remoteness which gives the stranger the character of objectivity gets
another practical expression in the more abstract nature of the relation
to him. This is seen in the fact that one has certain more general
qualities only in common with the stranger, whereas the relation with
those organically allied is based on the similarity of just those
specific differences by which the members of an intimate group are
distinguished from those who do not share that intimacy. All personal
relations whatsoever are determined according to this scheme, however
varied the form which they assume. What is decisive is not the fact that
certain common characteristics exist side by side with individual
differences which may or may not affect them but rather that the
influence of this common possession itself upon the personal relation of
the individuals involved is determined by certain conditions: Does it
exist in and for these individuals and for these only? Does it represent
qualities that are general in the group, to be sure, but peculiar to it?
Or is it merely felt by the members of the group as something peculiar
to individuals themselves whereas, in fact, it is a common possession of
a group, or a type, or mankind? In the last case an attenuation of the
effect of the common possession enters in, proportional to the size of
the group. Common characteristics function, it is true, as a basis for
union among the elements, but it does not specifically refer these
elements to each other. A similarity so widely shared might serve as a
common basis of each with every possible other. This too is evidently
one way in which a relation may at the same moment comprehend both
nearness and remoteness. To the extent to which the similarities become
general, the warmth of the connection which they effect will have an
element of coolness, a feeling in it of the adventitiousness of this
very connection. The powers which united have lost their specific,
centripetal character.
This constellation (in which similarities are shared by large numbers)
acquires, it seems to me, an extraordinary and fundamental
preponderance--as against the individual and personal elements we have
been discussing--in defining our relation to the stranger. The stranger
is near to us in so far as we feel between him and ourselves
similarities of nationality or social position, of profession or of
general human nature. He is far from us in so far as these similarities
reach out over him and us, and only ally us both because in fact they
ally a great many.
In this sense a trait of this strangeness easily comes into even the
most intimate relations. Erotic relations show a very decided aversion,
in the stage of first passion, to any disposition to think of them in
general terms. A love such as this (so the lover feels) has never
existed before, nor is there anything to be compared with our passion
for the beloved person. An estrangement is wont, whether as cause or as
result it is difficult to decide, to set in at that moment in which the
sentiment of uniqueness disappears from the connection. A scepticism of
its value in itself and for us fastens itself to the very thought that
after all one has only drawn the lot of general humanity, one has
experienced a thousand times re-enacted adventure, and that, if one had
not accidentally encountered this precise person, any other one would
have acquired the same meaning for us. And something of this cannot fail
to be present in any relation, be it ever so intimate, because that
which is common to the two is perhaps never common only to them but
belongs to a general conception, which includes much else, many
possibilities of similarities. As little actuality as they may have,
often as we may forget them, yet here and there they crowd in like
shadows between men, like a mist gliding before every word's meaning,
which must actually congeal into solid corporeality in order to be
called rivalry. Perhaps this is in many cases a more general, at least
more insurmountable, strangeness than that afforded by differences and
incomprehensibilities. There is a feeling, indeed, that these are
actually not the peculiar property of just that relation but of a more
general one that potentially refers to us and to an uncertain number of
others, and therefore the relation experienced has no inner and final
necessity.
On the other hand, there is a sort of strangeness, in which this very
connection on the basis of a general quality embracing the parties is
precluded. The relation of the Greeks to the Barbarians is a typical
example; so are all the cases in which the general characteristics which
one takes as peculiarly and merely human are disallowed to the other.
But here the expression "the stranger" has no longer any positive
meaning. The relation with him is a non-relation. He is not a member of
the group itself. As such he is much more to be considered as near and
far at the same moment, seeing that the foundation of the relation is
now laid simply on a general human similarity. Between these two
elements there occurs, however, a peculiar tension, since the
consciousness of having only the absolutely general in common has
exactly the effect of bringing into particular emphasis that which is
not common. In the case of strangers according to country, city, or
race, the individual characteristics of the person are not perceived;
but attention is directed to his alien extraction which he has in common
with all the members of his group. Therefore the strangers are
perceived, not indeed as individuals, but chiefly as strangers of a
certain type. Their remoteness is no less general than their nearness.
With all his inorganic adjacency, the stranger is yet an organic member
of the group, whose uniform life is limited by the peculiar dependence
upon this element. Only we do not know how to designate the
characteristic unity of this position otherwise than by saying that it
is put together of certain amounts of nearness and of remoteness, which,
characterizing in some measure any sort of relation, determine in a
certain proportion and with characteristic mutual tension the specific,
formal relation of "the stranger."
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Physical Contacts
The literature of the research upon social contacts falls naturally
under four heads: physical contacts, sensory contacts, primary contacts,
and secondary contacts.
The reaction of the person to contacts with things as contrasted with
his contacts with persons is an interesting chapter in social
psychology. Observation upon children shows that the individual tends to
respond to inanimate objects, particularly if they are unfamiliar, as if
they were living and social. The study of animism among primitive
peoples indicates that their attitude toward certain animals whom they
regarded as superior social beings is a specialization of this response.
A survey of the poetry of all times and races discloses that nature to
the poet as well as to the mystic is personal. Homesickness and
nostalgia are an indication of the personal and intimate nature of the
relation of man to the physical world.
It seems to be part of man's original nature to take the world socially
and personally. It is only as things become familiar and controllable
that he gains the concept of mechanism. It is natural science and
machinery that has made so large a part of the world impersonal for most
of us.
The scientific study of the actual reaction of persons and groups to
their physical environment is still in the pioneer stage. The
anthropogeographers have made many brilliant suggestions and a few
careful and critical studies of the direct and indirect effects of the
physical environment not merely upon man's social and political
organization but upon his temperament and conduct. Huntington's
suggestive observations upon the effect of climate upon manners and
efficiency have opened a wide field for investigation.[133]
Interest is growing in the psychology and sociology of the responses of
individuals and groups to the physical conditions of their environment.
Communities, large and small in this country, as they become civic
conscious, have devised city plans. New York has made an elaborate
report on the zoning of the city into business, industrial, and
residential areas. A host of housing surveys present realistic pictures
of actual conditions of physical existence from the standpoint of the
hygienic and social effects of low standards of dwelling, overcrowding,
the problem of the roomer. Even historic accounts and impressionistic
observations of art and ornament, decoration and dress, indicate the
relation of these material trappings to the self-consciousness of the
individual in his social milieu.
The reservation must be made that studies of zoning, city planning, and
housing have taken account of economic, aesthetic, and hygienic factors
rather than those of contacts. Implicit, however, in certain aspects of
these studies, certainly present often as an unconscious motive, has
been an appreciation of the effects of the urban, artificial physical
environment upon the responses and the very nature of plastic human
beings, creatures more than creators of the modern leviathan, the Great
City.
Glimpses into the nature and process of these subtle effects appear only
infrequently in formal research. Occasionally such a book as _The
Spirit of Youth and the City Streets_ by Jane Addams throws a flood of
light upon the contrasts between the warmth, the sincerity, and the
wholesomeness of primary human responses and the sophistication, the
coldness, and the moral dangers of the secondary organization of urban
life.
A sociological study of the effect of the artificial physical and social
environment of the city upon the person will take conscious account of
these social factors. The lack of attachment to home in the city tenant
as compared with the sentiments and status of home-ownership in the
village, the mobility of the urban dweller in his necessary routine of
work and his restless quest for pleasure, the sophistication, the front,
the self-seeking of the individual emancipated from the controls of the
primary group--all these represent problems for research.
There are occasional references in literature to what may be called the
inversion of the natural attitudes of the city child. His attention, his
responses, even his images become fixed by the stimuli of the city
streets.[134] To those interested in child welfare and human values this
is the supreme tragedy of the city.
2. Touch and the Primary Contacts of Intimacy
The study of the senses in their relations to personal and social
behavior had its origins in psychology, in psychoanalysis, in ethnology,
and in the study of races and nationalities with reference to the
conflict and fusion of cultures. Darwin's theory of the origin of the
species increased interest in the instincts and it was the study of the
instincts that led psychologists finally to define all forms of behavior
in terms of stimulus and response. A "contact" is simply a stimulation
that has significance for the understanding of group behavior.
In psychoanalysis, a rapidly growing literature is accessible to
sociologists upon the nature and the effects of the intimate contacts of
sex and family life. Indeed, the Freudian concept of the _libido_ may be
translated for sociological purposes into the desire for response. The
intensity of the sentiments of love and hate that cement and disrupt the
family is indicated in the analyses of the so-called "family romance."
Life histories reveal the natural tendencies toward reciprocal affection
of mother and son or father and daughter, and the mutual antagonism of
father and son or mother and daughter.
In ethnology, attention was early directed to the phenomena of taboo
with its injunction against contamination by contacts. The literature of
primitive communities is replete with the facts of avoidance of contact,
as between the sexes, between mother-in-law and son-in-law, with persons
"with the evil eye," etc. Frazer's volume on "Taboo and the Perils of
the Soul" in his series entitled _The Golden Bough_, and Crawley, in his
book, _The Mystic Rose_, to mention two outstanding examples, have
assembled, classified, and interpreted many types of taboo. In the
literature of taboo is found also the ritualistic distinction between
"the clean" and "the unclean" and the development of reverence and awe
toward "the sacred" and "the holy."
Recent studies of the conflict of races and nationalities, generally
considered as exclusively economic or political in nature, bring out the
significance of disgusts and fears based fundamentally upon
characteristic racial odors, marked variations in skin color and in
physiognomy as well as upon differences in food habits, personal
conduct, folkways, mores, and culture.
3. Primary Contacts of Acquaintanceship
Two of the best sociological statements of primary contacts are to be
found in Professor Cooley's analysis of primary groups in his book
_Social Organization_ and in Shaler's exposition of the sympathetic way
of approach in his volume _The Neighbor_. A mass of descriptive material
for the further study of the primary contacts is available from many
sources. Studies of primitive peoples indicate that early social
organizations were based upon ties of kinship and primary group
contacts. Village life in all ages and with all races exhibits absolute
standards and stringent primary controls of behavior. The Blue Laws of
Connecticut are little else than primary-group attitudes written into
law. Common law, the traditional code of legal conduct sanctioned by the
experience of primary groups, may be compared with statute law, which is
an abstract prescription for social life in secondary societies. Here
also should be included the consideration of programs and projects for
community organization upon the basis of primary contacts, as for
example, Ward's _The Social Center_.
4. Secondary Contacts
The transition from feudal societies of villages and towns to our modern
world-society of great cosmopolitan cities has received more attention
from economics and politics than from sociology. Studies of the
industrial basis of city life have given us the external pattern of the
city: its topographical conditions, the concentration of population as
an outcome of large-scale production, division of labor, and
specialization of effort. Research in municipal government has proceeded
from the muck-raking period, indicated by Lincoln Steffens' _The Shame
of the Cities_ to surveys of public utilities and city administration of
the type of those made by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research.
Social interest in the city was first stimulated by the polemics against
the political and social disorders of urban life. There were those who
would destroy the city in order to remedy its evils and restore the
simple life of the country. Sociology sought a surer basis for the
solution of the problems from a study of the facts of city life.
Statistics of population by governmental departments provide figures
upon conditions and tendencies. Community surveys have translated into
understandable form a mass of information about the formal aspects of
city life.
Naturally enough, sympathetic and arresting pictures of city life have
come from residents of settlements as in Jane Addam's _Twenty Years at
Hull House_, Robert Wood's _The City Wilderness_, Lillian Wald's _The
House on Henry Street_ and Mrs. Simkhovitch's _The City Worker's World_.
Georg Simmel has made the one outstanding contribution to a sociology
or, perhaps better, a social philosophy of the city in his paper "The
Great City and Cultural Life."
BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL CONTACTS
I. THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL CONTACTS
(1) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ An exposition of the main
development in sociological theory from Spencer to Ratzenhofer, pp.
486-91. Chicago, 1905.
(2) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation_. Translated from the French
by Elsie Clews Parsons. Chap. iii, "What Is a Society?" New York, 1903.
(3) Thomas, W. I. "Race Psychology: Standpoint and Questionnaire, with
Particular Reference to the Immigrant and the Negro." _American Journal
of Sociology_, XVII (May, 1912), 725-75.
(4) Boas, Franz. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ New York, 1911.
II. INTIMATE SOCIAL CONTACTS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE SENSES
(1) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen über die Formen der
Vergesellschaftung. Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne, pp. 646-65.
Leipzig, 1908.
(2) Crawley, E. _The Mystic Rose._ A study of primitive marriage. London
and New York, 1902.
(3) Sully, James. _Sensation and Intuition._ Studies in psychology and
aesthetics. Chap, iv, "Belief: Its Varieties and Its Conditions."
London, 1874.
(4) Moll, Albert. _Der Rapport in der Hypnose._ Leipzig, 1892.
