Folkways
by William Graham Sumner · English · Gutenberg #24253 · 1,709,180 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Folkways
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Folkways
Author: William Graham Sumner
Release date: January 11, 2008 [eBook #24253]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24253
Credits: E-text prepared by Mark C. Orton, Turgut Dincer, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLKWAYS ***
E-text prepared by Mark C. Orton, Turgut Dincer, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 24253-h.htm or 24253-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/2/3/24253/24253-h/24253-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/2/3/24253/24253-h.zip)
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's note: |
| |
| Bold words, phrases, etc. are surrounded by plus (+) signs, |
| and italics by underscores (_). |
| |
| Alternative spellings of some words have been retained as |
| they were used in the original book. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
[Illustration: WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER (1902)]
FOLKWAYS
A Study of the Sociological Importance
of Usages, Manners, Customs,
Mores, and Morals
by
WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER
Professor of Political and Social Science
in Yale University
Thus it is clearly seen that use, rather than
reason, has power to introduce new things amongst
us, and to do away with old things.--_Castiglione,
Il libro del Cortegiano_, I, § 1.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on.--_Hamlet_, III, 4.
What custom wills, in all things should we do't.
_Coriolanus_, II, 3.
Ginn and Company
Boston · New York · Chicago · London
Atlanta · Dallas · Columbus · San Francisco
Entered at Stationers' Hall
Copyright, 1906, by
William Graham Sumner
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
733.1
+The Athenæum Press+
Ginn and Company · Proprietors ·
Boston · U.S.A.
PREFACE
In 1899 I began to write out a text-book of sociology from material
which I had used in lectures during the previous ten or fifteen years.
At a certain point in that undertaking I found that I wanted to
introduce my own treatment of the "mores." I could not refer to it
anywhere in print, and I could not do justice to it in a chapter of
another book. I therefore turned aside to write a treatise on the
"Folkways," which I now offer. For definitions of "folkways" and "mores"
see secs. 1, 2, 34, 39, 43, and 66. I formed the word "folkways" on the
analogy of words already in use in sociology. I also took up again the
Latin word "mores" as the best I could find for my purpose. I mean by it
the popular usages and traditions, when they include a judgment that
they are conducive to societal welfare, and when they exert a coercion
on the individual to conform to them, although they are not coördinated
by any authority (cf. sec. 42). I have also tried to bring the word
"Ethos" into familiarity again (secs. 76, 79). "Ethica," or "Ethology,"
or "The Mores" seemed good titles for the book (secs. 42, 43), but
Ethics is already employed otherwise, and the other words were very
unfamiliar. Perhaps "folkways" is not less unfamiliar, but its meaning
is more obvious. I must add that if any one is liable to be shocked by
_any_ folkways, he ought not to read about folkways at all. "Nature her
custom holds, let shame say what it will" (_Hamlet_, IV, 7, _ad fin._).
I have tried to treat all folkways, including those which are most
opposite to our own, with truthfulness, but with dignity and due respect
to our own conventions.
Chapter I contains elaborate definitions and expositions of the folkways
and the mores, with an analysis of their play in human society. Chapter
II shows the bearing of the folkways on human interests, and the way in
which they act or are acted on. The thesis which is expounded in these
two chapters is: that the folkways are habits of the individual and
customs of the society which arise from efforts to satisfy needs; they
are intertwined with goblinism and demonism and primitive notions of
luck (sec. 6), and so they win traditional authority. Then they become
regulative for succeeding generations and take on the character of a
social force. They arise no one knows whence or how. They grow as if by
the play of internal life energy. They can be modified, but only to a
limited extent, by the purposeful efforts of men. In time they lose
power, decline, and die, or are transformed. While they are in vigor
they very largely control individual and social undertakings, and they
produce and nourish ideas of world philosophy and life policy. Yet they
are not organic or material. They belong to a superorganic system of
relations, conventions, and institutional arrangements. The study of
them is called for by their _social_ character, by virtue of which they
are leading factors in the science of society.
