CRITICISM OF STANDARDS CHAP. XLVII Criticism Standards Accumu late and Clog the Life Time should not consecrate error. Without the free play of Without judgment and unfettered criticism standards will accumulate and choke the channel of life. New needed taboos will be added to old useless taboos until one is penned in a thorn hedge of Don'ts, like the orthodox Jew, who must obey 613 commandments. Current When, however, a standard is attacked it is well to note the ground of the attack. Is the reproach against it that it limits one's freedom? or that obeying it benefits society less than it costs the obeyers? The latter is a home thrust, but not the former. Any clever person can dissect standards to death, can make them out to be arbitrary, inconsistent and burdensome. Without a sense of responsibility such a one is dangerous, for he breaks down standards, not on general-welfare grounds, but to display his cleverness or to rid himself of salutary restraints. tive Crit Construc We may distinguish in society two elements: those who take Destruc standards seriously, live up to them under trying circumstances, ies and propagate them, expose those who violate them and shame the tive public into enforcing the standards it professes to hold; and those Critics who regard standards as gyves, ignore them when no one is looking, flout them when they feel themselves strong with the public, and pour upon them ridicule and contumely. The former are the upbuilders, the latter the destroyers. There are times when the latter are so many and strong that there is a moral sag in society from its members being freer to give themselves up to their appetites and passions. THE DISINTEGRATION OF TRADITION What gives a social standard power over the reluctant will is chiefly public opinion, the prestige of age and the grip of early education. In our time, however, the latter two are uncommonly weak, because the startling transformations in manner of life forced upon us by the economic results of mechanical inventions have obliged us often to cast aside tradition and to laugh at childhood teachings. Here is the prime cause of the raw individualism of our age, the ruthless self-assertion, the struggle-forlife ethics founded on a perverted Darwinism, and the elevation into a dogma of that ancient maxim of the underworld, "Every man for himself." Why Nowadays Tradition is Weak CHAP. When Moral Traditions Break up Human Nature Asserts Itself The Public is Not Wise Enough to Dispense with Standards Few People are to Trace quences of Conduct The break-up of moral traditions throws men back upon unschooled human nature and has its good side as well as its bad side. Writes Professor Cooley: "It may obscure those larger truths that are the growth of time and may let loose pride, sensuality and scepticism; but it also awakens the child in man and a childlike pliability to the better as well as to the worse in natural impulse. We may look, among people who have lost the sense of tradition, for the sort of virtues, as well as of vices, that we find on the frontier; for plain dealing, love of character and force, kindness, hope, hospitality and courage. Alongside of an extravagant growth of sensuality, pride and caprice, we have about us a general cult of childhood and womanhood, a vast philanthropy, and an interest in everything relating to the welfare of the masses of the people." In the absence of social standards good people come to apply the simple humanitarian touchstone of conduct. "It is right for one to do what one likes, provided that nobody is harmed." This principle sounds well but is really an unsafe guide. For example, a miscreant who has confessed to an atrocious crime falls into the hands of an enraged crowd. Why should they restrain their vengeful impulses? His life is forfeit anyhow. Lynching him will save the state the expense of trying him, and strike terror to men of his ilk. It needs deep insight into society to warn the crowd, "Yield to such impulses and in the end you will lose control of them. Hang malefactors to-day and in a few years you will be burning them. Lynch for murder to-day and ere long you will be lynching for larceny or arson. Insult your courts by taking justice out of their hands and presently only inferior men. will consent to be your judges." In a certain legislature a group of life insurance companies Competent used money to accelerate the passage of a needed amendment to All the So- the law on life insurance. The facts came out later in a law cial Conse- suit and a certain farmer-legislator known as "Honest John" was shown to have accepted a sum for his support. He defended himself after this fashion: "Yes, I took that money and used it in reducing the mortgage on my farm. Now, who was harmed by my taking it? Not the companies, for they are making no complaint. Not the public, for the law I voted for deserved to pass." Probably few of his constituents reflected that insurance "Social Organization," pp 354-5. companies which to-day put through a good bill by the use of money will be tempted some day to put through a bad bill by the use of money; that the success of the insurance companies will encourage railroad and traction and gas