(5) Elworthy, F. T. _The Evil Eye._ An account of this ancient and
widespread superstition. London, 1895.
(6) Lévy-Bruhl. _Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures._
Paris, 1910.
(7) Starbuck, Edwin D. "The Intimate Senses as Sources of Wisdom," _The
Journal of Religion_, I (March, 1921), 129-45.
(8) Paulhan, Fr. _Les transformations saddles des sentiments._ Paris,
1920.
(9) Stoll, O. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._
Chap. ix, pp. 225-29. Leipzig, 1904.
(10) Hooper, Charles E. _Common Sense._ An analysis and interpretation.
Being a discussion of its general character, its distinction from
discursive reasoning, its origin in mental imagery, its speculative
outlook, its value for practical life and social well-being, its
relation to scientific knowledge, and its bearings on the problems of
natural and rational causation. London, 1913.
(11) Weigall, A. "The Influence of the Kinematograph upon National
Life," _Nineteenth Century and After_, LXXXIX (April, 1921), 661-72.
III. MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF MOBILITY
(1) Vallaux, Camille. "Le sol et l'état," _Géographie sociale._ Paris,
1911.
(2) Demolins, Edmond. _Comment la route crée le type social._ Les
grandes routes des peuples; essai de géographie social. 2 vols. Paris,
1901.
(3) Vandervelde, É. _L'exode rural el le retour aux champs._ Chap. iv,
"Les conséquences de l'exode rural." (Sec. 3 discusses the political and
intellectual, the physical and moral consequences of the rural exodus,
pp. 202-13.) Paris, 1903.
(4) Bury, J. B. _A History of Freedom of Thought._ London and New York,
1913.
(5) Bloch, Iwan. _Die Prostitution._ Handbuch der gesamten
Sexualwissenschaft in Einzeldarstellungen. Berlin, 1912.
(6) Pagnier, Armand. _Du vagabondage et des vagabonds._ Étude
psychologique, sociologique et médico-légale. Lyon, 1906.
(7) Laubach, Frank C. _Why There Are Vagrants._ A study based upon an
examination of one hundred men. New York, 1916.
(8) Ribton-Turner, Charles J. _A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy and
Beggars and Begging._ London, 1887.
(9) Florian, Eugenio. _I vagabondi._ Studio sociologicoguiridico. Parte
prima, "L'Evoluzione del vagabondaggio." Pp. 1-124. Torino, 1897-1900.
(10) Devine, Edward T. "The Shiftless and Floating City Population,"
_Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, X
(September, 1897), 149-164.
IV. SOCIAL CONTACTS IN PRIMARY GROUPS
(1) Sumner, Wm. G. _Folkways._ A study of the sociological importance of
usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. "The In-Group and the
Out-Group," pp. 12-16. Boston, 1906.
(2) Vierkandt, Alfred. _Naturvölker und Kulturvölker._ Ein Beitrag zur
Socialpsychologie. Leipzig, 1896.
(3) Pandian, T. B. _Indian Village Folk._ Their Works and Ways. London,
1897.
(4) Dobschütz, E. v. _Die urchristlichen Gemeinden._
Sittengeschichtliche Bilder. Leipzig, 1902.
(5) Kautsky, Karl. _Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the
Reformation._ Translated by J. L. and E. G. Mulliken. London, 1897.
(6) Hupka, S. von. _Entwicklung der westgalizischen Dorfzustände in der
2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, verfolgt in einem Dörferkomplex._
Zürich, 1910.
(7) Wallace, Donald M. _Russia._ Chaps. vi, vii, viii, and ix. New York,
1905.
(8) Ditchfield, P. H. _Old Village Life, or, Glimpses of Village Life
through All Ages._ New York, 1920.
(9) Hammond, John L., and Hammond, Barbara. _The Village Labourer,
1760-1832._ A study in the government of England before the reform bill.
London, 1911.
(10) _The Blue Laws of Connecticut._ A collection of the earliest
statutes and judicial proceedings of that colony, being an exhibition of
the rigorous morals and legislation of the Puritans. Edited with an
introduction by Samuel M. Schmucker. Philadelphia, 1861.
(11) Nordhoff, C. _The Communistic Societies of the United States._ From
personal visit and observation. Including detailed accounts of the
Economists, Zoarites, Shakers, the Amana, Oneida, Bethel, Aurora,
Icarian, and other existing societies, their religious creeds, social
practices, numbers, industries, and present condition. New York, 1875.
(12) Hinds, William A. _American Communities and Co-operative Colonies._
2d rev. Chicago, 1908. [Contains notices of 144 communities in the
United States.]
(13) L'Houet, A. _Zur Psychologie des Bauerntums._ Ein Beitrag.
Tübingen, 1905.
(14) Pennington, Patience. _A Woman Rice-Planter._ New York, 1913.
(15) Smedes, Susan D. _A Southern Planter._ London, 1889.
(16) Sims, Newell L. _The Rural Community, Ancient and Modern._ Chap.
iv, "The Disintegration of the Village Community." New York, 1920.
(17) Anderson, Wilbert L. _The Country Town._ A study of rural
evolution. New York, 1906.
(18) Zola, Émile. _La Terre._ Paris, 1907. [Romance.]
V. SOCIAL CONTACTS IN SECONDARY GROUPS
(1) Weber, Adna Ferrin. _The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth
Century._ A study in statistics. New York, 1899.
(2) Preuss, Hugo. _Die Entwicklung des deutschen Städtewesens._ I Band.
Leipzig, 1906.
(3) Green, Alice S. A. (Mrs. J. R.) _Town Life in the Fifteenth
Century._ London and New York, 1894.
(4) Toynbee, Arnold. _Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the
Eighteenth Century in England._ London, 1890.
(5) Hammond, J. L., and Hammond, Barbara. _The Town Labourer,
1760-1832._ The new civilization. London, 1917.
(6) ----. _The Skilled Labourer_, 1760-1832. London, 1919. [Presents the
detailed history of particular bodies of skilled workers during the
great change of the Industrial Revolution.]
(7) Jastrow, J. "Die Stadtgemeinschaft in ihren kulturellen
Beziehungen." (Indicates the institutions which have come into existence
under conditions of urban community life.) _Zeitschrift für
Socialwissenschaft_, X (1907), 42-51, 92-101. [Bibliography.]
(8) Sombart, Werner. _The Jews and Modern Capitalism._ Translated from
the German by M. Epstein. London, 1913.
(9) ----. _The Quintessence of Capitalism._ A study of the history and
psychology of the modern business man. Translated from the German by M.
Epstein. New York, 1915.
(10) Wallas, Graham. _The Great Society._ A psychological analysis. New
York, 1914.
(11) Booth, Charles. _Life and Labour of the People in London._ V, East
London, chap, ii, "The Docks." III, chap, iv, "Influx of Population."
London, 1892.
(12) Marpillero, G. "Saggio di psicologia dell'urbanismo," _Rivista
italiana di sociologia_, XII (1908), 599-626.
(13) Besant, Walter. _East London._ London and New York, 1901.
(14) _The Pittsburgh Survey--the Pittsburgh District._ Robert A. Woods,
"Pittsburgh, an Interpretation." Allen T. Burns, "Coalition of
Pittsburgh Coal Fields." New York, 1914.
(15) _Hull House Maps and Papers._ A presentation of nationalities and
wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and
essays on problems growing out of the social conditions. New York, 1895.
(16) Addams, Jane. _Twenty Years at Hull House._ With autobiographical
notes. New York, 1910.
(17) ----. _The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets._ New York, 1909.
(18) Simkhovitch, Mary K. _The City Worker's World in America._ New
York, 1917.
(19) Park, R. E., and Miller, H. A. _Old World Traits Transplanted._ New
York, 1921.
(20) Park, Robert E. _The Immigrant Press and Its Control._ (In press.)
(21) Steiner, J. F. _The Japanese Invasion._ A study in the psychology
of inter-racial contacts. Chicago, 1917.
(22) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. IV, Chicago, 1918.
(23) Cahan, Abraham. _The Rise of David Levinsky._ A novel. New York and
London, 1917.
(24) Hasanovitz, Elizabeth. _One of Them._ Chapters from a passionate
autobiography. Boston, 1918.
(25) Ravage, M. E. _An American in the Making._ The life story of an
immigrant. New York and London, 1917.
(26) Ribbany, Abraham Mitrie. _A Far Journey._ Boston, 1914.
(27) Riis, Jacob A. _The Making of an American._ New York and London,
1901.
(28) Cohen, Rose. _Out of the Shadow._ New York, 1918.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The Land as the Basis for Social Contacts.
2. Density of Population, Social Contacts and Social Organization.
3. Mobility and Social Types, as the Gypsy, the Nomad, the Hobo, the
Pioneer, the Commercial Traveler, the Missionary, the Globe-Trotter, the
Wandering Jew.
4. Stability and Social Types, as the Farmer, the Home-Owner, the
Business Man.
5. Sensory Experience and Human Behavior. Nostalgia (Homesickness).
6. Race Prejudice and Primary Contacts.
7. Taboo and Social Contact.
8. Social Contacts in a Primary Group, as the Family, the Play Group,
the Neighborhood, the Village.
9. Social Control in Primary Groups.
10. The Substitution of Secondary for Primary Contacts as the Cause of
Social Problems, as Poverty, Crime, Prostitution, etc.
11. Control of Problems through Secondary Contacts, as Charity
Organization Society, Social Service Registration Bureau, Police
Department, Morals Court, Publicity through the Press, etc.
12. The Industrial Revolution and the Great Society.
13. Attempts to Revive Primary Groups in the City, as the Social Center,
the Settlement, the Social Unit Experiment, etc.
14. Attempts to Restore Primary Contacts between Employer and Employee.
15. The Anonymity of the Newspaper.
16. Standardization and Impersonality of the Great Society.
17. The Sociology of the Stranger; a Study of the Revivalist, the
Expert, the Genius, the Trader.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What do you understand by the term contact?
2. What are the ways in which geographic conditions influence social
contacts?
3. What are the differences in contact with the land between primitive
and modern peoples?
4. In what ways do increasing social contacts affect contacts with the
soil? Give concrete illustrations.
5. What is the social significance of touch as compared with that of the
other senses?
6. In what sense is touch a social contact?
7. By what principle do you explain desire or aversion for contact?
8. Give illustrations indicating the significance of touch in various
fields of social life.
9. How do you explain the impulse to touch objects which attract
attention?
10. What are the differences in contacts within and without the group in
primitive society?
11. In what way do external relations affect the contacts within the
group?
12. Give illustrations of group egotism or ethnocentrism.
13. To what extent does the dependence of the solidarity of the in-group
upon its relations with the out-groups have a bearing upon present
international relations?
14. To what extent is the social control of the immigrant dependent upon
the maintenance of the solidarity of the immigrant group?
15. What are our reactions upon meeting a person? a friend? a stranger?
16. What do you understand Shaler to mean by the statement that "at the
beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is evidently dealt with
in the categoric way"?
17. How far is "the sympathetic way of approach" practical in human
relations?
18. What is the difference in the basis of continuity between animal and
human society?
19. What types of social contacts make for historical continuity?
20. What are the differences of social contacts in the movements of
primitive and civilized peoples?
21. To what extent is civilization dependent upon increasing contacts
and intimacy of contacts?
22. Does mobility always mean increasing contacts?
23. Under what conditions does mobility contribute to the increase of
experience?
24. Does the hobo get more experience than the schoolboy?
25. Contrast the advantages and limitations of historical continuity and
of mobility.
26. What do you understand by a primary group?
27. Are primary contacts limited to members of face-to-face groups?
28. What attitudes and relations characterize village life?
29. Interpret sociologically the control by the group of the behavior of
the individual in a rural community.
30. Why has the growth of the city resulted in the substitution of
secondary for primary social contacts?
31. What problems grow out of the breakdown of primary relations? What
problems are solved by the breakdown of primary relations?
32. Do the contacts of city life make for the development of
individuality? personality? social types?
33. In what ways does publicity function as a form of secondary contact
in American life?
34. Why does the European peasant first become a reader of newspapers
after his immigration to the United States?
35. Why does the shift from country to city involve a change (a) from
concrete to abstract relations; (b) from absolute to relative
standards of life; (c) from personal to impersonal relations; and
(d) from sentimental to rational attitudes?
36. How far is social solidarity based upon concrete and sentimental
rather than upon abstract and rational relations?
37. Why does immigration make for change from sentimental to rational
attitudes toward life?
38. In what way is capitalism associated with the growth of secondary
contacts?
39. How does "the stranger" include externality and intimacy?
40. In what ways would you illustrate the relation described by Simmel
that combines "the near" and "the far"?
41. Why is it that "the stranger" is associated with revolutions and
destructive forces in the group?