When the analysis of the folkways has been concluded it is necessary
that it should be justified by a series of illustrations, or by a
setting forth of cases in which the operation of the mores is shown to
be what is affirmed in the analysis. Any such exposition of the mores in
cases, in order to be successful, must go into details. It is in details
that all the graphic force and argumentative value of the cases are to
be found. It has not been easy to do justice to the details and to
observe the necessary limits of space. The ethnographical facts which I
present are not subsequent justification of generalizations otherwise
obtained. They are selections from a great array of facts from which the
generalizations were deduced. A number of other very important cases
which I included in my plan of proofs and illustrations I have been
obliged to leave out for lack of space. Such are: Demonism, Primitive
Religion, and Witchcraft; The Status of Women; War; Evolution and the
Mores; Usury; Gambling; Societal Organization and Classes; Mortuary
Usages; Oaths; Taboos; Ethics; Æsthetics; and Democracy. The first four
of these are written. I may be able to publish them soon, separately. My
next task is to finish the sociology.
W. G. SUMNER
YALE UNIVERSITY
With the reprinting of _Folkways_ it seems in place to inform the
admirers of this book and of its author concerning the progress of
Professor Sumner's work between 1907 and his death, in his seventieth
year, in April, 1910. Several articles bearing on the mores, and
realizing in part the programme outlined in the last paragraph of the
foregoing Preface, have been published: "The Family and Social Change,"
in the _American Journal of Sociology_ for March, 1909 (14: 577-591);
"Witchcraft," in the _Forum_ for May, 1909 (41: 410-423); "The Status of
Women in Chaldea, Egypt, India, Judea, and Greece to the time of
Christ," in the _Forum_ for August, 1909 (42: 113-136); "Mores of the
Present and the Future," in the _Yale Review_ for November, 1909 (18:
233-245); and "Religion and the Mores," in the _American Journal of
Sociology_ for March, 1910 (15: 577-591). Of these the first and last
were presidential addresses before the American Sociological Society.
All are included in Volume I (War and Other Essays) of a four-volume set
of Sumner's writings, published since his death by the Yale University
Press.
Regarding the treatise on the "science of society" (for he had decided
to call it that instead of "sociology") mentioned in the Preface, it
should be said that Professor Sumner left a considerable amount of
manuscript in the rather rough form of a first draft, together with a
great mass of classified materials. He wrote very little on this
treatise after the completion of _Folkways_, and not infrequently spoke
of the latter to the present writer as "my last book." It is intended,
however, that the _Science of Society_ shall be, at some time in the
future, completed, and in such form as shall give to the world the
fruits of Professor Sumner's intellectual power, clarity of vision, and
truly herculean industry.
The present revision of _Folkways_ incorporates but few and unimportant
corrections. Certain of these are from the hand of the author, and
others from that of the present writer.
A photograph of Professor Sumner has been chosen for insertion in the
present edition. It was taken April 18, 1902, and is regarded by many as
being the most faithful representation in existence of Sumner's
expression and pose, as he appeared in later years. This is the Sumner
of the "mores," with mental powers at ripe maturity and bodily vigor as
yet unimpaired by age. The Yale commencement orator of 1909 said of
Sumner, in presenting him for the Doctorate of Laws: "His intellect has
broadened, his heart has mellowed, as he has descended into the vale of
years." While advancing age weakened in no respect the sheer power and
the steady-eyed fearlessness of mind and character which made Sumner a
compelling force in the university and in the wider world, it seems to
some of us that the essential kindliness of his nature came out with
especial clearness in his later years. And it is the suggestion of this
quality which lends a distinctive charm, in our eyes, to the portrait
chosen to head this volume.
