indeed, go upon their way mechanically enough.
In walking or in running, in saving ourselves from a fall, in coughing,
sneezing, or swallowing, we react as mechanically as do the lower
animals; but in the distinctly human modes of behavior, the place taken
by the inherited structure is very different. Hunger and thirst no doubt
are of the nature of instincts, but the methods of satisfying hunger and
thirst are acquired by experience or by teaching. Love and the whole
family life have an instinctive basis, that is to say, they rest upon
tendencies inherited with the brain and nerve structure; but everything
that has to do with the satisfaction of these impulses is determined by
the experience of the individual, the laws and customs of the society in
which he lives, the woman whom he meets, the accidents of their
intercourse, and so forth. Instinct, already plastic and modifiable in
the higher animals, becomes in man a basis of character which determines
how he will take his experience, but without experience is a mere blank
form upon which nothing is yet written.
For example, it is an ingrained tendency of average human nature to be
moved by the opinion of our neighbors. This is a powerful motive in
conduct, but the kind of conduct to which it will incite clearly depends
on the kind of thing that our neighbors approve. In some parts of the
world ambition for renown will prompt a man to lie in wait for a woman
or child in order to add a fresh skull to his collection. In other parts
he may be urged by similar motives to pursue a science or paint a
picture. In all these cases the same hereditary or instinctive element
is at work, that quality of character which makes a man respond
sensitively to the feelings which others manifest toward him. But the
kind of conduct which this sensitiveness may dictate depends wholly on
the social environment in which the man finds himself. Similarly it is,
as the ordinary phrase quite justly puts it, "in human nature" to stand
up for one's rights. A man will strive, that is, to secure that which he
has counted on as his due. But as to what he counts upon, as to the
actual treatment which he expects under given circumstances, his views
are determined by the "custom of the country," by what he sees others
insisting on and obtaining, by what has been promised him, and so forth.
Even such an emotion as sexual jealousy, which seems deeply rooted in
the animal nature, is largely limited in its exercise and determined in
the form it takes by custom. A hospitable savage, who will lend his wife
to a guest, would kill her for acting in the same way on her own motion.
In the one case he exercises his rights of proprietorship; in the other,
she transgresses them. It is the maintenance of a claim which jealousy
concerns itself with, and the standard determining the claim is the
custom of the country.
In human society, then, the conditions regulating conduct are from the
first greatly modified. Instinct, becoming vague and more general, has
evolved into "character," while the intelligence finds itself confronted
with customs to which it has to accommodate conduct. But how does custom
arise? Let us first consider what custom is. It is not merely a habit of
action; but it implies also a judgment upon action, and a judgment
stated in general and impersonal terms. It would seem to imply a
bystander or third party. If A hits B, B probably hits back. It is his
"habit" so to do. But if C, looking on, pronounces that it was or was
not a fair blow, he will probably appeal to the "custom" of the
country--the traditional rules of fighting, for instance--as the ground
of his judgment. That is, he will lay down a rule which is general in
the sense that it would apply to other individuals under similar
conditions, and by it he will, as an impartial third person, appraise
the conduct of the contending parties. The formation of such rules,
resting as it does on the power of framing and applying general
conceptions, is the prime differentia of human morality from animal
behavior. The fact that they arise and are handed on from generation to
generation makes social tradition at once the dominating factor in the
regulation of human conduct. Without such rules we can scarcely conceive
society to exist, since it is only through the general conformity to
custom that men can understand each other, that each can know how the
other will act under given circumstances, and without this amount of
understanding the reciprocity, which is the vital principle of society,
disappears.
4. Collective Representation and Intellectual Life[89]
Logical thought is made up of concepts. Seeking how society can have
played a rôle in the genesis of logical thought thus reduces itself to
seeking how it can have taken a part in the formation of concepts.
The concept is opposed to sensual representations of every
order--sensations, perceptions, or images--by the following properties.
Sensual representations are in a perpetual flux; they come after each
other like the waves of a river, and even during the time that they last
they do not remain the same thing. Each of them is an integral part of
the precise instant when it takes place. We are never sure of again
finding a perception such as we experienced it the first time; for if
the thing perceived has not changed, it is we who are no longer the
same. On the contrary, the concept is, as it were, outside of time and
change; it is in the depths below all this agitation; it might be said
that it is in a different portion of the mind, which is serener and
calmer. It does not move of itself, by an internal and spontaneous
evolution, but, on the contrary, it resists change. It is a manner of
thinking that, at every moment of time, is fixed and crystallized. In so
far as it is what it ought to be, it is immutable. If it changes, it is
not because it is its nature to do so, but because we have discovered
some imperfection in it; it is because it had to be rectified. The
system of concepts with which we think in everyday life is that
expressed by the vocabulary of our mother-tongue; for every word
translates a concept. Now language is something fixed; it changes but
very slowly, and consequently it is the same with the conceptual system
which it expresses. The scholar finds himself in the same situation in
regard to the special terminology employed by the science to which he
has consecrated himself, and hence in regard to the special scheme of
concepts to which this terminology corresponds. It is true that he can
make innovations, but these are always a sort of violence done to the
established ways of thinking.
And at the same time that it is relatively immutable, the concept is
universal, or at least capable of becoming so. A concept is not my
concept; I hold it in common with other men, or, in any case, can
communicate it to them. It is impossible for me to make a sensation pass
from my consciousness into that of another; it holds closely to my
organism and personality and cannot be detached from them. All that I
can do is to invite others to place themselves before the same object as
myself and to leave themselves to its action. On the other hand,
conversation and all intellectual communication between men is an
exchange of concepts. The concept is an essentially impersonal
representation; it is through it that human intelligences communicate.