42. Why does "the stranger" have prestige?
43. In what sense is the attitude of the academic man that of "the
stranger" as compared with the attitude of the practical man?
44. To what extent does the professional man have the characteristics of
"the stranger"?
45. Why does the feeling of a relation as unique give it value that it
loses when thought of as shared by others?
46. What would be the effect upon the problem of the relation of the
whites and negroes in the United States of the recognition that this
relation is of the same kind as that which exists between other races in
similar situations?
FOOTNOTES:
[117] Alexander Pope, in smooth lines, and with apt phrases, has
concretely described this process of perversion:
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
[118] H. S. Jennings, John B. Watson, Adolph Meyer, and W. I. Thomas,
"Practical and Theoretical Problems in Instinct and Habit," _Suggestions
of Modern Science Concerning Education_, p. 174.
[119] See Introduction, pp. 8-10.
[120] Thorstein Veblin, _The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of
the Industrial Arts_. (New York, 1914.)
[121] From Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 486-89. (The
University of Chicago Press, 1905.)
[122] From Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic Environment_, pp.
51-53. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.)
[123] From Ernest Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, pp. 76-79. (Published by
The Macmillan Co., 1902. Reprinted by permission.)
[124] From W. G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 12-13. (Ginn & Co., 1906.)
[125] Adapted from N. S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_, pp. 207-27. (Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1904.)
[126] From Friedrich Ratzel, _The History of Mankind_, I, 21-25.
(Published by The Macmillan Co., 1896. Reprinted by permission.)
[127] Adapted from Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic
Environment_, pp. 75-84, 186-87. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.)
[128] Adapted from Caroline C. Richards, _Village Life in America_, pp.
21-138. (Henry Holt & Co., 1912.)
[129] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of
Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 593-609.
[130] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of
Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 604-7.
[131] Adapted from Werner Sombart, _The Quintessence of Capitalism_, pp.
292-307. (T. F. Unwin, Ltd., 1915.)
[132] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, pp. 685-91. (Leipzig:
Duncker und Humblot, 1908.)
[133] Ellsworth Huntington, _Climate and Civilization_. (New Haven,
1915.)
[134] The following is one of the typical illustrations of this point.
An art teacher conducted a group of children from a settlement, in a
squalid city area, to the country. She asked the children to draw any
object they wished. On examination of the drawings she was astonished to
find not rural scenes but pictures of the city streets, as lamp-posts
and smokestacks.
CHAPTER VI
SOCIAL INTERACTION
I. INTRODUCTION
1. The Concept of Interaction
The idea of interaction is not a notion of common sense. It represents
the culmination of long-continued reflection by human beings in their
ceaseless effort to resolve the ancient paradox of unity in diversity,
the "one" and the "many," to find law and order in the apparent chaos of
physical changes and social events; and thus to find explanations for
the behavior of the universe, of society, and of man.
The disposition to be curious and reflective about the physical and
social universe is human enough. For men, in distinction from animals,
live in a world of ideas as well as in a realm of immediate reality.
This world of ideas is something more than the mirror that
sense-perception offers us; something less than that ultimate reality to
which it seems to be a prologue and invitation. Man, in his ambition to
be master of himself and of nature, looks behind the mirror, to analyze
phenomena and seek causes, in order to gain control. Science, natural
science, is a research for causes, that is to say, for mechanisms, which
in turn find application in technical devices, organization, and
machinery, in which mankind asserts its control over physical nature and
eventually over man himself. Education, in its technical aspects at
least, is a device of social control, just as the printing press is an
instrument that may be used for the same purpose.
Sociology, like other natural sciences, aims at prediction and control
based on an investigation of the nature of man and society, and nature
means here, as elsewhere in science, just those aspects of life that are
determined and predictable. In order to describe man and society in
terms which will reveal their nature, sociology is compelled to reduce
the complexity and richness of life to the simplest terms, i.e.,
elements and forces. Once the concepts "elements" or "forces" have been
accepted, the notion of interaction is an evitable, logical development.
In astronomy, for example, these elements are (a) the masses of the
heavenly bodies, (b) their position, (c) the direction of their
movement, and (d) their velocity. In sociology, these forces are
institutions, tendencies, human beings, ideas, anything that embodies
and expresses motives and wishes. In _principle_, and with reference to
their logical character, the "forces" and "elements" in sociology may be
compared with the forces and elements in any other natural science.
Ormond, in his _Foundations of Knowledge_,[135] gives an illuminating
analysis of interaction as a concept which may be applied equally to the
behavior of physical objects and persons.
The notion of interaction is not simple but very complex. The
notion involves not simply the idea of bare collision and
rebound, but something much more profound, namely, the internal
modifiability of the colliding agents. Take for example the
simplest possible case, that of one billiard ball striking
against another. We say that the impact of one ball against
another communicates motion, so that the stricken ball passes
from a state of rest to one of motion, while the striking ball
has experienced a change of an opposite character. But nothing
is explained by this account, for if nothing happens but the
communication of motion, why does it not pass through the
stricken ball and leave its state unchanged? The phenomenon
cannot be of this simple character, but there must be a point
somewhere at which the recipient of the impulse gathers itself
up, so to speak, into a knot and becomes the subject of the
impulse which is thus translated into movement. We have thus
movement, impact, impulse, which is translated again into
activity, and outwardly the billiard ball changing from a state
of rest to one of motion; or in the case of the impelling ball,
from a state of motion to one of rest. Now the case of the
billiard balls is one of the simpler examples of interaction.
We have seen that the problem it supplies is not simple but
very complex. The situation is not thinkable at all if we do
not suppose the internal modifiability of the agents, and this
means that these agents are able somehow to receive internally
and to react upon impulses which are communicated externally in
the form of motion or activity. The simplest form of
interaction involves the supposition, therefore, of internal
subject-points or their analogues from which impulsions are
received and responded to.
Simmel, among sociological writers, although he nowhere expressly
defines the term, has employed the conception of interaction with a
clear sense of its logical significance. Gumplowicz, on the other hand,
has sought to define social interaction as a principle fundamental to
all natural sciences, that is to say, sciences that seek to describe
change in terms of a process, i.e., physics, chemistry, biology,
psychology. The logical principle is the same in all these sciences; the
_processes_ and the _elements_ are different.
2. Classification of the Materials
The material in this chapter will be considered here under three main
heads: (a) society as interaction, (b) communication as the medium
of interaction, and (c) imitation and suggestion as mechanisms of
interaction.
a) _Society as interaction._--Society stated in mechanistic terms
reduces to interaction. A person is a member of society so long as he
responds to social forces; when interaction ends, he is isolated and
detached; he ceases to be a person and becomes a "lost soul." This is
the reason that the limits of society are coterminous with the limits of
interaction, that is, of the participation of persons in the life of
society. One way of measuring the wholesome or the normal life of a
person is by the sheer external fact of his membership in the social
groups of the community in which his lot is cast.
Simmel has illustrated in a wide survey of concrete detail how
interaction defines the group in time and space. Through contacts of
historical continuity, the life of society extends backward to
prehistoric eras. More potent over group behavior than contemporary
discovery and invention is the control exerted by the "dead hand of the
past" through the inertia of folkways and mores, through the revival of
memories and sentiments and through the persistence of tradition and
culture. Contacts of mobility, on the other hand, define the area of the
interaction of the members of the group in space. The degree of
departure from accepted ideas and modes of behavior and the extent of
sympathetic approach to the strange and the novel largely depend upon
the rate, the number, and the intensity of the contacts of mobility.
b) _Communication as the medium of social interaction._--Each science
postulates its own medium of interaction. Astronomy and physics assume
a hypothetical substance, the ether. Physics has its principles of molar
action and reaction; chemistry studies molecular interaction. Biology
and medicine direct their research to the physiological interaction of
organisms. Psychology is concerned with the behavior of the individual
organism in terms of the interaction of stimuli and responses.
Sociology, as collective psychology, deals with communication.
Sociologists have referred to this process as intermental stimulation
and response.
The readings on communication are so arranged as to make clear the three
natural levels of interaction: (x) that of the senses; (y) that of
the emotions; and (z) that of sentiments and ideas.
Interaction through sense-perceptions and emotional responses may be
termed the natural forms of communication since they are common to man
and to animals. Simmel's interpretation of interaction through the
senses is suggestive of the subtle, unconscious, yet profound, way in
which personal attitudes are formed. Not alone vision, but hearing,
smell and touch exhibit in varying degrees the emotional responses of
the type of appreciation. This means understanding other persons or
objects on the perceptual basis.
The selections from Darwin and from Morgan upon emotional expression in
animals indicate how natural expressive signs become a vehicle for
communication. A prepossession for speech and ideas blinds man to the
important rôle in human conduct still exerted by emotional
communication, facial expression, and gesture. Blushing and laughter are
peculiarly significant, because these forms of emotional response are
distinctively human. To say that a person blushes when he is
self-conscious, that he laughs when he is detached from, and superior
to, and yet interested in, an occurrence means that blushing and
laughter represent contrasted attitudes to a social situation. The
relation of blushing and laughter to social control, as an evidence of
the emotional dependence of the person upon the group, is at its apogee
in adolescence.
Interaction through sensory impressions and emotional expression is
restricted to the communication of attitudes and feelings. The
selections under the heading "Language and the Communication of Ideas"
bring out the uniquely human character of speech. Concepts, as Max
Müller insists, are the common symbols wrought out in social experience.
They are more or less conventionalized, objective, and intelligible
symbols that have been defined in terms of a common experience or, as
the logicians say, of a universe of discourse. Every group has its own
universe of discourse. In short, to use Durkheim's phrase, concepts are
"collective representations."
History has been variously conceived in terms of great events,
epoch-making personalities, social movements, and cultural changes. From
the point of view of sociology social evolution might profitably be
studied in its relation to the development and perfection of the means
and technique of communication. How revolutionary was the transition
from word of mouth and memory to written records! The beginnings of
ancient civilization with its five independent centers in Egypt, the
Euphrates River Valley, China, Mexico, and Peru appear to be
inextricably bound up with the change from pictographs to writing, that
is to say from symbols representing words to symbols representing
sounds. The modern period began with the invention of printing and the
printing press. As books became the possession of the common man the
foundation was laid for experiments in democracy. From the sociological
standpoint the book is an organized objective mind whose thoughts are
accessible to all. The rôle of the book in social life has long been
recognized but not fully appreciated. The Christian church, to be sure,
regards the Bible as the word of God. The army does not question the
infallibility of the Manual of Arms. Our written Constitution has been
termed "the ark of the covenant." The orthodox Socialist appeals in
unquestioning faith to the ponderous tomes of Marx.
World-society of today, which depends upon the almost instantaneous
communication of events and opinion around the world, rests upon the
invention of telegraphy and the laying of the great ocean cables.
Wireless telegraphy and radio have only perfected these earlier means
and render impossible a monopoly or a censorship of intercommunication
between peoples. The traditional cultures, the social inheritances of
ages of isolation, are now in a world-process of interaction and
modification as a result of the rapidity and the impact of these modern
means of the circulation of ideas and sentiments. At the present time it
is so popular to malign the newspaper that few recognize the extent to
which news has freed mankind from the control of political parties,
social institutions, and, it may be added, from the "tyranny" of books.
c) _Imitation and suggestion the mechanistic forms of
interaction._--In all forms of communication behavior changes occur, but
in two cases the processes have been analyzed, defined, and reduced to
simple terms, viz., in imitation and in suggestion.
Imitation, as the etymology of the term implies, is a process of copying
or learning. But imitation is learning only so far as it has the
character of an experiment, or trial and error. It is also obvious that
so-called "instinctive" imitation is not learning at all. Since the
results of experimental psychology have limited the field of instinctive
imitation to a few simple activities, as the tendencies to run when
others run, to laugh when others laugh, its place in human life becomes
of slight importance as compared with imitation which involves
persistent effort at reproducing standard patterns of behavior.
This human tendency, under social influences, to reproduce the copy
Stout has explained in psychological terms of attention and interest.
The interests determine the run of attention, and the direction of
attention fixes the copies to be imitated. Without in any way
discounting the psychological validity of this explanation, or its
practical value in educational application, social factors controlling
interest and attention should not be disregarded. In a primary group,
social control narrowly restricts the selection of patterns and
behavior. In an isolated group the individual may have no choice
whatsoever. Then, again, attention may be determined, not by interests
arising from individual capacity or aptitude, but rather from _rapport_,
that is, from interest in the prestige or in the personal traits of the
individual presenting the copy.
The relation of the somewhat complex process of imitation to the simple
method of trial and error is of significance. Learning by imitation
implies at once both identification of the person with the individual
presenting the copy and yet differentiation from him. Through imitation
we appreciate the other person. We are in sympathy or _en rapport_ with
him, while at the same time we appropriate his sentiment and his
technique. Ribot and Adam Smith analyze this relation of imitation to
sympathy and Hirn points out that in art this process of internal
imitation is indispensable for aesthetic appreciation.