A. G. KELLER
YALE UNIVERSITY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF THE FOLKWAYS AND OF THE
MORES 1
II. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MORES 75
III. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 119
IV. LABOR, WEALTH 158
V. SOCIETAL SELECTION 173
VI. SLAVERY 261
VII. ABORTION, INFANTICIDE, KILLING THE OLD 308
VIII. CANNIBALISM 329
IX. SEX MORES 342
X. THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION 395
XI. THE SOCIAL CODES 417
XII. INCEST 479
XIII. KINSHIP, BLOOD REVENGE, PRIMITIVE JUSTICE, PEACE
UNIONS 493
XIV. UNCLEANNESS AND THE EVIL EYE 509
XV. THE MORES CAN MAKE ANYTHING RIGHT AND PREVENT
CONDEMNATION OF ANYTHING 521
XVI. SACRAL HARLOTRY, CHILD SACRIFICE 533
XVII. POPULAR SPORTS, EXHIBITIONS, DRAMA 560
XVIII. ASCETICISM 605
XIX. EDUCATION, HISTORY 628
XX. LIFE POLICY, VIRTUE VS. SUCCESS 639
LIST OF BOOKS 655
(Titles are under the name of the author, or the leading word
of the title)
INDEX 671
FOLKWAYS
CHAPTER I
FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF THE FOLKWAYS
AND OF THE MORES
Definition and mode of origin of the folkways.--The folkways are
a societal force.--Folkways are made unconsciously.--Impulse
and instinct; primeval stupidity; magic.--The strain of
improvement and consistency.--The aleatory element.--All
origins are lost in mystery.--Spencer on primitive custom.--
Good and bad luck; ills of life; goodness and happiness.--
Illustrations.--Immortality and compensation.--Tradition and
its restraints.--The concepts of "primitive society";
"we-groups" and "others-groups."--Sentiments in the in-group
towards out-groups.--Ethnocentrism.--Illustrations.--
Patriotism.--Chauvinism.--The struggle for existence and the
competition of life; antagonistic coöperation.--Four motives:
hunger, love, vanity, fear.--The process of making folkways.--
Suggestion and suggestibility.--Suggestion in education.--
Manias.--Suggestion in politics.--Suggestion and criticism.--
Folkways based on false inferences.--Harmful folkways.--How
"true" and "right" are found.--The folkways are right; rights;
morals.--The folkways are true.--Relations of world philosophy
to folkways.--Definition of the mores.--Taboos.--No primitive
philosophizing; myths; fables; notion of social welfare.--The
imaginative element.--The ethical policy and the success
policy.--Recapitulation.--Scope and method of the mores.--
Integration of the mores of a group or age.--Purpose of the
present work.--Why use the word "mores."--The mores are a
directive force.--Consistency in the mores.--The mores of
subgroups.--What are classes?--Classes rated by societal
value.--Class; race; group solidarity.--The masses and the
mores.--Fallacies about the classes and the masses.--Action of
the masses on ideas.--Organization of the masses.--Institutions
of civil liberty.--The common man.--The "people"; popular
impulses.--Agitation.--The ruling element in the masses.--The
mores and institutions.--Laws.--How laws and institutions
differ from mores.--Difference between mores and some cognate
things.--Goodness or badness of the mores.--More exact
definition of the mores.--Ritual.--The ritual of the mores.--
Group interests and policy.--Group interests and folkways.--
Force in the folkways.--Might and right.--Status.--
Conventionalization.--Conventions indispensable.--The "ethos"
or group character; Japan.--Chinese ethos.--Hindoo ethos.--
European ethos.
+1. Definition and mode of origin of the folkways.+ If we put together
all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about
primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of
life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts. Every moment
brings necessities which must be satisfied at once. Need was the first
experience, and it was followed at once by a blundering effort to
satisfy it. It is generally taken for granted that men inherited some
guiding instincts from their beast ancestry, and it may be true,
although it has never been proved. If there were such inheritances, they
controlled and aided the first efforts to satisfy needs. Analogy makes
it easy to assume that the ways of beasts had produced channels of habit
and predisposition along which dexterities and other psychophysical
activities would run easily. Experiments with newborn animals show that
in the absence of any experience of the relation of means to ends,
efforts to satisfy needs are clumsy and blundering. The method is that
of trial and failure, which produces repeated pain, loss, and
disappointments. Nevertheless, it is a method of rude experiment and
selection. The earliest efforts of men were of this kind. Need was the
impelling force. Pleasure and pain, on the one side and the other, were
the rude constraints which defined the line on which efforts must
proceed. The ability to distinguish between pleasure and pain is the
only psychical power which is to be assumed. Thus ways of doing things
were selected, which were expedient. They answered the purpose better
than other ways, or with less toil and pain. Along the course on which
efforts were compelled to go, habit, routine, and skill were developed.