The nature of the concept, thus defined, bespeaks its origin. If it is
common to all, it is the work of the community. Since it bears the mark
of no particular mind, it is clear that it was elaborated by a unique
intelligence, where all others meet each other, and after a fashion,
come to nourish themselves. If it has more stability than sensations or
images, it is because the collective representations are more stable
than the individual ones; for while an individual is conscious even of
the slight changes which take place in his environment, only events of a
greater gravity can succeed in affecting the mental status of a society.
Every time that we are in the presence of a _type_ of thought or action
which is imposed uniformly upon particular wills or intelligences, this
pressure exercised over the individual betrays the intervention of the
group. Also, as we have already said, the concepts with which we
ordinarily think are those of our vocabulary. Now it is unquestionable
that language, and consequently the system of concepts which it
translates, is the product of collective elaboration. What it expresses
is the manner in which society as a whole represents the facts of
experience. The ideas which correspond to the diverse elements of
language are thus collective representations.
Even their contents bear witness to the same fact. In fact, there are
scarcely any words among those which we usually employ whose meaning
does not pass, to a greater or less extent, the limits of our personal
experience. Very frequently a term expresses things which we have never
perceived or experiences which we have never had or of which we have
never been the witnesses. Even when we know some of the objects which
it concerns, it is only as particular examples that they serve to
illustrate the idea which they would never have been able to form by
themselves. Thus there is a great deal of knowledge condensed in the
word which I never collected, and which is not individual; it even
surpasses me to such an extent that I cannot even completely appropriate
all its results. Which of us knows all the words of the language he
speaks and the entire signification of each?
This remark enables us to determine the sense in which we mean to say
that concepts are collective representations. If they belong to a whole
social group, it is not because they represent the average of the
corresponding individual representations; for in that case they would be
poorer than the latter in intellectual content, while, as a matter of
fact, they contain much that surpasses the knowledge of the average
individual. They are not abstractions which have a reality only in
particular consciousnesses, but they are as concrete representations as
an individual could form of his own personal environment; they
correspond to the way in which this very special being, society,
considers the things of its own proper experience. If, as a matter of
fact, the concepts are nearly always general ideas, and if they express
categories and classes rather than particular objects, it is because the
unique and variable characteristics of things interest society but
rarely; because of its very extent, it can scarcely be affected by more
than their general and permanent qualities. Therefore it is to this
aspect of affairs that it gives its attention: it is a part of its
nature to see things in large and under the aspect which they ordinarily
have. But this generality is not necessary for them, and, in any case,
even when these representations have the generic character which they
ordinarily have, they are the work of society and are enriched by its
experience.
The collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life,
since it is the consciousness of the consciousnesses. Being placed
outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things
only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes
into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it
sees farther; at every moment of time, it embraces all known reality;
that is why it alone can furnish the mind with the molds which are
applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to
think of them. It does not create these molds artificially; it finds
them within itself; it does nothing but become conscious of them. They
translate the ways of being which are found in all the stages of reality
but which appear in their full clarity only at the summit, because the
extreme complexity of the psychic life which passes there necessitates a
greater development of consciousness. Collective representations also
contain subjective elements, and these must be progressively rooted out
if we are to approach reality more closely. But howsoever crude these
may have been at the beginning, the fact remains that with them the germ
of a new mentality was given, to which the individual could never have
raised himself by his own efforts; by them the way was opened to a
stable, impersonal and organized thought which then had nothing to do
except to develop its nature.
D. THE SOCIAL GROUP
1. Definition of the Group[90]
The term "group" serves as a convenient sociological designation for any
number of people, larger or smaller, between whom such relations are
discovered that they must be thought of together. The "group" is the
most general and colorless term used in sociology for combinations of
persons. A family, a mob, a picnic party, a trade union, a city
precinct, a corporation, a state, a nation, the civilized or the
uncivilized population of the world, may be treated as a group. Thus a
"group" for sociology is a number of persons whose relations to each
other are sufficiently impressive to demand attention. The term is
merely a commonplace tool. It contains no mystery. It is only a handle
with which to grasp the innumerable varieties of arrangements into which
people are drawn by their variations of interest. The universal
condition of association may be expressed in the same commonplace way:
people always live in groups, and the same persons are likely to be
members of many groups.
Individuals nowhere live in utter isolation. There is no such thing as a
social vacuum. The few Robinson Crusoes are not exceptions to the rule.
If they are, they are like the Irishman's horse. The moment they begin
to get adjusted to the exceptional condition, they die. Actual persons
always live and move and have their being in groups. These groups are
more or less complex, more or less continuous, more or less rigid in
character. The destinies of human beings are always bound up with the
fate of the groups of which they are members. While the individuals are
the real existences, and the groups are only relationships of
individuals, yet to all intents and purposes the groups which people
form are just as distinct and efficient molders of the lives of
individuals as though they were entities that had existence entirely
independent of the individuals.
The college fraternity or the college class, for instance, would be only
a name, and presently not even that, if each of its members should
withdraw. It is the members themselves, and not something outside of
themselves. Yet to A, B, or C the fraternity or the class might as well
be a river or a mountain by the side of which he stands, and which he is
helpless to remove. He may modify it somewhat. He is surely modified by
it somewhat; and the same is true of all the other groups in which A, B,
or C belong. To a very considerable extent the question, Why does A, B,
or C do so and so? is equivalent to the question, What are the
peculiarities of the group to which A, B, or C belongs? It would never
occur to A, B, or C to skulk from shadow to shadow of a night, with
paint-pot and brush in hand, and to smear Arabic numerals of bill-poster
size on sidewalk or buildings, if "class spirit" did not add stimulus to
individual bent. Neither A, B, nor C would go out of his way to flatter
and cajole a Freshman, if membership in a fraternity did not make a
student something different from an individual. These are merely
familiar cases which follow a universal law.