In this process of appreciation and learning the primitive method of
trial and error comes into the service of imitation. In a real sense
imitation is mechanical and conservative; it provides a basis for
originality, but its function is to transmit, not to originate the new.
On the other hand, the simple process of trial and error, a common
possession of man and the animals, results in discovery and invention.
The most scientifically controlled situation for the play of suggestion
is in hypnosis. An analysis of the observed facts of hypnotism will be
helpful in arriving at an understanding of the mechanism of suggestion
in everyday life. The essential facts of hypnotism may be briefly
summarized as follows: (a) The establishment of a relation of
_rapport_ between the experimenter and the subject of such a nature that
the latter carries out suggestions presented by the former. (b) The
successful response by the subject to the suggestion is conditional upon
its relation to his past experience. (c) The subject responds to his
own idea of the suggestion, and not to the idea as conceived by the
experimenter. A consideration of cases is sufficient to convince the
student of a complete parallel between suggestion in social life with
suggestion in hypnosis, so far, at least, as concerns the last two
points. Wherever rapport develops between persons, as in the love of
mother and son, the affection of lovers, the comradeship of intimate
friends, there also arises the mechanism of the reciprocal influence of
suggestion. But in normal social situations, unlike hypnotism, there may
be the effect of suggestion where no rapport exists.
Herein lies the significance of the differentiation made by Bechterew
between active perception and passive perception. In passive perception
ideas and sentiments evading the "ego" enter the "subconscious mind"
and, uncontrolled by the active perception, form organizations or
complexes of "lost" memories. It thus comes about that in social
situations, where no rapport exists between two persons, a suggestion
may be made which, by striking the right chord of memory or by
resurrecting a forgotten sentiment, may transform the life of the other,
as in conversion. The area of suggestion in social life is indicated in
a second paper selected from Bechterew. In later chapters upon "Social
Control" and "Collective Behavior" the mechanism of suggestion in the
determination of group behavior will be further considered.
Imitation and suggestion are both mechanisms of social interaction in
which an individual or group is controlled by another individual or
group. The distinction between the two processes is now clear. The
characteristic mark of imitation is the tendency, under the influence of
copies socially presented, to build up mechanisms of habits, sentiments,
ideals, and patterns of life. The process of suggestion, as
differentiated from imitation in social interaction, is to release under
the appropriate social stimuli mechanisms already organized, whether
instincts, habits, or sentiments. The other differences between
imitation and suggestion grow out of this fundamental distinction. In
imitation attention is alert, now on the copy and now on the response.
In suggestion the attention is either absorbed in, or distracted from,
the stimulus. In imitation the individual is self conscious; the subject
in suggestion is unconscious of his behavior. In imitation the activity
tends to reproduce the copy; in suggestion the response may be like or
unlike the copy.
II. MATERIALS
A. SOCIETY AS INTERACTION
1. The Mechanistic Interpretation of Society[136]
In every natural process we may observe the two essential factors which
constitute it, namely, heterogeneous elements and their reciprocal
interaction which we ascribe to certain natural forces. We observe these
factors in the natural process of the stars, by which the different
heavenly bodies exert certain influences over each other, which we
ascribe either to the force of attraction or to gravity.
"No material bond unites the planets to the sun. The direct activity of
an elementary force, the general force of attraction, holds both in an
invisible connection by the elasticity of its influence."
In the chemical natural process we observe the most varied elements
related to each other in the most various ways. They attract or repulse
each other. They enter into combinations or they withdraw from them.
These are nothing but actions and interactions which we ascribe to
certain forces inherent in these elements.
The vegetable and animal natural process begins, at any rate, with the
contact of heterogeneous elements which we characterize as sexual cells
(gametes). They exert upon each other a reciprocal influence which sets
into activity the vegetable and animal process.
The extent to which science is permeated by the hypothesis that
heterogeneous elements reacting upon each other are necessary to a
natural process is best indicated by the atomic theory.
Obviously, it is conceded that the origins of all natural processes
cannot better be explained than by the assumption of the existence in
bodies of invisible particles, each of which has some sort of separate
existence and reacts upon the others.
The entire hypothesis is only the consequence of the concept of a
natural process which the observation of nature has produced in the
human mind.
Even though we conceive the social process as characteristic and
different from the four types of natural processes mentioned above,
still there must be identified in it the two essential factors which
constitute the generic conception of the natural process. And this is,
in fact, what we find. The numberless human groups, which we assume as
the earliest beginnings of human existence, constitute the great variety
of heterogeneous ethnic elements. These have decreased with the decrease
in the number of hordes and tribes. From the foregoing explanation we
are bound to assume as certain that in this field we are concerned with
ethnically different and heterogeneous elements.
The question now remains as to the second constitutive element of a
natural process, namely, the definite interaction of these elements, and
especially as to those interactions which are characterized by
regularity and permanency. Of course, we must avoid analogy with the
reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous elements in the domain of other
natural processes. In strict conformity with the scientific method we
take into consideration merely such interactions as the facts of common
knowledge and actual experience offer us. Thus will we be able, happily,
to formulate a principle of the reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous
ethnic, or, if you will, social elements, the mathematical certainty and
universality of which cannot be denied irrefutably, since it manifests
itself ever and everywhere in the field of history and the living
present.
This principle may be very simply stated: Every stronger ethnic or
social group strives to subjugate and make serviceable to its purposes
every weaker element which exists or may come within the field of its
influence. This thesis of the relation of heterogeneous ethnic and
social elements to each other, with all the consequences proceeding
from it, contains within it the key to the solution of the entire riddle
of the natural process of human history. We shall see this thesis
illustrated ever and everywhere in the past and the present in the
interrelations of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements and become
convinced of its universal validity. In this latter relation it does not
correspond at all to such natural laws, as, for example, attraction and
gravitation or chemical affinity, or to the laws of vegetable and animal
life. In order better to conceive of this social natural law in its
general validity, we must study it in its different consequences and in
the various forms which it assumes according to circumstances and
conditions.
2. Social Interaction as the Definition of the Group in Time and
Space[137]
Society exists wherever several individuals are in reciprocal
relationship. This reciprocity arises always from specific impulses or
by virtue of specific purposes. Erotic, religious, or merely associative
impulses, purposes of defense or of attack, of play as well as of gain,
of aid and instruction, and countless others bring it to pass that men
enter into group relationships of acting for, with, against, one
another; that is, men exercise an influence upon these conditions of
association and are influenced by them. These reactions signify that out
of the individual bearers of those occasioning impulses and purposes a
unity, that is, a "society," comes into being.
An organic body is a unity because its organs are in a relationship of
more intimate interchange of their energies than with any external
being. A _state_ is _one_ because between its citizens the corresponding
relationship of reciprocal influences exists. We could, indeed, not call
the world _one_ if each of its parts did not somehow influence every
other, if anywhere the reciprocity of the influences, however mediated,
were cut off. That unity, or socialization, may, according to the kind
and degree of reciprocity, have very different gradations, from the
ephemeral combination for a promenade to the family; from all
relationships "at will" to membership in a state; from the temporary
aggregation of the guests in a hotel to the intimate bond of a medieval
guild.
Everything now which is present in the individuals--the immediate
concrete locations of all historical actuality--in the nature of
impulse, interest, purpose, inclination, psychical adaptability, and
movement of such sort that thereupon or therefrom occurs influence upon
others, or the reception of influence from them--all this I designate as
the content or the material of socialization. In and of themselves,
these materials with which life is filled, these motivations which impel
it, are not social in their nature. Neither hunger nor love, neither
labor nor religiosity, neither the technique nor the functions and
results of intelligence, as they are given immediately and in their
strict sense, signify socialization. On the contrary, they constitute it
only when they shape the isolated side-by-sideness of the individuals
into definite forms of with-and-for-one-another, which belong under the
general concept of reciprocity. Socialization is thus the _form_,
actualizing itself in countless various types, in which the
individuals--on the basis of those interests, sensuous or ideal,
momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious, casually driving or
purposefully leading--grow together into a unity, and within which these
interests come to realization.
That which constitutes "society" is evidently types of reciprocal
influencing. Any collection of human beings whatsoever becomes
"society," not by virtue of the fact that in each of the number there is
a life-content which actuates the individual as such, but only when the
vitality of these contents attains the form of reciprocal influencing.
Only when an influence is exerted, whether immediately or through a
third party, from one upon another has society come into existence in
place of a mere spatial juxtaposition or temporal contemporaneousness or
succession of individuals. If, therefore, there is to be a science, the
object of which is to be "society" and nothing else, it can investigate
only these reciprocal influences, these kinds and forms of
socialization. For everything else found within "society" and realized
by means of it is not "society" itself, but merely a content which
builds or is built by this form of coexistence, and which indeed only
together with "society" brings into existence the real structure,
"society," in the wider and usual sense.
The persistence of the group presents itself in the fact that, in spite
of the departure and the change of members, the group remains identical.
We say that it is the same state, the same association, the same army,
which now exists that existed so and so many decades or centuries ago;
this, although no single member of the original organization remains.
Here is one of the cases in which the temporal order of events presents
a marked analogy with the spatial order. Out of individuals existing
side by side, that is, apart from each other, a social unity is formed.
The inevitable separation which space places between men is nevertheless
overcome by the spiritual bond between them, so that there arises an
appearance of unified interexistence. In like manner the temporal
separation of individuals and of generations presents their union in our
conceptions as a coherent, uninterrupted whole. In the case of persons
spatially separated, this unity is effected by the reciprocity
maintained between them across the dividing distance. The unity of
complex being means nothing else than the cohesion of elements which is
produced by the reciprocal exercise of forces. In the case of temporally
separated persons, however, unity cannot be effected in this manner,
because reciprocity is lacking. The earlier may influence the later, but
the later cannot influence the earlier. Hence the persistence of the
social unity in spite of shifting membership presents a peculiar problem
which is not solved by explaining how the group came to exist at a given
moment.
a) _Continuity by continuance of locality._--The first and most
obvious element of the continuity of group unity is the continuance of
the locality, of the place and soil on which the group lives. The state,
still more the city, and also countless other associations, owe their
unity first of all to the territory which constitutes the abiding
substratum for all change of their contents. To be sure, the continuance
of the locality does not of itself alone mean the continuance of the
social unity, since, for instance, if the whole population of a state is
driven out or enslaved by a conquering group, we speak of a changed
civic group in spite of the continuance of the territory. Moreover, the
unity of whose character we are speaking is psychical, and it is this
psychical factor itself which makes the territorial substratum a unity.
After this has once taken place, however, the locality constitutes an
essential point of attachment for the further persistence of the group.
But it is only one such element, for there are groups that get along
without a local substratum. On the one hand, there are the very small
groups, like the family, which continue precisely the same after the
residence is changed. On the other hand, there are the very large
groups, like that ideal community of the "republic of letters," or the
other international associations in the interest of culture, or the
groups conducting international commerce. Their peculiar character
comes from entire independence of all attachment to a definite locality.
b) _Continuity through blood relationship._--In contrast with this
more formal condition for the maintenance of the group is the
physiological connection of the generations. Community of stock is not
always enough to insure unity of coherence for a long time. In many
cases the local unity must be added. The social unity of the Jews has
been weakened to a marked degree since the dispersion, in spite of their
physiological and confessional unity. It has become more compact in
cases where a group of Jews have lived for a time in the same territory,
and the efforts of the modern "Zionism" to restore Jewish unity on a
larger scale calculate upon concentration in one locality. On the other
hand, when other bonds of union fail, the physiological is the last
recourse to which the self-maintenance of the group resorts. The more
the German guilds declined, the weaker their inherent power of cohesion
became, the more energetically did each guild attempt to make itself
exclusive, that is, it insisted that no persons should be admitted as
guildmasters except sons or sons-in-law of masters or the husbands of
masters' widows.
The physiological coherence of successive generations is of incomparable
significance for the maintenance of the unitary self of the group, for
the special reason that the displacement of one generation by the
following _does not take place all at once_. By virtue of this fact it
comes about that a continuity is maintained which conducts the vast
majority of the individuals who live in a given moment into the life of
the next moment. The change, the disappearance and entrance of persons,
affects in two contiguous moments a number relatively small compared
with the number of those who remain constant. Another element of
influence in this connection is the fact that human beings are not bound
to a definite mating season, but that children are begotten at any time.
It can never properly be asserted of a group, therefore, that at any
given moment a new generation begins. The departure of the older and the
entrance of the younger elements proceed so gradually and continuously
that the group seems as much like a unified self as an organic body in
spite of the change of its atoms.
