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means of bribery, patronage, and preferment. Intrigue and con- CHAP. IX spiracy are the social bonds. The social type is the Conspirital

tual

"7. Society of the seventh type is deliberately created by agreement. The utility of association has been perceived, and a Society compact of cooperation is entered into for the promotion of the general welfare. Such was the Achæan League. Such was the League of the Iroquois. Such was the confederation of American commonwealths in 1778. The social bond is a covenant or contract. The social type is the Contractual.

Idealistic

"8. Society of the eighth type exists where a population society collectively responds to certain great ideals, that, by united efforts, it strives to realize. Comprehension of mind by mind, confidence, fidelity, and an altruistic spirit of social service are the social bonds. The social type is the Idealistic." 11

of Society

Giddings goes on to show 12 that these types observed from Theories early times have suggested to thinkers as many different theories of the nature of society. In tribal mythologies we find sympathy or natural brotherhood theories. The society of congenial spirits suggests the consciousness-of-kind theories voiced in the proverb, Birds of a feather flock together," in the saying of Empedocles that "Like desires like," and in the word of Eccleasticus that "All flesh consorteth according to kind, and a man will cleave to his like." From approbational societies have come ir natural-justice theories. From despotic societies have come theories that might makes right in the sense of creating law and crder. From authoritative societies have come theories of the dvne right of kings; from conspirital societies have come Machiavellian theories of the inevitableness of intrigue and con.racy; and from societies long used to deliberative assemblies, to charters of liberty and bills of rights have come the social-covenant or social-contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.

#Giddings, "Descriptive and Historical Sociology," pp. 10–13. 11.American Journal of Sociology, Vol. X, p. 169.

CHAP. X

Character-
istics of
''Wild''
Children

Effects of

Solitary

Conine

ment,

CHAPTER X

ASSOCIATION

HUMAN NATURE IN ISOLATION

BEFORE the days of the scientific study of human nature,

romancers often imagined what a man would be like who had grown up without human association. In every case they portrayed a being with our faculties and reactions, although quite without culture. We know now that a child with only animals for nurses and companions would never develop the distinctively human traits. Its mentality would be arrested on a plane but little above that of an imbecile. The observations upon human beings of "wild" upbringing who at various times have been brought among civilized people show them to be characterized by a vegetative type of existence, automatic reactions, unconsciousness of self, inability to learn the use of language, absence of social emotions, and indifference to human companionship. Selfconsciousness, the rise of personality, and the ordinary capacity for thought and emotion are impossible without the give-and-take of life in society.

About a century ago, from observing the mutual contamination of prison inmates, some were led to advocate the solitary confinement of prisoners, at least for the first part of their term of incarceration. It was argued that in the silence of his cell the offender would come to see his misconduct in a new light and would resolve to change his ways. But the results of the policy showed how little the penologists understood the social side of human nature. In 1821, by act of the legislature of New York, eighty convicts in the Auburn prison were put into solitary cells without labor. At the end of a year five were dead, one had killed himself, another was mad, and the rest were melancholy. The next year the experiment was abandoned. In 1842, in England, Pentonville prison began to confine the prisoner in solitude for the first eighteen months of his sentence. For the next eight years the insanity rate among Pentonville prisoners was ten times

as great as in other English prisons. Since solitude is most rack- CHAP. X ing to the more developed personalities, it is not surprising that of the Fenian leaders locked up at Mountjoy from 1865 to 1867 nearly one-half went mad before their release and many others died soon afterward. After repeated experiments, in the course of which numerous prisoners went insane, the English prison authorities cut down the maximum period of solitary confinement first to nine months and later to six months.

Life

Victims of long-enforced solitude generally become the prey of Hermit of melancholia, delusions, and hallucinations. They cease to have emotions, shrink from the sight of others, and perhaps return voluntarily to their cell as to a grateful shelter. Hermits, too, exhibit a variety of forms of mental disintegration. The biographies of the anchorite saints record strange noises and mysterious voices which the devout of their time deemed supernatural, but which were really sense hallucinations in no wise different from those which visit to-day the isolated lighthouse keeper, or the lonely shepherd of the Sierras.

The struggles of the social self against death are pathetic. In an Italian prison Pellico gained new life when he could wave a handkerchief at a fellow-prisoner, and his spirits rose at the mere sight of a human being. In cellular confinement prisoners devise many ingenious signals to convey sympathy. In Russian prisons the "politicals" developed a clever code of taps on walls or pipes as a means of communicating. In their mad thirst for compannship the immured make pets of mice, rats, and birds, even ders, ants, and flies. In lieu of anything better, a flower or a struggling plant may furnish support to the starving social self. Incorrigible prisoners have been softened and transformed by having small animals to pet or even a flower box to tend.