In effect, the groups to which we belong might be as separate and
independent of us as the streets and buildings of a city are from the
population. If the inhabitants should migrate in a body, the streets and
buildings would remain. This is not true of human groups, but their
reaction upon the persons who compose them is no less real and evident.
We are in large part what our social set, our church, our political
party, our business and professional circles are. This has always been
the case from the beginning of the world, and will always be the case.
To understand what society is, either in its larger or its smaller
parts, and why it is so, and how far it is possible to make it
different, we must invariably explain groups on the one hand, no less
than individuals on the other. There is a striking illustration in
Chicago at present (summer, 1905). Within a short time a certain man has
made a complete change in his group-relations. He was one of the most
influential trade-union leaders in the city. He has now become the
executive officer of an association of employers. In the elements that
are not determined by his group-relationships he is the same man that he
was before. Those are precisely the elements, however, that may be
canceled out of the social problem. All the elements in his personal
equation that give him a distinct meaning in the life of the city are
given to him by his membership in the one group or the other. Till
yesterday he gave all his strength to organizing labor against capital.
Now he gives all his strength to the service of capital against labor.
Whatever social problem we confront, whatever persons come into our
field of view, the first questions involved will always be: To what
groups do these persons belong? What are the interests of these groups?
What sort of means do the groups use to promote their interests? How
strong are these groups, as compared with groups that have conflicting
interests? These questions go to one tap root of all social
interpretation, whether in the case of historical events far in the
past, or of the most practical problems of our own neighborhood.
2. The Unity of the Social Group[91]
It has long been a cardinal problem in sociology to determine just how
to conceive in objective terms so very real and palpable a thing as the
continuity and persistence of social groups. Looked at as a physical
object society appears to be made up of mobile and independent units.
The problem is to understand the nature of the bonds that bind these
independent units together and how these connections are maintained and
transmitted.
Conceived of in its lowest terms the unity of the social group may be
compared to that of the plant communities. In these communities, the
relation between the individual species which compose it seems at first
wholly fortuitous and external. Co-operation and community, so far as it
exists, consists merely in the fact that within a given geographical
area, certain species come together merely because each happens to
provide by its presence an environment in which the life of the other is
easier, more secure, than if they lived in isolation. It seems to be a
fact, however, that this communal life of the associated plants fulfils,
as in other forms of life, a typical series of changes which correspond
to growth, decay and death. The plant community comes into existence,
matures, grows old, and eventually dies. In doing this, however, it
provides by its own death an environment in which another form of
community finds its natural habitat. Each community thus precedes and
prepares the way for its successor. Under such circumstances the
succession of the individual communities itself assumes the character of
a life-process.
In the case of the animal and human societies we have all these
conditions and forces and something more. The individuals associated in
an animal community not only provide, each for the other, a physical
environment in which all may live, but the members of the community are
organically pre-adapted to one another in ways which are not
characteristic of the members of a plant community. As a consequence,
the relations between the members of the animal community assume a much
more organic character. It is, in fact, a characteristic of animal
society that the members of a social group are organically adapted to
one another and therefore the organization of animal society is almost
wholly transmitted by physical inheritance.
In the case of human societies we discover not merely organically
inherited adaptation, which characterizes animal societies, but, in
addition, a great body of habits and accommodations which are
transmitted in the form of social inheritance. Something that
corresponds to social tradition exists, to be sure, in animal societies.
Animals learn by imitation from one another, and there is evidence that
this social tradition varies with changes in environment. In man,
however, association is based on something more than habits or instinct.
In human society, largely as a result of language, there exists a
conscious community of purpose. We have not merely folkways, which by an
extension of that term might be attributed to animals, but we have mores
and formal standards of conduct.
In a recent notable volume on education, John Dewey has formulated a
definition of the educational process which he identifies with the
process by which the social tradition of human society is transmitted.
Education, he says in effect, is a self-renewing process, a process in
which and through which the social organism lives.
With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of
human beings, the re-creation of beliefs, ideals, hopes,
happiness, misery and practices. The continuity of experience,
through renewal of the social group, is a literal fact.
Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social
continuity of life.
Under ordinary circumstances the transmission of the social tradition is
from the parents to the children. Children are born into the society and
take over its customs, habits, and standards of life simply, naturally,
and without conflict. But it will at once occur to anyone that the
physical life of society is not always continued and maintained in this
natural way, i.e., by the succession of parents and children. New
societies are formed by conquest and by the imposition of one people
upon another. In such cases there arises a conflict of cultures, and as
a result the process of fusion takes place slowly and is frequently not
complete. New societies are frequently formed by colonization, in which
case new cultures are grafted on to older ones. The work of missionary
societies is essentially one of colonization in this sense. Finally we
have societies growing up, as in the United States, by immigration.
These immigrants, coming as they do from all parts of the world, bring
with them fragments of divergent cultures. Here again the process of
assimilation is slow, often painful, not always complete.
3. Types of Social Groups[92]
Between the two extreme poles--the crowd and the state (nation)--between
these extreme links of the chain of human association, what are the
other intermediate groups, and what are their distinctive
characteristics?
Gustave Le Bon thus classifies the different types of crowds
(aggregations):
A. Heterogeneous crowds
1. Anonymous (street crowds, for example)
2. Not anonymous (parliamentary assemblies, for example)
B. Homogeneous crowds
1. Sects (political, religious, etc.)
2. Castes (military, sacerdotal, etc.)
3. Classes (bourgeois, working-men, etc.)
This classification is open to criticism. First of all, it is inaccurate
to give the name of crowd indiscriminately to every human group.