If the change were instantaneous, it is doubtful if we should be
justified in calling the group "the same" after the critical moment as
before. The circumstance alone that the transition affected in a given
moment only a minimum of the total life of the group makes it possible
for the group to retain its selfhood through the change. We may express
this schematically as follows: If the totality of individuals or other
conditions of the life of the group be represented by a, b, c, d, e; in
a later moment by m, n, o, p, q; we may nevertheless speak of the
persistence of identical selfhood if the development takes the following
course: a, b, c, d, e--m, b, c, d, e--m, n, c, d, e--m, n, o, d, e--m,
n, o, p, e--m, n, o, p, q. In this case each stage is differentiated
from the contiguous stage by only one member, and at each moment it
shares the same chief elements with its neighboring moments.
c) _Continuity through membership in the group._--This continuity in
change of the individuals who are the vehicles of the group unity is
most immediately and thoroughly visible when it rests upon procreation.
The same form is found, however, in cases where this physical agency is
excluded, as, for example, within the Catholic clerus. Here the
continuity is secured by provision that enough persons always remain in
office to initiate the neophytes. This is an extremely important
sociological fact. It makes bureaucracies tenacious, and causes their
character and spirit to endure in spite of all shifting of individuals.
The physiological basis of self-maintenance here gives place to a
psychological one. To speak exactly, the preservation of group identity
in this case depends, of course, upon the amount of invariability in the
vehicles of this unity, but, at all events, the whole body of members
belonging in the group at any given moment only separate from the group
after they have been associated with their successors long enough to
assimilate the latter fully to themselves, i.e., to the spirit, the
form, the tendency of the group. The immortality of the group depends
upon the fact that the change is sufficiently slow and gradual.
The fact referred to by the phrase "immortality of the group" is of the
greatest importance. The preservation of the identical selfhood of the
group through a practically unlimited period gives to the group a
significance which, _ceteris paribus_, is far superior to that of the
individual. The life of the individual, with its purposes, its
valuations, its force, is destined to terminate within a limited time,
and to a certain extent each individual must start at the beginning.
Since the life of the group has no such a priori fixed time limit, and
its forms are really arranged as though they were to last forever, the
group accomplishes a summation of the achievements, powers, experiences,
through which it makes itself far superior to the fragmentary individual
lives. Since the early Middle Ages this has been the source of the power
of municipal corporations in England. Each had from the beginning the
right, as Stubbs expresses it, "of perpetuating its existence by filling
up vacancies as they occur." The ancient privileges were given expressly
only to the burghers and their heirs. As a matter of fact, they were
exercised as a right to add new members so that, whatever fate befell
the members and their physical descendants, the corporation, as such,
was held intact. This had to be paid for, to be sure, by the
disappearance of the individual importance of the units behind their
rôle as vehicles of the maintenance of the group, for the group security
must suffer, the closer it is bound up with the perishable individuality
of the units. On the other hand, the more anonymous and unpersonal the
unit is, the more fit is he to step into the place of another, and so to
insure to the group uninterrupted self-maintenance. This was the
enormous advantage through which during the Wars of the Roses the
Commons repulsed the previously superior power of the upper house. A
battle that destroyed half the nobility of the country took also from
the House of Lords one-half its force, because this is attached to the
personalities. The House of Commons is in principle assured against such
weakening. That estate at last got predominance which, through the
equalizing of its members, demonstrated the most persistent power of
group existence. This circumstance gives every group an advantage in
competition with an individual.
d) _Continuity through leadership._--On this account special
arrangements are necessary so soon as the life of the group is
intimately bound up with that of a leading, commanding individual. What
dangers to the integrity of the group are concealed in this sociological
form may be learned from the history of all interregnums--dangers which,
of course, increase in the same ratio in which the ruler actually forms
the central point of the functions through which the group preserves its
unity, or, more correctly, at each moment creates its unity anew.
Consequently a break between rulers may be a matter of indifference
where the prince only exercises a nominal sway--"reigns, but does not
govern"--while, on the other hand, we observe even in the swarm of bees
that anarchy results so soon as the queen is removed. Although it is
entirely false to explain this latter phenomenon by analogy of a human
ruler, since the queen bee gives no orders, yet the queen occupies the
middle point of the activity of the hive. By means of her antennae she
is in constant communication with the workers, and so all the signals
coursing through the hive pass through her. By virtue of this very fact
the hive feels itself a unity, and this unity dissolves with the
disappearance of the functional center.
e) _Continuity through the hereditary principle._--In political groups
the attempt is made to guard against all the dangers of personality,
particularly those of possible intervals between the important persons,
by the principle: "The king never dies." While in the early Middle Ages
the tradition prevailed that when the king dies his peace dies with him,
this newer principle contains provision for the self-preservation of the
group. It involves an extraordinarily significant sociological
conception, viz., the king is no longer king as a person, but the
reverse is the case, that is, his person is only the in itself
irrelevant vehicle of the abstract kingship, which is as unalterable as
the group itself, of which the kingship is the apex. The group reflects
its immortality upon the kingship, and the sovereign in return brings
that immortality to visible expression in his own person, and by so
doing reciprocally strengthens the vitality of the group. That mighty
factor of social coherence which consists of loyalty of sentiment toward
the reigning power might appear in very small groups in the relation of
fidelity toward the person of the ruler. For large groups the definition
that Stubbs once gave must certainly apply, viz.: "Loyalty is a habit of
strong and faithful attachment to a person, not so much by reason of his
personal character as of his official position." By becoming objectified
in the deathless office, the princely principle gains a new
psychological power for concentration and cohesion within the group,
while the old princely principle that rested on the mere personality of
the prince necessarily lost power as the size of the group increased.
f) _Continuity through a material symbol._--The objectification of the
coherence of the group may also do away with the personal form to such
an extent that it attaches itself to a material symbol. Thus in the
German lands in the Middle Ages the imperial jewels were looked upon as
the visible realization of the idea of the realm and of its continuity,
so that the possession of them gave to a pretender a decided advantage
over all other aspirants, and this was one of the influences which
evidently assisted the heir of the body of the deceased emperor in
securing the succession.
In view of the destructibility of a material object, since too this
disadvantage cannot be offset, as in the case of a person, by the
continuity of heredity, it is very dangerous for the group to seek such
a support for its self-preservation. Many a regiment has lost its
coherence with the loss of its standard. Many kinds of associations have
dissolved after their palladium, their storehouse, their grail, was
destroyed. When, however, the social coherence is lost in this way, it
is safe to say that it must have suffered serious internal disorder
before, and that in this case the loss of the external symbol
representing the unity of the group is itself only the symbol that the
social elements have lost their coherence. When this last is not the
case, the loss of the group symbol not only has no disintegrating effect
but it exerts a direct integrating influence. While the symbol loses its
corporeal reality, it may, as mere thought, longing, ideal, work much
more powerfully, profoundly, indestructibly. We may get a good view of
these two opposite influences of the forms of destruction of the group
symbol upon the solidity of the group by reference to the consequences
of the destruction of the Jewish temple by Titus. The hierarchal Jewish
state was a thorn in the flesh of the Roman statecraft that aimed at the
unity of the empire. The purpose of dissolving this state was
accomplished, so far as a certain number of the Jews were concerned, by
the destruction of the temple. Such was the effect with those who cared
little, anyway, about this centralization. Thus the alienation of the
Pauline Christians from Judaism was powerfully promoted by this event.
For the Palestinian Jews, on the other hand, the breach between Judaism
and the rest of the world was deepened. By this destruction of its
symbol their national religious exclusiveness was heightened to
desperation.
g) _Continuity through group honor._--The sociological significance of
honor as a form of cohesion is extraordinarily great. Through the appeal
to honor, society secures from its members the kind of conduct conducive
to its own preservation, particularly within the spheres of conduct
intermediate between the purview of the criminal code, on the one hand,
and the field of purely personal morality, on the other. By the demands
upon its members contained in the group standard of honor the group
preserves its unified character and its distinctness from the other
groups within the same inclusive association. The essential thing is the
specific idea of honor in narrow groups--family honor, officers' honor,
mercantile honor, yes, even the "honor among thieves." Since the
individual belongs to various groups, the individual may, at the same
time, be under the demands of several sorts of honor which are
independent of each other. One may preserve his mercantile honor, or his
scientific honor as an investigator, who has forfeited his family honor,
and vice versa; the robber may strictly observe the requirements of
thieves' honor after he has violated every other; a woman may have lost
her womanly honor and in every other respect be most honorable, etc.
Thus honor consists in the relation of the individual to a particular
circle, which in this respect manifests its separateness, its
sociological distinctness, from other groups.
h) _Continuity through specialized organs._--From such recourse of
social self-preservation to individual persons, to a material substance,
to an ideal conception, we pass now to the cases in which social
persistence takes advantage of an organ composed of a number of persons.
Thus a religious community embodies its coherence and its life principle
in its priesthood; a political community its inner principle of union in
its administrative organization, its union against foreign power in its
military system; this latter in its corps of officers; every permanent
union in its official head; transitory associations in their committees;
political parties in their parliamentary representatives.
B. THE NATURAL FORMS OF COMMUNICATION
1. Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction[138]
It is through the medium of the senses that we perceive our fellow-men.
This fact has two aspects of fundamental sociological significance:
(a) that of appreciation, and (b) that of comprehension.
a) _Appreciation._--Sense-impressions may induce in us affective
responses of pleasure or pain, of excitement or calm, of tension or
relaxation, produced by the features of a person, or by the tone of his
voice, or by his mere physical presence in the same room. These
affective responses, however, do not enable us to understand or to
define the other person. Our emotional response to the sense-image of
the other leaves his real self outside.
b) _Comprehension._--The sense-impression of the other person may
develop in the opposite direction when it becomes the medium for
understanding the other. What I see, hear, feel of him is only the
bridge over which I reach his real self. The sound of the voice and its
meaning, perhaps, present the clearest illustration. The speech, quite
as much as the appearance, of a person, may be immediately either
attractive or repulsive. On the other hand, what he says enables us to
understand not only his momentary thoughts but also his inner self. The
same principle applies to all sense-impressions.
The sense-impressions of any object produce in us not only emotional and
aesthetic attitudes toward it but also an understanding of it. In the
case of reaction to non-human objects, these two responses are, in
general, widely separated. We may appreciate the emotional value of any
sense-impression of an object. The fragrance of a rose, the charm of a
tone, the grace of a bough swaying in the wind, is experienced as a joy
engendered within the soul. On the other hand, we may desire to
understand and to comprehend the rose, or the tone, or the bough. In the
latter case we respond in an entirely different way, often with
conscious endeavor. These two diverse reactions which are independent of
each other are with human beings generally integrated into a unified
response. Theoretically, our sense-impressions of a person may be
directed on the one hand to an appreciation of his emotional value, or
on the other to an impulsive or deliberate understanding of him.
Actually, these two reactions are coexistent and inextricably interwoven
as the basis of our relation to him. Of course, appreciation and
comprehension develop in quite different degrees. These two diverse
responses--to the tone of voice and to the meaning of the utterance; to
the appearance of a person and to his individuality; to the attraction
or repulsion of his personality and to the impulsive judgment upon his
character as well as many times upon his grade of culture--are present
in any perception in very different degrees and combinations.
Of the special sense-organs, the eye has a uniquely sociological
function. The union and interaction of individuals is based upon mutual
glances. This is perhaps the most direct and purest reciprocity which
exists anywhere. This highest psychic reaction, however, in which the
glances of eye to eye unite men, crystallizes into no objective
structure; the unity which momentarily arises between two persons is
present in the occasion and is dissolved in the function. So tenacious
and subtle is this union that it can only be maintained by the shortest
and straightest line between the eyes, and the smallest deviation from
it, the slightest glance aside, completely destroys the unique character
of this union. No objective trace of this relationship is left behind,
as is universally found, directly or indirectly, in all other types of
associations between men, as, for example, in interchange of words. The
interaction of eye and eye dies in the moment in which the directness of
the function is lost. But the totality of social relations of human
beings, their self-assertion and self-abnegation, their intimacies and
estrangements, would be changed in unpredictable ways if there occurred
no glance of eye to eye. This mutual glance between persons, in
distinction from the simple sight or observation of the other, signifies
a wholly new and unique union between them.
The limits of this relation are to be determined by the significant fact
that the glance by which the one seeks to perceive the other is itself
expressive. By the glance which reveals the other, one discloses
himself. By the same act in which the observer seeks to know the
observed, he surrenders himself to be understood by the observer. The
eye cannot take unless at the same time it gives. The eye of a person
discloses his own soul when he seeks to uncover that of another. What
occurs in this direct mutual glance represents the most perfect
reciprocity in the entire field of human relationships.
