CHAP. XXXIV Law Much Public Opinion which reflects the stupidity and shortsightedness and impulsiveness of the mass. It strikes furiously at vivisection but is limp before bribery, adulteration and monopoly. Its intensest reaction is against that which shocks its instincts, incest, for example, or infanticide, but just for that reason these offences are the last to worry about. The thoughtful penalize peculation, ballot-frauds and the neglect of fires in forests while the foolish public is gnashing its teeth at vaccinators and body-snatchers. Unless it is directed by the wise or guided by accepted moral or legal principles, public opinion is a poor cuirass for protecting the vitals of society. Fortunately, law is a lamp to the public, teaching it to hate offenses like blackmail and intimidation of voters, which it does not resent from instinct. The religious and legal codes are far more intelligent than tional than public opinion. Religion mounts guard over the fundamentals which do not appeal immediately to the feelings of the public, such as chastity, marriage, filial obedience, and property. But, owing to the worshipper's indignation at any slight to his divinity, the religious code hits at many things which are not antisocial, e.g., swearing, Sabbath-breaking and impiety. The law is the least sentimental of controls because it is shaped by picked men, i.e., judges and lawmakers. It is so progressive that it strikes at conduct which is not yet condemned by the public. It makes using a bakery for sleeping purposes or soliciting divorce business by advertisement a crime before it has become either a wrong or a sin. On the other hand, more quickly than public opinion or religion, law can be twisted to suit the designs of the dominant social class. How to in Control ECONOMY AND EFFICIENCY IN SOCIAL CONTROL In preserving social order society should aim at greatest result for least effort, just as it does in fighting fires or building roads. Now, always the means of restraint which first suggests itself is the infliction of pain, bodily or mental. Public opinion makes itself respected by derision and boycott, the law by cell and noose, religious prohibitions by hell-fire. But the rod is cruel to the offender and often distressing to the punisher. So sages have cast about for methods of control which painlessly mould the individual to social requirement. One of these is education. The parent or teacher teaches the young what conduct to admire and what to despise; or else builds into the plastic mind some moral cornerstone, for example, the fear of God, reverence for the law, respect for magistrates, belief in the coincidence of virtue and happiness or in the harmony of private and public interests. Another refined means of harnessing the will is the personal ideal. We try to be like the type we admire, for otherwise we cannot respect ourselves. The wise take advantage of this by seeing to it that the type we learn to admire shall be social. The best illustration is the transformation of the knightly ideal into the "gentleman" ideal. In the tenth century the admired knight was an armed bull-necked ruffian on horseback who could overthrow all comers. Gradually the troubadours and women got these mounted fighters to incorporate into their ideal, courtesy, loyalty, self-control, consideration for the weak, and faith-keeping. Then this combination of qualities was separated, first from the profession of arms, and then from hereditary leisure. The type was popularized by drama, poetry and novel until now the ordinary American will strike you if you tell him he is "no gentleman." In the same way the "lady," who was once one of the women folk of the lord of the castle, has become the ideal of at least half the women in our society. In the stage of diffused economic surplus society lessens the inner tension by endorsing and recommending social valuations, i.e., the rating of the objects of desire from the group point of view rather than the individual point of view. Courage, honesty and justice become "moral values" more precious than rubies. Pleasures which are exclusive or collision-provoking, such as those of the palate or of sex, are constantly depreciated. Then society "appreciates" the safe pleasures-those which, like companionship or sport, are cooperative; those, like the enjoyment of nature, music or art, which are inexclusive; those, like health or beauty or humor or knowledge, which can be expanded without clash with others; and those which, being ideal, do not wastefully consume strength. The pursuit of such joys confirms and stabilizes association and it is no wonder that by high appraisals society lures men in this direction. IRON OR SILKEN SOCIAL CONTROL At one time let us say one man out of two respects the rights of others only from fear of punishment. Two centuries later, СНАР. XXXIV Genesis of the Ideal of "Gentle man" Steering Men by Social Val uations CHAP. XXXIV The Rôle of Coercion in Social Con trol Di- Does Not when literacy is universal and nearly all understand the wherefore of social requirements, perhaps only one out of five has his eye on the rod of justice. In a democratic society in which selfrespect is general it may be that not more than one in ten covets unfair