Literally (from the etymological standpoint) this objection seems to me
unanswerable. Tarde more exactly distinguishes between crowds,
associations, and corporations.
But we retain the generic term of "crowd" because it indicates the first
stage of the social group which is the source of all the others, and
because with these successive distinctions it does not lend itself to
equivocal meaning.
In the second place, it is difficult to understand why Le Bon terms the
sect a _homogeneous_ crowd, while he classifies parliamentary assemblies
among the _heterogeneous_ crowds. The members of a sect are usually far
more different from one another in birth, education, profession, social
status, than are generally the members of a political assembly.
Turning from this criticism to note without analyzing heterogeneous
crowds, let us then proceed to determine the principal characteristics
of the three large types of homogeneous crowds, the classes, the castes,
the sects.
The heterogeneous crowd is composed of _tout le monde_, of people like
you, like me, like the first passer-by. _Chance_ unites these
individuals physically, the _occasion_ unites them psychologically; they
do not know each other, and after the moment when they find themselves
together, they may never see each other again. To use a metaphor, it is
a psychological meteor, of the most unforeseen, ephemeral, and
transitory kind.
On this accidental and fortuitous foundation are formed here and there
other crowds, always heterogeneous, but with a certain character of
stability or, at least, of periodicity. The audience at a theater, the
members of a club, of a literary or social gathering, constitute also a
crowd but a different crowd from that of the street. The members of
these groups know each other a little; they have, if not a common aim,
at least a common custom. They are nevertheless "anonymous crowds," as
Le Bon calls them, because they do not have within themselves the
nucleus of organization.
Proceeding further, we find crowds still heterogeneous, but not so
anonymous--juries, for example, and assemblies. These small crowds
experience a new sentiment, unknown to anonymous crowds, that of
responsibility which may at times give to their actions a different
orientation. Then the parliamentary crowds are to be distinguished from
the others because, as Tarde observes with his habitual penetration,
they are double crowds: they represent a majority in conflict with one
or more minorities, which safeguards them in most cases from unanimity,
the most menacing danger which faces crowds.
We come now to homogeneous crowds, of which the first type is the sect.
Here are found again individuals differing in birth, in education, in
profession, in social status, but united and, indeed, voluntarily
cemented by an extremely strong bond, a common faith and ideal. Faith,
religious, scientific, or political, rapidly creates a communion of
sentiments capable of giving to those who possess it a high degree of
homogeneity and power. History records the deeds of the barbarians under
the influence of Christianity, and the Arabs transformed into a sect by
Mahomet. Because of their sectarian organization, a prediction may be
made of what the future holds in store for the socialists.
The sect is a crowd, picked out and permanent; the crowd is a transitory
sect which has not chosen its members. The sect is a chronic kind of
crowd; the crowd is an acute kind of sect. The crowd is composed of a
multitude of grains of sand without cohesion; the sect is a block of
marble which resists every effort. When a sentiment or an idea, having
in itself a reason for existence, slips into the crowd, its members soon
crystallize and form a sect. The sect is then the first crystallization
of every doctrine. From the confused and amorphous state in which it
manifests itself to the crowd, every idea is predestined to define
itself in the more specific form of the sect, to become later a party, a
school, or a church--scientific, political, or religious.
Any faith, whether it be Islamism, Buddhism, Christianity, patriotism,
socialism, anarchy, cannot but pass through this sectarian phase. It is
the first step, the point where the human group in leaving the twilight
zone of the anonymous and mobile crowd raises itself to a definition and
to an integration which then may lead up to the highest and most
perfect human group, the nation.
If the sect is composed of individuals united by a common idea and aim,
in spite of diversity of birth, education, and social status, the caste
unites, on the contrary, those who could have--and who have
sometimes--diverse ideas and aspirations, but who are brought together
through identity of profession. The sect corresponds to the community of
faith, the caste to the community of professional ideas. The sect is a
_spontaneous_ association; the caste is, in many ways, a _forced_
association. After having chosen a profession--let it be priest,
soldier, magistrate--a man belongs necessarily to a caste. A person, on
the contrary, does not necessarily belong to a sect. And when one
belongs to a caste--be he the most independent man in the world--he is
more or less under the influence of that which is called _esprit de
corps_.
The caste represents the highest degree of organization to which the
homogeneous crowd is susceptible. It is composed of individuals who by
their tastes, their education, birth, and social status, resemble each
other in the fundamental types of conduct and mores. There are even
certain castes, the military and sacerdotal, for example, in which the
members at last so resemble one another in appearance and bearing that
no disguise can conceal the nature of their profession.
The caste offers to its members ideas already molded, rules of conduct
already approved; it relieves them, in short, of the fatigue of thinking
with their own brains. When the caste to which an individual belongs is
known, all that is necessary is to press a button of his mental
mechanism to release a series of opinions and of phrases already made
which are identical in every individual of the same caste.
This harmonious collectivity, powerful and eminently conservative, is
the most salient analogy which the nations of the Occident present to
that of India. In India the caste is determined by birth, and it is
distinguished by a characteristic trait: the persons of one caste can
live with, eat with, and marry only individuals of the same caste.
In Europe it is not only birth, but circumstances and education which
determine the entrance of an individual into a caste; to marry, to
frequent, to invite to the same table only people of the same caste,
exists practically in Europe as in India. In Europe the above-mentioned
prescriptions are founded on convention, but they are none the less
observed. We all live in a confined circle, where we find our friends,
our guests, our sons- and daughters-in-law.
Misalliances are assuredly possible in Europe; they are impossible in
India. But if there religion prohibits them, with us public opinion and
convention render them very rare. And at bottom the analogy is complete.