Shame causes a person to look at the ground to avoid the glance of the
other. The reason for this is certainly not only because he is thus
spared the visible evidence of the way in which the other regards his
painful situation, but the deeper reason is that the lowering of his
glance to a certain degree prevents the other from comprehending the
extent of his confusion. The glance in the eye of the other serves not
only for me to know the other but also enables him to know me. Upon the
line which unites the two eyes, it conveys to the other the real
personality, the real attitude, and the real impulse. The "ostrich
policy" has in this explanation a real justification: who does not see
the other actually conceals himself in part from the observer. A person
is not at all completely present to another, when the latter sees him,
but only when he also sees the other.
The sociological significance of the eye has special reference to the
expression of the face as the first object of vision between man and
man. It is seldom clearly understood to what an extent even our
practical relations depend upon mutual recognition, not only in the
sense of all external characteristics, as the momentary appearance and
attitude of the other, but what we know or intuitively perceive of his
life, of his inner nature, of the immutability of his being, all of
which colors unavoidably both our transient and our permanent relations
with him. The face is the geometric chart of all these experiences. It
is the symbol of all that which the individual has brought with him as
the pre-condition of his life. In the face is deposited what has been
precipitated from past experience as the substratum of his life, which
has become crystallized into the permanent features of his face. To the
extent to which we thus perceive the face of a person, there enters into
social relations, in so far as it serves practical purposes, a
super-practical element. It follows that a man is first known by his
countenance, not by his acts. The face as a medium of expression is
entirely a theoretical organ; it does not act, as the hand, the foot,
the whole body; it transacts none of the internal or practical relations
of the man, it only tells about him. The peculiar and important
sociological art of "knowing" transmitted by the eye is determined by
the fact that the countenance is the essential object of the
interindividual sight. This knowing is still somewhat different from
understanding. To a certain extent, and in a highly variable degree, we
know at first glance with whom we have to do. Our unconsciousness of
this knowledge and its fundamental significance lies in the fact that we
direct our attention from this self-evident intuition to an
understanding of special features which determine our practical
relations to a particular individual. But if we become conscious of this
self-evident fact, then we are amazed how much we know about a person in
the first glance at him. We do not obtain meaning from his expression,
susceptible to analysis into individual traits. We cannot unqualifiedly
say whether he is clever or stupid, good- or ill-natured, temperamental
or phlegmatic. All these traits are general characteristics which he
shares with unnumbered others. But what this first glance at him
transmits to us cannot be analyzed or appraised into any such conceptual
and expressive elements. Yet our initial impression remains ever the
keynote of all later knowledge of him; it is the direct perception of
his individuality which his appearance, and especially his face,
discloses to our glance.
The sociological attitude of the blind is entirely different from that
of the deaf-mute. For the blind, the other person is actually present
only in the alternating periods of his utterance. The expression of the
anxiety and unrest, the traces of all past events, exposed to view in
the faces of men, escape the blind, and that may be the reason for the
peaceful and calm disposition, and the unconcern toward their
surroundings, which is so often observed in the blind. Indeed, the
majority of the stimuli which the face presents are often puzzling; in
general, what we see of a man will be interpreted by what we hear from
him, while the opposite is more unusual. Therefore the one who sees,
without hearing, is much more perplexed, puzzled, and worried, than the
one who hears without seeing. This principle is of great importance in
understanding the sociology of the modern city.
Social life in the large city as compared with the towns shows a great
preponderance of occasions to _see_ rather than to _hear_ people. One
explanation lies in the fact that the person in the town is acquainted
with nearly all the people he meets. With these he exchanges a word or a
glance, and their countenance represents to him not merely the visible
but indeed the entire personality. Another reason of especial
significance is the development of public means of transportation.
Before the appearance of omnibuses, railroads, and street cars in the
nineteenth century, men were not in a situation where for periods of
minutes or hours they could or must look at each other without talking
to one another. Modern social life increases in ever growing degree the
rôle of mere visual impression which always characterizes the
preponderant part of all sense relationship between man and man, and
must place social attitudes and feelings upon an entirely changed basis.
The greater perplexity which characterizes the person who only sees, as
contrasted with the one who only hears, brings us to the problems of
the emotions of modern life: the lack of orientation in the collective
life, the sense of utter lonesomeness, and the feeling that the
individual is surrounded on all sides by closed doors.
2. The Expression of the Emotions[139]
Actions of all kinds, if regularly accompanying any state of the mind,
are at once recognized as expressive. These may consist of movements of
any part of the body, as the wagging of a dog's tail, the shrugging of a
man's shoulders, the erection of the hair, the exudation of
perspiration, the state of the capillary circulation, labored breathing,
and the use of the vocal or other sound-producing instruments. Even
insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation.
With man the respiratory organs are of especial importance in
expression, not only in a direct, but to a still higher degree in an
indirect, manner.
Few points are more interesting in our present subject than the
extraordinarily complex chain of events which lead to certain expressive
movements. Take, for instance, the oblique eyebrows of a man suffering
from grief or anxiety. When infants scream loudly from hunger or pain,
the circulation is affected, and the eyes tend to become gorged with
blood; consequently the muscles surrounding the eyes are strongly
contracted as a protection. This action, in the course of many
generations, has become firmly fixed and inherited; but when, with
advancing years and culture, the habit of screaming is partially
repressed, the muscles round the eyes still tend to contract, whenever
even slight distress is felt. Of these muscles, the pyramidals of the
nose are less under the control of the will than are the others, and
their contraction can be checked only by that of the central fasciae of
the frontal muscle; these latter fasciae draw up the inner ends of the
eyebrows and wrinkle the forehead in a peculiar manner, which we
instantly recognize as the expression of grief or anxiety. Slight
movements, such as these just described, or the scarcely perceptible
drawing down of the corners of the mouth, are the last remnants or
rudiments of strongly marked and intelligible movements. They are as
full of significance to us in regard to expression as are ordinary
rudiments to the naturalist in the classification and genealogy of
organic beings.
That the chief expressive actions exhibited by man and by the lower
animals are now innate or inherited--that is, have not been learned by
the individual--is admitted by everyone. So little has learning or
imitation to do with several of them that they are from the earliest
days and throughout life quite beyond our control; for instance, the
relaxation of the arteries of the skin in blushing, and the increased
action of the heart in anger. We may see children only two or three
years old, and even those born blind, blushing from shame; and the naked
scalp of a very young infant reddens from passion. Infants scream from
pain directly after birth, and all their features then assume the same
form as during subsequent years. These facts alone suffice to show that
many of our most important expressions have not been learned; but it is
remarkable that some, which are certainly innate, require practice in
the individual before they are performed in a full and perfect manner;
for instance, weeping and laughing. The inheritance of most of our
expressive actions explains the fact that those born blind display them,
as I hear from the Rev. R. H. Blair, equally well with those gifted with
eyesight. We can thus also understand the fact that the young and the
old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the
same state of mind by the same movement.
We are so familiar with the fact of young and old animals displaying
their feelings in the same manner that we hardly perceive how remarkable
it is that a young puppy should wag its tail when pleased, depress its
ears and uncover its canine teeth when pretending to be savage, just
like an old dog; or that a kitten should arch its little back and erect
its hair when frightened and angry, like an old cat. When, however, we
turn to less common gestures in ourselves, which we are accustomed to
look at as artificial or conventional--such as shrugging the shoulders
as a sign of impotence, or the raising the arms with open hands and
extended fingers as a sign of wonder--we feel perhaps too much surprise
at finding that they are innate. That these and some other gestures are
inherited we may infer from their being performed by very young
children, by those born blind, and by the most widely distinct races of
man. We should also bear in mind that new and highly peculiar tricks, in
association with certain states of the mind, are known to have arisen
in certain individuals and to have been afterward transmitted to their
offspring, in some cases for more than one generation.
Certain other gestures, which seem to us so natural that we might easily
imagine that they were innate, apparently have been learned like the
words of a language. This seems to be the case with the joining of the
uplifted hands and the turning up of the eyes in prayer. So it is with
kissing as a mark of affection; but this is innate, in so far as it
depends on the pleasure derived from contact with a beloved person. The
evidence with respect to the inheritance of nodding and shaking the head
as signs of affirmation and negation is doubtful, for they are not
universal, yet seem too general to have been independently acquired by
all the individuals of so many races.
We will now consider how far the will and consciousness have come into
play in the development of the various movements of expression. As far
as we can judge, only a few expressive movements, such as those just
referred to, are learned by each individual; that is, were consciously
and voluntarily performed during the early years of life for some
definite object, or in imitation of others, and then became habitual.
The far greater number of the movements of expression, and all the more
important ones, are, as we have seen, innate or inherited; and such
cannot be said to depend on the will of the individual. Nevertheless,
all those included under our first principle were at first voluntarily
performed for a definite object, namely, to escape some danger, to
relieve some distress, or to gratify some desire. For instance, there
can hardly be a doubt that the animals which fight with their teeth have
acquired the habit of drawing back their ears closely to their heads
when feeling savage from their progenitors having voluntarily acted in
this manner in order to protect their ears from being torn by their
antagonists; for those animals which do not fight with their teeth do
not thus express a savage state of mind. We may infer as highly probable
that we ourselves have acquired the habit of contracting the muscles
round the eyes whilst crying gently, that is, without the utterance of
any loud sound, from our progenitors, especially during infancy, having
experienced during the act of screaming an uncomfortable sensation in
their eyeballs. Again, some highly expressive movements result from the
endeavor to check or prevent other expressive movements; thus the
obliquity of the eyebrows and the drawing down of the corners of the
mouth follow from the endeavor to prevent a screaming-fit from coming on
or to check it after it has come on. Here it is obvious that the
consciousness and will must at first have come into play; not that we
are conscious in these or in other such cases what muscles are brought
into action, any more than when we perform the most ordinary voluntary
movements.
The power of communication between the members of the same tribe by
means of language has been of paramount importance in the development of
man; and the force of language is much aided by the expressive movements
of the face and body. We perceive this at once when we converse on an
important subject with any person whose face is concealed. Nevertheless
there are no grounds, as far as I can discover, for believing that any
muscle has been developed or even modified exclusively for the sake of
expression. The vocal and other sound-producing organs by which various
expressive noises are produced seem to form a partial exception; but I
have elsewhere attempted to show that these organs were first developed
for sexual purposes, in order that one sex might call or charm the
other. Nor can I discover grounds for believing that any inherited
movement which now serves as a means of expression was at first
voluntarily and consciously performed for this special purpose--like
some of the gestures and the finger-language used by the deaf and dumb.
On the contrary, every true or inherited movement of expression seems to
have had some natural and independent origin. But when once acquired,
such movements may be voluntarily and consciously employed as a means of
communication. Even infants, if carefully attended to, find out at a
very early age that their screaming brings relief, and they soon
voluntarily practice it. We may frequently see a person voluntarily
raising his eyebrows to express surprise, or smiling to express
pretended satisfaction and acquiescence. A man often wishes to make
certain gestures conspicuous or demonstrative, and will raise his
extended arms with widely opened fingers above his head to show
astonishment or lift his shoulders to his ears to show that he cannot or
will not do something.
We have seen that the study of the theory of expression confirms to a
certain limited extent the conclusion that man is derived from some
lower animal form, and supports the belief of the specific or
subspecific unity of the several races; but as far as my judgment
serves, such confirmation was hardly needed. We have also seen that
expression in itself, or the language of the emotions, as it has
sometimes been called, is certainly of importance for the welfare of
mankind. To understand, as far as is possible, the source or origin of
the various expressions which may be hourly seen on the faces of the men
around us, not to mention our domesticated animals, ought to possess
much interest for us. From these several causes we may conclude that the
philosophy of our subject has well deserved that attention which it has
already received from several excellent observers, and that it deserves
still further attention, especially from any able physiologist.
3. Blushing[140]
Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions.
Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount
of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush. The
reddening of the face from a blush is due to the relaxation of the
muscular coats of the small arteries, by which the capillaries become
filled with blood; and this depends on the proper vasomotor center being
affected. No doubt if there be at the same time much mental agitation,
the general circulation will be affected; but it is not due to the
action of the heart that the network of minute vessels covering the face
becomes under a sense of shame gorged with blood. We can cause laughing
by tickling the skin, weeping or frowning by a blow, trembling from the
fear of pain, and so forth; but we cannot cause a blush by any physical
means--that is, by any action on the body. It is the mind which must be
affected. Blushing is not only involuntary, but the wish to restrain it,
by leading to self-attention, actually increases the tendency.
The young blush much more freely than the old, but not during infancy,
which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early age redden
from passion. I have received authentic accounts of two little girls
blushing at the ages of between two and three years; and of another
sensitive child, a year older, blushing when reproved for a fault. Many
children at a somewhat more advanced age blush in a strongly marked
manner. It appears that the mental powers of infants are not as yet
sufficiently developed to allow of their blushing. Hence, also, it is
that idiots rarely blush. Dr. Crichton Browne observed for me those
under his care, but never saw a genuine blush, though he has seen their
faces flush, apparently from joy, when food was placed before them, and
from anger. Nevertheless some, if not utterly degraded, are capable of
blushing. A microcephalous idiot, for instance, thirteen years old,
whose eyes brightened a little when he was pleased or amused, has been
described by Dr. Behn as blushing and turning to one side when undressed
for medical examination.