companies to use money in order to gain their end; that if all through the underworld the whisper runs that dirty money is floating about the legislature, grey wolves" and the "yellow dogs" of politics will move heaven and earth in order to make their way into the legislature and get some of it. 8 No, we still need guidance by norms. Many questions of right and wrong are hard nuts to crack. They call for the profoundest insight into human nature and into society. Year by year human relations become more tangled. The questions of our complex society are to the questions that troubled our grandfathers as problems in quadratic equations are to problems under the “rule of three." Well does Cooley observe: "In a traditional order one is accustomed from childhood to regard usage, the authority of elders and the dominant institutions as the rule of life." "But in our own time there is for many persons, if not most, no authoritative canon of life, and for better or worse we are ruled by native impulse and by that private reason which may be so weak when detached from a rational whole." "We find, then, that people have to make up their own minds upon their duties as wives, husbands, mothers and daughters; upon commercial obligation and citizenship; upon the universe and the nature and authority of God. Inevitably many of us make a poor business of it. It is too much. It is as if each should sit down to invent a language for himself. These things should be thought out gradually, cooperatively, each adding little and accepting much." THE PERFECTING OF STANDARDS Should Test While most of us need the support of social standards in skirt- Sociology ing the abysses of life, there is no reason why these standards Constantly should be arbitrary or antiquated. The influence of the scien- Standards tific students of society ought to be directed to testing current standards from the rational point of view, e.g., the color line and the taboo on the marriage of near kin, and to formulating and pushing standards called for by novel situations or new knowledge, e.g., the obligations of the parent in modern society, the "Social Organization," p. 352. CHAP. XLVII Only by Standards tained and Main Advanced responsibility of the employer of young people, eugenic standards, and taboos relating to race poisons. Sometimes standards advance of themselves in sympathy with changed conditions of life. Generally, however, moral progress does not occur without worry and strain, without heroism and sacrifice on the part of the élite. We cannot agree with Ward when he says of the spiritual part of civilization: It is a "flower so delicate that it can only bloom in the rich soil of material prosperity. As such it does not need to be especially fostered. No amount of care devoted to it alone could make it flourish in the absence of suitable conditions, and with such conditions it requires no special attention." Is it not significant that no modern society neglects to maintain either an established church or an established school for the purpose of diffusing and transmitting its standards? The fact is that always in a healthy society a great deal of thought and care is given by the choicest spirits to propagating and preserving what are considered to be spiritual values. "Pure Sociology," p. 18. CHAPTER XLVIII GROUPS OFTEN human groups are among the end-products of social CHAP. XLVIII Many Processes processes. Domination calls into being large aggregates, such as empires. Exploitation binds exploiters and exploited to- Social gether in certain permanent relations. Opposition between sects, Generate parties, classes, and nations causes those on the same side to stand Groups together both from sympathy and from the practical motive of mutual support. When two elements of a population engage in struggle, the blows of each pound the other into a coherent mass. Warfare, the extreme phase of opposition, has long been recognized as the arch-consolidator. Adaptation smooths away the obstacles to the formation of groups or makes men more harmonious and cooperative if they are already in the same group. Stratification extends the we-feeling among those of the same social condition. Socialization makes people ready to cohere into a group when an occasion for union presents itself. Professionalization necessitates a union of those within the same profession to formulate its standards and to expose, punish or cast out practitioners who ignore these standards. Nevertheless, social processes are not the only creators of groups. What is necessary in order that men should feel themselves to be one and therefore stand together is that they should be aware of essential common traits distinguishing them from others, or of a momentous common interest which can be protected and advanced only by collective effort. Therefore, whatever marks off certain persons from others or establishes among them a community of interest is a group-maker. LOCAL GROUPING For various reasons, the ancient natural grouping by propinquity is giving way to selective association. Inequality of culture may hold neighbors apart, as we see in the aloofness of the artist colony or writer colony from the farmers of a picturesque New |