The class is superior to the caste in extent. If the psychological bond
of the sect is community of faith, and that of the caste community of
profession, the psychological bond of the class is community of
interests.
Less precise in its limits, more diffuse and less compact than the caste
or the sect, the class represents today the veritable crowd in a dynamic
state, which can in a moment's time descend from that place and become
statically a crowd. And it is from the sociological standpoint the most
terrible kind of crowd; it is that which today has taken a bellicose
attitude, and which by its attitude and precepts prepares the brutal
blows of mobs.
We speak of the "conflict of the classes," and from the theoretical
point of view and in the normal and peaceful life that signifies only a
contest of ideas by legal means. Always depending upon the occasion, the
audacity of one or many men, the character of the situation, the
conflict of the classes is transformed into something more material and
more violent--into revolt or into revolution.
Finally we arrive at the state (nation). Tocqueville said that the
classes which compose society form so many distinct nations. They are
the greatest collectivities before coming to the nation, the state.
This is the most perfect type of organization of the crowd, and the
final and supreme type, if there is not another collectivity superior in
number and extension, the collectivity formed by race.
The bond which unites all the citizens of a state is language and
nationality. Above the state there are only the crowds determined by
race, which comprise many states. And these are, like the states and
like the classes, human aggregates which in a moment could be
transformed into violent crowds. But then, and justly, because their
evolution and their organization are more developed, their mobs are
called armies, and their violences are called wars, and they have the
seal of legitimacy unknown in other crowds. In this order of ideas war
could be defined as the supreme form of collective crimes.
4. _Esprit de Corps_, Morale, and Collective Representations of Social
Groups[93]
War is no doubt the least human of human relationships. It can begin
only when persuasion ends, when arguments fitted to move minds are
replaced by the blasting-powder fitted to move rocks and hills. It means
that one at least of the national wills concerned has deliberately set
aside its human quality--as only a human will can do--and has made of
itself just such a material obstruction or menace. Hence war seems, and
is often called, a contest of brute forces. Certainly it is the
extremest physical effort men make, every resource of vast populations
bent to increase the sum of power at the front, where the two lines
writhe like wrestlers laboring for the final fall.
Yet it is seldom physical force that decides a long war. For war summons
skill against skill, head against head, staying-power against
staying-power, as well as numbers and machines against machines and
numbers. When an engine "exerts itself" it spends more power, eats more
fuel, but uses no nerve; when a man exerts himself, he must bend his
will to it. The extremer the physical effort, the greater the strain on
the inner or moral powers. Hence the paradox of war: just because it
calls for the maximum material performance, it calls out a maximum of
moral resource. As long as guns and bayonets have men behind them, the
quality of the men, the quality of their minds and wills, must be
counted with the power of the weapons.
And as long as men fight in nations and armies, that subtle but mighty
influence that passes from man to man, the temper and spirit of the
group, must be counted with the quality of the individual citizen and
soldier. But how much does this intangible, psychological factor count?
Napoleon in his day reckoned it high: "In war, the moral is to the
physical as three to one."
For war, completely seen, is no mere collision of physical forces; it is
a collision of will against will. It is, after all, the mind and will of
a nation--a thing intangible and invisible--that assembles the materials
of war, the fighting forces, the ordnance, the whole physical array. It
is this invisible thing that wages the war; it is this same invisible
thing that on one side or the other must admit the finish and so end it.
As things are now, it is the element of "morale" that controls the
outcome.
I say, as things are now; for it is certainly not true as a rule of
history that will-power is enough to win a war, even when supported by
high fighting spirit, brains, and a good conscience: Belgium had all
this, and yet was bound to fall before Germany had she stood alone. Her
spirit worked miracles at Liége, delayed by ten days the marching
program of the German armies, and thereby saved--perhaps Paris, perhaps
Europe. But the day was saved because the issue raised in Serbia and in
Belgium drew to their side material support until their forces could
compare with the physical advantages of the enemy. Morale wins, not by
itself, but by turning scales; it has a value like the power of a
minority or of a mobile reserve. It adds to one side or the other the
last ounce of force which is to its opponent the last straw that breaks
its back.
Perhaps the simplest way of explaining the meaning of morale is to say
that what "condition" is to the athlete's body, morale is to the mind.
Morale is condition; good morale is good condition of the inner man: it
is the state of will in which you can get most from the machinery,
deliver blows with the greatest effect, take blows with the least
depression, and hold out for the longest time. It is both fighting-power
and staying-power and strength to resist the mental infections which
fear, discouragement, and fatigue bring with them, such as eagerness for
any kind of peace if only it gives momentary relief, or the irritability
that sees large the defects in one's own side until they seem more
important than the need of defeating the enemy. And it is the perpetual
ability to come back.
From this it follows that good morale is not the same as good spirits or
enthusiasm. It is anything but the cheerful optimism of early morning,
or the tendency to be jubilant at every victory. It has nothing in
common with the emotionalism dwelt on by psychologists of the "crowd."
It is hardly to be discovered in the early stages of war. Its most
searching test is found in the question, How does war-weariness affect
you?
No one going from America to Europe in the last year could fail to
notice the wide difference between the mind of nations long at war and
that of a nation just entering. Over there, "crowd psychology" had spent
itself. There was little flag-waving; the common purveyors of music were
not everywhere playing (or allowed to play) the national airs. If in
some Parisian cinema the Marseillaise was given, nobody stood or sang.
The reports of atrocities roused little visible anger or even talk--they
were taken for granted. In short, the simpler emotions had been worn
out, or rather had resolved themselves into clear connections between
knowledge and action. The people had found the mental gait that can be
held indefinitely. Even a great advance finds them on their guard
against too much joy. As the news from the second victory of the Marne
begins to come in, we find this despatch: "Paris refrains from
exultation."