Women blush much more than men. It is rare to see an old man, but not
nearly so rare to see an old woman, blushing. The blind do not escape.
Laura Bridgman, born in this condition, as well as completely deaf,
blushes. The Rev. R. H. Blair, principal of the Worcester College,
informs me that three children born blind, out of seven or eight then in
the asylum, are great blushers. The blind are not at first conscious
that they are observed, and it is a most important part of their
education, as Mr. Blair informs me, to impress this knowledge on their
minds; and the impression thus gained would greatly strengthen the
tendency to blush, by increasing the habit of self-attention.
The tendency to blush is inherited. Dr. Burgess gives the case of a
family consisting of a father, mother, and ten children, all of whom,
without exception, were prone to blush to a most painful degree. The
children were grown up; "and some of them were sent to travel in order
to wear away this diseased sensibility, but nothing was of the slightest
avail." Even peculiarities in blushing seem to be inherited. Sir James
Paget, whilst examining the spine of a girl, was struck at her singular
manner of blushing; a big splash of red appeared first on one cheek, and
then other splashes, variously scattered over the face and neck. He
subsequently asked the mother whether her daughter always blushed in
this peculiar manner and was answered, "Yes, she takes after me." Sir J.
Paget then perceived that by asking this question he had caused the
mother to blush and she exhibited the same peculiarity as her daughter.
In most cases the face, ears, and neck are the sole parts which redden;
but many persons, whilst blushing intensely, feel that their whole
bodies grow hot and tingle; and this shows that the entire surface must
be in some manner affected. Blushes are said sometimes to commence on
the forehead, but more commonly on the cheeks, afterward spreading to
the ears and neck. In two albinos examined by Dr. Burgess, the blushes
commenced by a small circumscribed spot on the cheeks, over the
parotidean plexus of nerves, and then increased into a circle; between
this blushing circle and the blush on the neck there was an evident line
of demarcation, although both arose simultaneously. The retina, which is
naturally red in the albino, invariably increased at the same time in
redness. Every one must have noticed how easily after one blush fresh
blushes chase each other over the face. Blushing is preceded by a
peculiar sensation in the skin. According to Dr. Burgess the reddening
of the skin is generally succeeded by a slight pallor, which shows that
the capillary vessels contract after dilating. In some rare cases
paleness instead of redness is caused under conditions which would
naturally induce a blush. For instance, a young lady told me that in a
large and crowded party she caught her hair so firmly on the button of a
passing servant that it took some time before she could be extricated;
from her sensation she imagined that she had blushed crimson but was
assured by a friend that she had turned extremely pale.
The mental states which induce blushing consist of shyness, shame, and
modesty, the essential element in all being self-attention. Many reasons
can be assigned for believing that originally self-attention directed to
personal appearance, in relation to the opinion of others, was the
exciting cause, the same effect being subsequently produced, through the
force of association, by self-attention in relation to moral conduct. It
is not the simple act of reflecting on our own appearance, but the
thinking what others think of us, which excites a blush. In absolute
solitude the most sensitive person would be quite indifferent about his
appearance. We feel blame or disapprobation more acutely than
approbation; and consequently depreciatory remarks or ridicule, whether
of our appearance or conduct, cause us to blush much more readily than
does praise. But undoubtedly praise and admiration are highly efficient:
a pretty girl blushes when a man gazes intently at her, though she may
know perfectly well that he is not depreciating her. Many children, as
well as old and sensitive persons, blush when they are much praised.
Hereafter the question will be discussed how it has arisen that the
consciousness that others are attending to our personal appearance
should have led to the capillaries, especially those of the face,
instantly becoming filled with blood.
My reasons for believing that attention directed to personal appearance,
and not to moral conduct, has been the fundamental element in the
acquirement of the habit of blushing will now be given. They are
separately light, but combined possess, as it appears to me,
considerable weight. It is notorious that nothing makes a shy person
blush so much as any remark, however slight, on his personal appearance.
One cannot notice even the dress of a woman much given to blushing
without causing her face to crimson. It is sufficient to stare hard at
some persons to make them, as Coleridge remarks, blush--"account for
that he who can."
With the two albinos observed by Dr. Burgess, "the slightest attempt to
examine their peculiarities" invariably caused them to blush deeply.
Women are much more sensitive about their personal appearance than men
are, especially elderly women in comparison with elderly men, and they
blush much more freely. The young of both sexes are much more sensitive
on this same head than the old, and they also blush much more freely
than the old. Children at a very early age do not blush; nor do they
show those other signs of self-consciousness which generally accompany
blushing; and it is one of their chief charms that they think nothing
about what others think of them. At this early age they will stare at a
stranger with a fixed gaze and unblinking eyes, as on an inanimate
object, in a manner which we elders cannot imitate.
It is plain to everyone that young men and women are highly sensitive to
the opinion of each other with reference to their personal appearance;
and they blush incomparably more in the presence of the opposite sex
than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will
blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl
whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. No happy
pair of young lovers, valuing each other's admiration and love more than
anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without
many a blush. Even the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr.
Bridges, blush "chiefly in regard to women, but certainly also at their
own personal appearance."
Of all parts of the body, the face is most considered and regarded, as
is natural from its being the chief seat of expression and the source of
the voice. It is also the chief seat of beauty and of ugliness, and
throughout the world is the most ornamented. The face, therefore, will
have been subjected during many generations to much closer and more
earnest self-attention than any other part of the body; and in
accordance with the principle here advanced we can understand why it
should be the most liable to blush. Although exposure to alternations of
temperature, etc., has probably much increased the power of dilatation
and contraction in the capillaries of the face and adjoining parts, yet
this by itself will hardly account for these parts blushing much more
than the rest of the body; for it does not explain the fact of the hands
rarely blushing. With Europeans the whole body tingles slightly when the
face blushes intensely; and with the races of men who habitually go
nearly naked, the blushes extend over a much larger surface than with
us. These facts are, to a certain extent, intelligible, as the
self-attention of primeval man, as well as of the existing races which
still go naked, will not have been so exclusively confined to their
faces, as is the case with the people who now go clothed.
We have seen that in all parts of the world persons who feel shame for
some moral delinquency are apt to avert, bend down, or hide their faces,
independently of any thought about their personal appearance. The object
can hardly be to conceal their blushes, for the face is thus averted or
hidden under circumstances which exclude any desire to conceal shame, as
when guilt is fully confessed and repented of. It is, however, probable
that primeval man before he had acquired much moral sensitiveness would
have been highly sensitive about his personal appearance, at least in
reference to the other sex, and he would consequently have felt distress
at any depreciatory remarks about his appearance; and this is one form
of shame. And as the face is the part of the body which is most
regarded, it is intelligible that any one ashamed of his personal
appearance would desire to conceal this part of his body. The habit,
having been thus acquired, would naturally be carried on when shame from
strictly moral causes was felt; and it is not easy otherwise to see why
under these circumstances there should be a desire to hide the face more
than any other part of the body.
The habit, so general with everyone who feels ashamed, of turning away
or lowering his eyes, or restlessly moving them from side to side,
probably follows from each glance directed toward those present,
bringing home the conviction that he is intently regarded; and he
endeavors, by not looking at those present, and especially not at their
eyes, momentarily to escape from this painful conviction.
4. Laughing[141]
Sympathy, when it is not the direct cause, is conditional to the
existence of laughter. Sometimes it provokes it; always it spreads it,
sustains and strengthens it.
First of all, it is so much the nature of laughter to communicate itself
that when it no longer communicates itself it ceases to exist. One might
say that outbursts of merriment need to be encouraged, that they are not
self-sufficient. Not to share them is to blow upon them and extinguish
them. When, in an animated and mirthful group, some one remains cold or
gloomy, the laughter immediately stops or is checked. Yet those whom the
common people call, in their picturesque language, wet blankets,
spoil-sports, or kill-joys, are not necessarily hostile to the gaiety of
the rest. They may only have, and, in fact, very often do have, nothing
but the one fault of being out of tune with this gaiety. But even their
calm appears an offense to the warmth and the high spirits of the others
and kills by itself alone this merriment.
Not only is laughter maintained by sympathy but it is even born of
sympathy. The world is composed of two kinds of people: those who make
one laugh and those who are made to laugh, these latter being infinitely
more numerous. How many there are, indeed, who have no sense of humor,
and who, of themselves, would not think of laughing at things at which
they do nevertheless laugh heartily because they see others laugh. As
for those who have a ready wit and a sense of the comic, do they not
enjoy the success of their jokes as much, if not more, than their jokes
themselves? Their mirthfulness, then, at least, grows with the joy of
spreading it. Very often it happens that many good humorists are
temperamentally far from gay, and laugh at their jokes only on the
rebound, echoing the laughter which they provoke. To laugh, then, is to
share the gaiety of others, whether this gaiety is communicated from
them to us or from us to them. It seems that we can be moved to laughter
only by the merriment of others, that we possess ours only indirectly
when others send it to us. Human solidarity never appears more clearly
than in the case of laughter.
Yet can one say that sympathy actually produces laughter? Is it not
enough to say that it increases it, that it strengthens its effects? All
our sentiments are without doubt in a sense revealed to us by others.
How many, as Rochefoucauld says, would be ignorant of love if they had
never read novels! How many in the same way would never have discovered
by themselves the laughable side of people and things. Yet even the
feelings which one experiences by contagion one can experience only of
one's own accord, in one's own way, and according to one's disposition.
This fact alone of their contagion proves that from one's birth one
carries the germ in himself. Sympathy would explain, then, contagion,
but not the birth, of laughter. The fact is that our feelings exist for
ourselves only when they acquire a communicative or social value; they
have to be diffused in order to manifest themselves. Sympathy does not
create them but it gives them their place in the world. It gives them
just that access of intensity without which their nature cannot develop
or even appear: thus it is that our laughter would be for us as if it
did not exist, if it did not find outside itself an echo which increases
it.
From the fact that sympathy is the law of laughter, does it follow that
it is the cause? Not at all. It would be even contradictory to maintain
this. A laugh being given, others are born out of sympathy. But the
first laugh or one originally given, where does it get its origin?
Communicated laughter implies spontaneous laughter as the echo implies a
sound. If sympathy explains one, it is, it would seem, an antipathy or
the absence of sympathy which produces the other. "The thing at which we
laugh," says Aristotle, "is a defect or ugliness which is not great
enough to cause suffering or injury. Thus, for example, a ridiculous
face is an ugly or misshapen face, but one on which suffering has not
marked." Bain says likewise, "The laughable is the deformed or ugly
thing which is not pushed to the point where it is painful or injurious.
An occasion for laughter is the degradation of a person of dignity in
circumstances which do not arouse a strong emotion," like indignation,
anger, or pity. Descartes puts still more limits upon laughter. Speaking
of malice he says that laughter cannot be provoked except by misfortunes
not only _light_ but also _unforseen_ and _deserved_. "Derision or
mockery," he says, "is a kind of joy mixed with hate, which comes from
one's perceiving some _little misfortune_ in a person _whom one thinks
deserves it_. We hate this misfortune but are happy at seeing it in some
one who merits it, and, _when this happens unexpectedly, surprise causes
us to burst out laughing_. But this misfortune must be small, for if it
is great we cannot believe that he who meets it deserves it, unless one
has a very malicious or hateful nature."
This fact can be established directly by analyzing the most cruel
laughter. If we enter into the feelings of the one who laughs and set
aside the disagreeable sentiments, irritation, anger, and disgust, which
at times they produce upon us, we come to understand even the savage
sneer which appears to us as an insult to suffering; the laugh of the
savage, trampling his conquered enemy under foot, or that of the child
torturing unfortunate animals. This laugh is, in fact, inoffensive in
its way, it is cruel in fact but not in intention. What it expresses is
not a perverse, satanic joy but a _heartlessness_, as is so properly
said. In the child and the savage sympathy has not been born, that is to
say, the absence of imagination for the sufferings of others is
complete. As a result we have a negative cruelty, a sort of altruistic
or social anaesthesia.
When such an anaesthesia is not complete, when the altruistic
sensibility of one who laughs is only dull, his egotism being very keen,
his laughter might appear still less hatefully cruel. It would express
then not properly the joy of seeing others suffer but that of not having
to undergo their suffering and the power of seeing it only as a
spectacle.