advantage. When all the youth of every generation shall have received a socialized education, we may find ourselves so far advanced that only the one in a hundred who is mentally defective will need to be restrained by fear of penalty. It does not follow, however, that criminal law is destined to take an insignificant place among the supports of social order. If the one rascal among twenty men might aggress at will, the higher forms of control would break down, confidence in fair play would disappear and man after man would abandon the honest majority. The deadly contagion of lawlessness would spread with growing rapidity till social order lay in ruins. The law, therefore, is still the cornerstone of the edifice of order. THE CHAPTER XXXV SUPER-SOCIAL CONTROL HE higher means of social control ought to emanate from many minds of divers experiences. and interests. They ought to be spontaneous products of a consensus. If, in fact, they are foisted upon society by some scheming group, then society, much as it may control its individual members, is itself controlled. This we may call super-social control. There is no better example of it than the deliberate moulding of German education, ideals and public opinion for thirty years before the World War by an influential group headed by the Kaiser which had determined to use the German people in a vast design of aggression and conquest. The press was muzzled by an immense number of suits for lèse majesté. From the accession of William II the attitude of the courts became more and more illiberal and systematically inimical to the press. Honest expression of opinion which ran counter to the Kaiser's ideas was persistently and severely punished. There never was a régime in Germany, so far as the records go, during which convictions for lèse majesté and all sorts of press offences were even approximately as numerous. The Kaiser never pardoned a single one of these offenders against his own dignity, nor even shortened his sentence. СНАР. In Ger many the Social Mind Comes Under the Control of the State Intimida tion of the of Social The one party which set its face like flint against German im- Hounding perialism and militarism was that of the Social Democrats. Ac- Democrats cordingly, during the twelve years when the Exceptional Laws were in force, their leaders were harried, plundered, hounded down as criminals and prevented from speaking and writing. The Kaiser called the Social Democrats "a gang of fellows without a country" and held them up to scorn as a party which had no moral or legal right to exist. Freedom of teaching being a proud tradition of German education, the universities all of them state universities were controlled not by the coarse method of restraining the utterances of CHAP. professors, but by taking care that only "safe" men were promoted to professorships in the fields of history, economics, and political science. Dr. Althoff, who through his friendship with University the Kaiser wielded a large influence in the appointment of pro Filling the Chairs with fessors, was rather proud of saying that he saw to it that the right men were chosen for these posts. If a docent showed himself critical of the fictions of racial superiority, of cultural superiority, of "encirclement by envious enemies," and of the necessity of a "preventive war" which were the chief means of deluding the people there was no academic career for him. Gradually the chairs in certain subjects were filled by tame professors who taught what they were expected to teach and lost no opportunity to glorify the Prussian idea of the state and of war. History was distorted to establish the iniquity of Germany's rivals, anthropology to prove that the Germans are the "noble" race, ethnology to show the "decadence" of the French and unfitness for civilization" of the Slavs, political science to demonstrate that it is the interest of the state which gives an action the character of right or wrong. So there went out generation after generation of young men filled with lies, figments and sophistries invented in furtherance of the Design. The university had become "scarcely more than an institution for providing state officials of an orthodox turn of mind." The teaching in the lower schools was shaped to capture the souls of the young for militarism. The history learned was full of kings and generals, wars and battles. The fatherland was, of course, always in the holiest right and acted on a moral plane far above that of any other country. In the higher schools the study of history was used systematically to drill into the pupils definite political attitudes, e.g., hatred against England. In the study of German the pupils were required to write on patriotic themes and to employ certain phrases of war enthusiasm. No such concept as internationalism was permitted to develop in the German school boy's mind, while nationalism was hammered into him early and late. All governments save his own were depicted as degenerate, while democracy was identified with corruption and national impotency. The power of suggestion was not overlooked. The streets, avenues and squares, baptized with names of princes, heroes, and victories, constantly called to mind the glory of the Empire. |