And in the trenches the same is true in even greater degree. All the
bravado and illusion of war are gone, also all the nervous revulsion;
and in their places a grimly reliable resource of energy held in
instant, almost mechanical, readiness to do what is necessary. The
hazards which it is useless to speculate about, the miseries, delays,
tediums, casualties, have lost their exclamatory value and have fallen
into the sullen routine of the day's work. Here it is that morale begins
to show in its more vital dimensions. Here the substantial differences
between man and man, and between side and side, begin to appear as they
can never appear in training camp.
Fitness and readiness to act, the positive element in morale, is a
matter not of good and bad alone, but of degree. Persistence, courage,
energy, initiative, may vary from zero upward without limit. Perhaps the
most important dividing line--one that has already shown itself at
various critical points--is that between the willingness to defend and
the willingness to attack, between the defensive and the aggressive
mentality. It is the difference between docility and enterprise, between
a faith at second hand dependent on neighbor or leader, and a faith at
first hand capable of assuming for itself the position of leadership.
But readiness to wait, the negative element in morale, is as important
as readiness to act, and oftentimes it is a harder virtue. Patience,
especially under conditions of ignorance of what may be brewing, is a
torment for active and critical minds such as this people is made of.
Yet impetuosity, exceeding of orders, unwillingness to retreat when the
general situation demands it, are signs not of good morale but the
reverse. They are signs that one's heart cannot be kept up except by the
flattering stimulus of always going forward--a state of mind that may
cause a commanding officer serious embarrassment, even to making
impossible decisive strokes of strategy.
In fact, the better the morale, the more profound its mystery from the
utilitarian angle of judgment. There is something miraculous in the
power of a bald and unhesitating announcement of reverse to steel the
temper of men attuned to making sacrifices and to meeting emergencies.
No one can touch the deepest moral resources of an army or nation who
does not know the fairly regal exaltation with which it is possible for
men to face an issue--_if they believe in it_. There are times when men
seem to have an appetite for suffering, when, to judge from their own
demeanor, the best bait fortune could offer them is the chance to face
death or to bear an inhuman load. This state of mind does not exist of
itself; it is morale at its best, and it appears only when the occasion
strikes a nerve which arouses the super-earthly vistas of human
consciousness or subconsciousness. But it commonly appears at the
summons of a leader who himself welcomes the challenge of the task he
sets before his followers. It is the magic of King Alfred in his appeal
to his chiefs to do battle with the Danes, when all that he could hold
out to them was the prospect of his own vision,
This--that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Morale, for all the greater purposes of war, is a state of faith; and
its logic will be the superb and elusive logic of human faith. It is for
this reason that morale, while not identical with the righteousness of
the cause, can never reach its height unless the aim of the war can be
held intact in the undissembled moral sense of the people. This is one
of the provisions in the deeper order of things for the slow
predominance of the better brands of justice.
There are still officers in army and navy--not as many as formerly--who
believe exclusively in the morale that works its way into every body of
recruits through discipline and the sway of _esprit de corps_. "They
know that they're here to can the Kaiser, and that's all they need to
know," said one such officer to me very recently. "After a man has been
here two months, the worst punishment you can give him is to tell him he
can't go to France right away. The soldier is a man of action; and the
less thinking he does, the better." There is an amount of practical
wisdom in this; for the human mind has a large capacity for adopting
beliefs that fit the trend of its habits and feelings, and this trend is
powerfully molded by the unanimous direction of an army's purpose. There
is an all but irresistible orthodoxy within a body committed to a war.
And the current (pragmatic) psychology referred to, making the
intelligence a mere instrument of the will, would seem to sanction the
maxim, "First decide, and then think accordingly."
But there are two remarks to be made about this view; first, that in the
actual creation of morale within an army corps much thinking is
included, and nothing is accomplished without the consent of such
thoughts as a man already has. Training does wonders in making morale,
when nothing in the mind opposes it. Second, that the morale which is
sufficient for purposes of training is not necessarily sufficient for
the strains of the field.
The intrinsic weakness of "affective morale," as psychologists call it,
is that it puts both sides on the same mental and moral footing: it
either justifies our opponents as well as ourselves, or it makes both
sides the creatures of irrational emotion.
Crowds are capable of doing reasonless things upon impulse and of
adopting creeds without reflection. But an army is not a crowd; still
less is a nation a crowd. A mob or crowd is an unorganized group of
people governed by less than the average individual intelligence of its
members. Armies and nations are groups of people so organized that they
are controlled by an intelligence higher than the average. The instincts
that lend, and must lend, their immense motive-power to the great
purposes of war are the servants, not the masters, of that
intelligence.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. The Scientific Study of Societies
Interest in the study of "society as it is" has had its source in two
different motives. Travelers' tales have always fascinated mankind. The
ethnologists began their investigations by criticising and systematizing
the novel and interesting observations of travelers in regard to
customs, cultures, and behavior of people of different races and
nationalities. Their later more systematic investigations were, on the
whole, inspired by intellectual curiosity divorced from any overwhelming
desire to change the manner of life and social organizations of the
societies studied.
The second motive for the systematic observation of actual society came
from persons who wanted social reforms but who were forced to realize
the futility of Utopian projects. The science of sociology as conceived
by Auguste Comte was to substitute fact for doctrines about society. But
his attempt to interpret social evolution resulted in a philosophy of
history, not a natural science of society.
Herbert Spencer appreciated the fact that the new science of sociology
required an extensive body of materials as a basis for its
generalizations. Through the work of assistants he set himself the
monumental task of compiling historical and cultural materials not only
upon primitive and barbarous peoples but also upon the Hebrews, the
Phoenicians, the French and the English. These data were classified and
published in eight large volumes under the title _Descriptive
Sociology_.