Analogous facts may be cited closer to us, easier to verify. Those who
enjoy robust health often laugh at invalids: their imagination does not
comprehend physical suffering, they are incapable of sympathizing with
those who experience it. Likewise those who possess calm and even
dispositions cannot witness without laughing an excess of mad anger or
of impotent rage. In general we do not take seriously those feelings to
which we ourselves are strangers; we consider them extravagant and
amusing. "How can one be a Persian?" To laugh is to detach one's self
from others, to separate one's self and to take pleasure in this
separation, to amuse one's self by contrasting the feelings, character,
and temperament of others and one's own feelings, character, and
temperament. _Insensibility_ has been justly noted by M. Bergson as an
essential characteristic of him who laughs. But this _insensibility_,
this heartlessness, gives very much the effect of a positive and real
ill nature, and M. Bergson had thus simply repeated and expressed in a
new way, more precise and correct, the opinion of Aristotle: the cause
of laughter is malice mitigated by insensibility or the absence of
sympathy.
Thus defined, malice is after all essentially relative, and when one
says that the object of our laughter is the misfortune of someone else,
_known by us_ to be endurable and slight, it must be understood that
this misfortune may be _in itself_ very serious as well as undeserved,
and in this way laughter is often really cruel.
The coarser men are, the more destitute they are of sympathetic
imagination, and the more they laugh at one another with an offensive
and brutal laugh. There are those who are not even touched by contact
with physical suffering; such ones have the heart to laugh at the
shufflings of a bandy-legged man, at the ugliness of a hunchback, or the
repulsive hideousness of an idiot. Others there are who are moved by
physical suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering.
These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded pride, at
the tortured self-consciousness of one abashed or humiliated. These are,
in their eyes, harmless, and slight pricks which they themselves, by a
coarseness of nature, or a fine moral health, would endure perhaps with
equanimity, which at any rate they do not feel in behalf of others, with
whom they do not suffer in sympathy.
_Castigat ridendo mores._ According to M. A. Michiels, the author of a
book upon the _World of Humor and of Laughter_, this maxim must be
understood in its broadest sense. "Everything that is contrary to the
absolute ideal of human perfection," in whatever order it be, whether
physical, intellectual, moral, or social, arouses laughter. The fear of
ridicule is the most dominant of our feelings, that which controls us in
most things and with the most strength. Because of this fear one does
"what one would not do for the sake of justice, scrupulousness, honor,
or good will;" one submits to an infinite number of obligations which
morality would not dare to prescribe and which are not included in the
laws. "Conscience and the written laws," says A. Michiels, "form two
lines of ramparts against evil, the ludicrous is the third line of
defense, it stops, brands, and condemns the little misdeeds which the
guards have allowed to pass."
Laughter is thus the great censor of vices, it spares none, it does not
even grant indulgence to the slightest imperfections, of whatever nature
they be. This mission, which M. Michiels attributes to laughter,
granting that it is fulfilled, instead of taking its place in the
natural or providential order of things, does it not answer simply to
those demands, whether well founded or not, which society makes upon
each of us? M. Bergson admits this, justly enough, it appears, when he
defines laughter as a social bromide. But then it is no longer mere
imperfection in general, it is not even immorality, properly speaking;
it is merely unsociability, well or badly understood, which laughter
corrects. More precisely, it is a special unsociability, one which
escapes all other penalties, which it is the function of laughter to
reach. What can this unsociability be? It is the self-love of each one
of us in so far as it has anything disagreeable to others in it, an
abstraction of every injurious or hateful element. It is the harmless
self-love, slight, powerless, which one does not fear but one scorns,
yet for all that does not pardon but on the contrary pitilessly pursues,
wounds, and galls. Self-love thus defined is vanity, and what is called
the moral correction administered by laughter is the wound to self-love.
"The specific remedy for vanity," says M. Bergson, "is laughter, and the
essentially ridiculous is vanity."
One sees in what sense laughter is a "correction." Whether one considers
the jests uttered, the feelings of the jester, or of him at whom one
jests, laughter appears from the point of view of morality as a
correction most often undeserved, unjust--or at least disproportionate
to the fault--pitiless, and cruel.
In fact, the self-love at which one laughs is, as we have said,
harmless. Besides it is often a natural failing, a weakness, not a vice.
Even if it were a vice, the jester would not be justified in laughing at
it, for it does not appear that he himself is exempt. On the contrary,
his vanity is magnified when that of others is upon the rack. Finally
the humiliation caused by laughter is not a chastisement which one
accepts but a torture to which one submits; it is a feeling of
resentment, of bitterness, not a wholesome sense of shame, nor one from
which anyone is likely to profit. Laughter may then have a social use;
but it is not an act of justice. It is a quick and summary police
measure which will not stand too close a scrutiny but which it would be
imprudent either to condemn or to approve without reserve. Society is
established and organized according to natural laws which seem to be
modeled on those of reason, but self-loves discipline themselves, they
enter into conflict and hold each other in check.
C. LANGUAGE AND THE COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS
1. Intercommunication in the Lower Animals[142]
The foundations of intercommunication, like those of imitation, are laid
in certain instinctive modes of response, which are stimulated by the
acts of other animals of the same social group.
Some account has already been given of the sounds made by young birds,
which seem to be instinctive and to afford an index of the emotional
state at the time of utterance. That in many cases they serve to evoke a
like emotional state and correlated expressive behavior in other birds
of the same brood cannot be questioned. The alarm note of a chick will
place its companions on the alert; and the harsh "krek" of a young
moor-hen, uttered in a peculiar crouching attitude, will often throw
others into this attitude, though the maker of the warning sound may be
invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct of the hen
is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger signal causes
them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is not less
familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens, or a sheep with
her lambs, can doubt that such "dumb animals" are influenced in their
behavior by suggestive sounds. The important questions are, how they
originate, what is their value, and how far such intercommunication--if
such we may call it--extends.
There can be but little question that in all cases of animals under
natural conditions such behavior has an instinctive basis. Though the
effect may be to establish a means of communication, such is not their
conscious purpose at the outset. They are presumably congenital and
hereditary modes of emotional expression which serve to evoke responsive
behavior in another animal--the reciprocal action being generally in its
primary origin between mate and mate, between parent and offspring, or
between members of the same family group. _And it is this reciprocal
action which constitutes it a factor in social evolution._ Its chief
interest in connection with the subject of behavior lies in the fact
that it shows the instinctive foundations on which intelligent and
eventually rational modes of intercommunication are built up. For
instinctive as the sounds are at the outset, by entering into the
conscious situation and taking their part in the association-complex of
experience, they become factors in the social life as modified and
directed by intelligence. To their original instinctive value as the
outcome of stimuli, and as themselves affording stimuli to responsive
behavior, is added a value for consciousness in so far as they enter
into those guiding situations by which intelligent behavior is
determined. And if they also serve to evoke, in the reciprocating
members of the social group, similar or allied emotional states, there
is thus added a further social bond, inasmuch as there are thus laid the
foundations of sympathy.
"What makes the old sow grunt and the piggies sing and whine?" said a
little girl to a portly, substantial farmer. "I suppose they does it for
company, my dear," was the simple and cautious reply. So far as
appearances went, that farmer looked as guiltless of theories as man
could be. And yet he gave terse expression to what may perhaps be
regarded as the most satisfactory hypothesis as to the primary purpose
of animal sounds. They are a means by which each indicates to others the
fact of his comforting presence; and they still, to a large extent,
retain their primary function. The chirping of grasshoppers, the song of
the cicada, the piping of frogs in the pool, the bleating of lambs at
the hour of dusk, the lowing of contented cattle, the call-notes of the
migrating host of birds--all these, whatever else they may be, are the
reassuring social links of sound, the grateful signs of kindred
presence. Arising thus in close relation to the primitive feelings of
social sympathy, they would naturally be called into play with special
force and suggestiveness at times of strong emotional excitement, and
the earliest differentiations would, we may well believe, be determined
along lines of emotional expression. Thus would originate mating cries,
male and female after their kind; and parental cries more or less
differentiated into those of mother and offspring, the deeper note of
the ewe differing little save in pitch and timbre from the bleating of
her lamb, while the cluck of the hen differs widely from the peeping
note of the chick in down. Thus, too, would arise the notes of anger and
combat, of fear and distress, of alarm and warning. If we call these the
instinctive language of emotional expression, we must remember that such
"language" differs markedly from the "language" of which the sentence is
the recognized unit.
It is, however, not improbable that, through association in the
conscious situation, sounds, having their origin in emotional expression
and evoking in others like emotional states, may acquire a new value in
suggesting, for example, the presence of particular enemies. An example
will best serve to indicate my meaning. The following is from H. B.
Medlicott:
In the early dawn of a grey morning I was geologizing along the
base of the Muhair Hills in South Behar, when all of a sudden
there was a stampede of many pigs from the fringe of the
jungle, with porcine shrieks of _sauve qui peut_ significance.
After a short run in the open they took to the jungle again,
and in a few minutes there was another uproar, but different in
sound and in action; there was a rush, presumably of the
fighting members, to the spot where the row began, and after
some seconds a large leopard sprang from the midst of the
scuffle. In a few bounds he was in the open, and stood looking
back, licking his chops. The pigs did not break cover, but
continued on their way. They were returning to their lair after
a night's feeding on the plain, several families having
combined for mutual protection; while the beasts of prey were
evidently waiting for the occasion. I was alone, and, though
armed, I did not care to beat up the ground to see if in either
case a kill had been effected. The numerous herd covered a
considerable space, and the scrub was thick. The prompt
concerted action must in each case have been started by the
special cry. I imagine that the first assailant was a tiger,
and the case was at once known to be hopeless, the cry
prompting instant flight, while in the second case the cry was
for defense. It can scarcely be doubted that in the first case
each adult pig had a vision of a tiger, and in the second of a
leopard or some minor foe.
If we accept Mr. Medlicott's interpretation as in the main correct, we
have in this case: (1) common action in social behavior, (2) community
of emotional state, and (3) the suggestion of natural enemies not
unfamiliar in the experience of the herd. It is a not improbable
hypothesis, therefore, that in the course of evolution the initial value
of uttered sounds is emotional; but that on this may be grafted in
further development the indication of particular enemies. If, for
example, the cry which prompts instant flight among the pigs is called
forth by a tiger, it is reasonable to suppose that this cry would give
rise to a representative generic image of that animal having its
influence on the conscious situation. But if the second cry, for
defense, was prompted sometimes by a leopard and sometimes by some other
minor foe, then this cry would not give rise to a representative image
of the same definiteness. Whether animals have the power of
intentionally differentiating the sounds they make to indicate different
objects is extremely doubtful. Can a dog bark in different tones to
indicate "cat" or "rat," as the case may be? Probably not. It may,
however, be asked why, if a pig may squeak differently, and thus,
perhaps, incidentally indicate on the one hand "tiger" and on the other
hand "leopard," should not a dog bark differently and thus indicate
appropriately "cat" or "rat"? Because it is assumed that the two
different cries in the pig are the instinctive expression of two
different emotional states, and Mr. Medlicott could distinguish them;
whereas, in the case of the dog, we can distinguish no difference
between his barking in the one case and the other, nor do the emotional
states appear to be differentiated. Of course there may be differences
which we have failed to detect. What may be regarded, however, as
improbable is the _intentional_ differentiation of sounds by barking in
different tones with the _purpose_ of indicating "cat" or "rat."
Such powers of intercommunication as animals possess are based on direct
association and refer to the here and the now. A dog may be able to
suggest to his companion the fact that he has descried a worriable cat;
but can a dog tell his neighbor of the delightful worry he enjoyed the
day before yesterday in the garden where the man with the biscuit tin
lives? Probably not, bark he never so expressively.
From the many anecdotes of dogs calling others to their assistance or
bringing others to those who feed them or treat them kindly, we may
indeed infer the existence of a social tendency and of the suggestive
effects of behavior, but we cannot derive conclusive evidence of
anything like descriptive communication.
Such intentional communication as is to be found in animals, if indeed
we may properly so call it, seems to arise by an association of the
performance of some act in a conscious situation involving further
behavior for its complete development. Thus the cat which touches the
handle of the door when it wishes to leave the room has had experience
in which the performance of this act has coalesced with a specific
development of the conscious situation. The case is similar when your
dog drops a ball or stick at your feet, wishing you to throw it for him
to fetch. Still, it is clear that such an act would be the perceptual
precursor of the deliberate conduct of the rational being by whom the
sign is definitely realized as a sign, the intentional meaning of which
is distinctly present to thought. This involves a judgment concerning
the sign as an object of thought; and this is probably beyond the
capacity of the dog. For, as Romanes himself says, "It is because the
human mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself and thus to
constitute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought that it
is capable of judgment, whether in the act of conception or in that of
predication. We have no evidence to show that any animal is capable of
objectifying its own ideas; and therefore we have no evidence that any
animal is capable of judgment."