Struggles
Famishing

of the

Social Self

Compan

ons

One of the early "finds" of child-study was that not a few Imaginary #dren have imaginary companions with names and clearly marked traits, with whom they talk, play, quarrel, and make up. Smetimes the isolated child projects a number of imaginary playtes with distinct personalities, who have varied experiences, elop life-histories, and live on with their creator into adult He. One investigator brought to light fifty cases of children who have invented such companions. Akin to this is the practice of aing to one's self" which grows up in hermits, trappers, prospectors, and other solitaries, and which seems due to the fact that

СНАР. Х

The Makebelieve of Prisoners

Why
Genius
Seeks

Solitude

the lonely soul finds a faint companionship in the sound of the voice just as the timid boy in the dark is heartened by hearing his own whistling.

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Even the making of objects which other human beings might admire, enjoy, or use holds comfort for the solitary. Small says: "They go to work without squares, gravers, stamps, patterns, or models. Every scrap of glass or metal, every nail and pin, turns to account as a tool. Waste from the shop, bones from the kitchen, walnut, cocoanut, acorn shells, feathers, locks of hair, the bark of trees, pebbles, every kind of fragment, affords materials. Tin plates, the bowls of spoons, stone jugs, old bottles, dippers, bed posts, table tops, cell walls, and the bottoms of chairs serve for canvas and parchment." The prisoner finds relief from his loneliness by tearing pictures out of books and newspapers and fastening them on his walls. If he has a latent artistic talent he lines his cell with drawings, which almost always represent human heads or figures. If he writes he is likely to produce autobiography, the most intimate of all literary forms. Thus, Every trifle wrought in confinement; every color stain upon prison walls; every nonsense couplet; and every attempt at biography or philosophy, represents an effort of loneliness to people the waste of hours to which the physical presence of others is denied. It is an effort to multiply the spirits of one's own personality when all other avenues of intercourse are closed." 2

GENIUS AND SOLITUDE

Still, terrible as is solitude, some souls prefer it to too much society. Various motives lead one to wish to be much by himself. Men of genius voluntarily turn recluse in order to create original works. In the words of Ruskin, "An artist should be fit for the best society and should keep out of it." Thoreau puts it: "The reason of isolation is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar; and when we soar the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none left." Even when they seek communion, geniuses are so fretted or bored by the chatter of commonplace persons that they prefer to be alone. In his Letters Wagner confesses: "I always feel it to be a useless and utterly

1 M. H. Small," Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude," Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. VII, p. 53.

2 Ibid., p. 58.

resultless proceeding to converse with any one."

Nothing CHAP. X

agrees with me like solitude." Schopenhauer thought that "Who does not love solitude loves not freedom." Wordsworth prizes

that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude.

Zimmermann declares, "Who lives with wolves must join in their
howls." Cicero writing to Atticus avers that, excepting the dear
friend he is addressing, he loves nothing so well as solitude; while
Thoreau thought one person to the square mile is enough and
wrote, "I never found the companion who was so companionable
as solitude." On the other hand Hume confesses, "I feel all
my opinions loosen and fall of themselves when not supported by
hers," and George Sand cries, "I care but little that I am grow-
ing old but that I am growing old alone." De Senancour, author
of "Obermann," renounces the world, yet wishes there might be
at his end one friend to "receive his adieu to life." Cowper
exclaims:

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude.
But grant me still a friend in my retreat
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.

World's

of the

Gifted men who are far above or ahead of their time are likely The to be so neglected, misunderstood, or hawked at that in despair Rejection they turn misanthrope and hold aloof from their kind. The Genius graphies of genius are full of tragedies of expansive souls, yearning for communion and sympathy, yet finding their offering ignored or rejected, so that they end eating out their hearts. their loneliness. The world never forgives their being different.

A great variety of conditions may lead to voluntary isolation. If one hundred famous solitaries studied by Small 3

teen suffered from physical weakness and horror of muscular furt, seven had a physical deformity or some sense defect; seventeen were of a pronounced neurotic type; nine had hallucinations; He were famed for visions, thirty were extremely subjective from chod, three were reared in the cloister and six were bred in the midst of a solitude almost as intense; sixteen suffered from alia, referred to as "lack of will" or "lack of force for work."

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