The study of human societies was too great to be satisfactorily
compassed by the work of one man. Besides that, Spencer, like most
English sociologists, was more interested in the progress of
civilization than in its processes. Spencer's _Sociology_ is still a
philosophy of history rather than a science of society. The philosophy
of history took for its unit of investigation and interpretation the
evolution of human society as a whole. The present trend in sociology is
toward the study of _societies_ rather than _society_. Sociological
research has been directed less to a study of the stages of evolution
than to the diagnosis and control of social problems.
Modern sociology's chief inheritance from Comte and Spencer was a
problem in logic: What is a society?
Manifestly if the relations between individuals in society are not
merely formal, and if society is something more than the sum of its
parts, then these relations must be defined in terms of interaction,
that is to say, in terms of process. What then is _the social process_;
what are the social processes? How are social processes to be
distinguished from physical, chemical, or biological processes? What is,
in general, the nature of the relations that need to be established in
order to make of individuals in society, members of society? These
questions are fundamental since they define the point of view of
sociology and describe the sort of facts with which the science seeks to
deal. Upon these questions the schools have divided and up to the
present time there is no very general consensus among sociologists in
regard to them. The introductory chapter to this volume is at once a
review of the points of view and an attempt to find answers. In the
literature to which reference is made at the close of chapter iii the
logical questions involved are discussed in a more thoroughgoing way
than has been possible to do in this volume.
Fortunately science does not wait to define its points of view nor solve
its theoretical problems before undertaking to analyze and collect the
facts. The contrary is nearer the truth. Science collects facts and
answers the theoretical questions afterward. In fact, it is just its
success in analyzing and collecting facts which throw light upon human
problems that in the end justifies the theories of science.
2. Surveys of Communities
The historian and the philosopher introduced the sociologist to the
study of society. But it was the reformer, the social worker, and the
business man who compelled him to study the community.
The study of the community is still in its beginnings. Nevertheless,
there is already a rapidly growing literature on this topic.
Ethnologists have presented us with vivid and detailed pictures of
primitive communities as in McGee's _The Seri Indians_, Jenk's _The
Bontoc Igorot_, Rivers' _The Todas_. Studies of the village communities
of India, of Russia, and of early England have thrown new light upon the
territorial factor in the organization of societies.
More recently the impact of social problems has led to the intensive
study of modern communities. The monumental work of Charles Booth,
_Life and Labour of the People in London_, is a comprehensive
description of conditions of social life in terms of the community. In
the United States, interest in community study is chiefly represented by
the social-survey movement which received impetus from the Pittsburgh
Survey of 1907. For sociological research of greater promise than the
survey are the several monographs which seek to make a social analysis
of the community, as Williams, _An American Town_, or Galpin, _The
Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community_. With due recognition of
these auspicious beginnings, it must be confessed that there is no
volume upon human communities comparable with several works upon plant
and animal communities.
3. The Group as a Unit of Investigation
The study of societies is concerned primarily with types of social
organization and with attitudes and cultural elements embodied in them.
The survey of communities deals essentially with social situations and
the problems connected with them.
The study of social groups was a natural outgrowth of the study of the
individual. In order to understand the person it is necessary to
consider the group. Attention first turned to social institutions, then
to conflict groups, and finally to crowds and crowd influences.
Social institutions were naturally the first groups to be studied with
some degree of detachment. The work of ethnologists stimulated an
interest in social origins. Evolution, though at first a purely
biological conception, provoked inquiry into the historical development
of social structure. Differences in institutions in contemporary
societies led to comparative study. Critics of institutions, both
iconoclasts without and reformers within, forced a consideration of
their more fundamental aspects.
The first written accounts of conflict groups were quite naturally of
the propagandist type both by their defenders and by their opponents.
Histories of nationalities, for example, originated in the patriotic
motive of national glorification. With the acceptance of objective
standards of historical criticism the ground was prepared for the
sociological study of nationalities as conflict groups. A school of
European sociologists represented by Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, and
Novicow stressed conflict as the characteristic behavior of social
groups. Beginnings, as indicated in the bibliography, have been made of
the study of various conflict groups as gangs, labor unions, parties,
and sects.
The interest in the mechanism of the control of the individual by the
group has been focused upon the study of the crowd. Tarde and Le Bon in
France, Sighele in Italy, and Ross in the United States were the
pioneers in the description and interpretation of the behavior of mobs
and crowds. The crowd phenomena of the Great War have stimulated the
production of several books upon crowds and crowd influences which are,
in the main, but superficial and popular elaborations of the
interpretations of Tarde and Le Bon. Concrete material upon group
behavior has rapidly accumulated, but little or no progress has been
made in its sociological explanation.
At present there are many signs of an increasing interest in the study
of group behavior. Contemporary literature is featuring realistic
descriptions. Sinclair Lewis in _Main Street_ describes concretely the
routine of town life with its outward monotony and its inner zest.
Newspapers and magazines are making surveys of the buying habits of
their readers as a basis for advertising. The federal department of
agriculture in co-operation with schools of agriculture is making
intensive studies of rural communities. Social workers are conscious
that a more fundamental understanding of social groups is a necessary
basis for case work and community organization. Surveys of institutions
and communities are now being made under many auspices and from varied
points of view. All this is having a fruitful reaction upon the
sociological theory.
4. The Study of the Family
The family is the earliest, the most elementary, and the most permanent
of social groups. It has been more completely studied, in all its
various aspects, than other forms of human association. Methods of
investigation of family life are typical of methods that may be employed
in the description of other forms of society. For that reason more
attention is given here to studies of family life than it is possible or
desirable to give to other and more transient types of social groups.
The descriptions of travelers, of ethnologists and of historians made
the first contributions to our knowledge of marriage, ceremonials, and
family organization among primitive and historical peoples. Early
students of these data devised theories of stages in the evolution of
the family. An anthology might be made of the conceptions that students
have formulated of the original form of the family, for example, the
theory of the matriarchate by Bachofen, of group marriage growing out of
earlier promiscuous relations by Morgan, of the polygynous family by
Darwin, of pair marriage by Westermarck. An example of the ingenious,
but discarded method of arranging all types of families observed in a
series representing stages of the evolution is to be found in Morgan's
_Ancient Society_. A survey of families among primitive peoples by
Hobhouse, Ginsberg, and Wheeler makes the point that even family life is
most varied upon the lower levels of culture, and that the historical
development of the family with any people must be studied in relation to
the physical and social environment.
The evolutionary theory of the family has, however, furnished a somewhat
detached point of view for the criticism of the modern family. Social
reformers have used the evolutionary theory as a formula to justify
attacks upon the family as an institution and to support the most varied
proposals for its reconstruction. Books like Ellen Key's _Love and
Marriage_ and Meisel-Hess, _The Sexual Crisis_ are not scientific
studies of the family but rather social political philippics directed
against marriage and the family.
The interest stimulated by ethnological observation, historical study,
and propagandist essays has, however, turned the attention of certain
students to serious study of the family and its problems. Howard's
_History of Matrimonial Institutions_ is a scholarly and comprehensive
treatise upon the evolution of the legal status of the family. Annual
statistics of marriage and divorce are now compiled and published by all
the important countries except the United States government. In the
United States, however, three studies of marriages and divorces have
been made; one in 1887-88, by the Department of Labor, covering the
twenty years from 1867-86 inclusive; another in 1906-7, by the Bureau of
the Census, for the twenty years 1887-1906; and the last, also by the
Bureau of the Census, for the year 1916.
The changes in family life resulting from the transition from home
industry to the factory system have created new social problems.
Problems of woman and child labor, unemployment, and poverty are a
product of the machine industry. Attempts to relieve the distress under
conditions of city life resulted in the formation of charity
organization societies and other philanthropic institutions, and in
attempts to control the behavior of the individuals and families
assisted. The increasing body of experience gained by social agencies
has gradually been incorporated in the technique of the workers. Mary
Richmond in _Social Diagnosis_ has analyzed and standardized the
procedure of the social case worker.
Less direct but more fundamental studies of family life have been made
by other investigators. Le Play, a French social economist, who lived
with the families which he observed, introduced the method of the
monographic study of the economic organization of family life. Ernst
Engel, from his study of the expenditure of Saxon working-class
families, formulated so-called "laws" of the relation between family
income and family outlay. Recent studies of family incomes and budgets
by Chapin, Ogburn, and others have thrown additional light upon the
relationship between wages and the standard of living. Interest in the
economics of the family is manifested by an increasing number of studies
in dietetics, household administration and domestic science.
Westermarck in his _History of Human Marriage_ attempted to write a
sociology of the family. Particularly interesting is his attempt to
compare the animal family with that of man. The effect of this was to
emphasize instinctive and biological aspects of the family rather than
its institutional character. The basis for a psychology of family life
was first laid in the _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_ by Havelock
Ellis. The case studies of individuals by psychoanalysts often lead into
family complexes and illuminate the structure of family attitudes and
wishes.
The sociological study of the family as a natural and a cultural group
is only now in its beginnings. An excellent theoretical study of the
family as a unity of interacting members is presented in Bosanquet, _The
Family_. The family as defined in the mores has been described and
interpreted, as for example, by Thomas in his analysis of the
organization of the large peasant family group in the first two volumes
of the _Polish Peasant_. Materials upon the family in the United States
have been brought together by Calhoun in his _Social History of the
American Family_.
While the family is listed by Cooley among primary groups, the notion is
gaining ground that it is primary in a unique sense which sets it apart
from all other social groups. The biological interdependence and
co-operation of the members of the family, intimacies of closest and
most enduring contacts have no parallel among other human groups. The
interplay of the attractions, tensions, and accommodations of
personalities in the intimate bonds of family life have up to the
present found no concrete description or adequate analysis in
sociological inquiry.
The best case studies of family life at present are in fiction, not in
the case records of social agencies, nor yet in sociological literature.
Arnold Bennett's trilogy, _Clayhanger_, _Hilda Lessways_, and _These
Twain_, suggests a pattern not unworthy of consideration by social
workers and sociologists. _The Pastor's Wife_, by the author of
_Elizabeth and Her German Garden_, is a delightful contrast of English
and German mores in their effect upon the intimate relations of family
life.
In the absence of case studies of the family as a natural and cultural
group the following tentative outline for sociological study is offered:
1. _Location and extent in time and space._--Genealogical tree
as retained in the family memory; geographical distribution and
movement of members of small family group and of large family
group; stability or mobility of family; its rural or urban
location.
2. _Family traditions and ceremonials._--Family romance; family
skeleton; family ritual, as demonstration of affection, family
events, etc.
3. _Family economics._--Family communism; division of labor
between members of the family; effect of occupation of its
members.
4. _Family organization and control._--Conflicts and
accommodation; superordination and subordination; typical forms
of control--patriarchy, matriarchy, consensus, etc.; family
_esprit de corps_, family morale, family objectives; status in
community.
5. _Family behavior._--Family life from the standpoint of the
four wishes (security, response, recognition, and new
experience); family crises; the family and the community;
familism versus individualism; family life and the development
of personality.