The struggle to maintain existence was carried on, not individually, but
in groups. Each profited by the other's experience; hence there was
concurrence towards that which proved to be most expedient. All at last
adopted the same way for the same purpose; hence the ways turned into
customs and became mass phenomena. Instincts were developed in
connection with them. In this way folkways arise. The young learn them
by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time, provide
for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform, universal in
the group, imperative, and invariable. As time goes on, the folkways
become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative. If asked why
they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive people always
answer that it is because they and their ancestors always have done so.
A sanction also arises from ghost fear. The ghosts of ancestors would be
angry if the living should change the ancient folkways (see sec. 6).
+2. The folkways are a societal force.+ The operation by which folkways
are produced consists in the frequent repetition of petty acts, often by
great numbers acting in concert or, at least, acting in the same way
when face to face with the same need. The immediate motive is interest.
It produces habit in the individual and custom in the group. It is,
therefore, in the highest degree original and primitive. By habit and
custom it exerts a strain on every individual within its range;
therefore it rises to a societal force to which great classes of
societal phenomena are due. Its earliest stages, its course, and laws
may be studied; also its influence on individuals and their reaction on
it. It is our present purpose so to study it. We have to recognize it as
one of the chief forces by which a society is made to be what it is. Out
of the unconscious experiment which every repetition of the ways
includes, there issues pleasure or pain, and then, so far as the men are
capable of reflection, convictions that the ways are conducive to
societal welfare. These two experiences are not the same. The most
uncivilized men, both in the food quest and in war, do things which are
painful, but which have been found to be expedient. Perhaps these cases
teach the sense of social welfare better than those which are
pleasurable and favorable to welfare. The former cases call for some
intelligent reflection on experience. When this conviction as to the
relation to welfare is added to the folkways they are converted into
mores, and, by virtue of the philosophical and ethical element added to
them, they win utility and importance and become the source of the
science and the art of living.
+3. Folkways are made unconsciously.+ It is of the first importance to
notice that, from the first acts by which men try to satisfy needs, each
act stands by itself, and looks no further than the immediate
satisfaction. From recurrent needs arise habits for the individual and
customs for the group, but these results are consequences which were
never conscious, and never foreseen or intended. They are not noticed
until they have long existed, and it is still longer before they are
appreciated. Another long time must pass, and a higher stage of mental
development must be reached, before they can be used as a basis from
which to deduce rules for meeting, in the future, problems whose
pressure can be foreseen. The folkways, therefore, are not creations of
human purpose and wit. They are like products of natural forces which
men unconsciously set in operation, or they are like the instinctive
ways of animals, which are developed out of experience, which reach a
final form of maximum adaptation to an interest, which are handed down
by tradition and admit of no exception or variation, yet change to meet
new conditions, still within the same limited methods, and without
rational reflection or purpose. From this it results that all the life
of human beings, in all ages and stages of culture, is primarily
controlled by a vast mass of folkways handed down from the earliest
existence of the race, having the nature of the ways of other animals,
only the topmost layers of which are subject to change and control, and
have been somewhat modified by human philosophy, ethics, and religion,
or by other acts of intelligent reflection. We are told of savages that
"It is difficult to exhaust the customs and small ceremonial usages of a
savage people. Custom regulates the whole of a man's actions,--his
bathing, washing, cutting his hair, eating, drinking, and fasting. From
his cradle to his grave he is the slave of ancient usage. In his life
there is nothing free, nothing original, nothing spontaneous, no
progress towards a higher and better life, and no attempt to improve his
condition, mentally, morally, or spiritually."[1] All men act in this
way with only a little wider margin of voluntary variation.
+4. Impulse and instinct. Primeval stupidity. Magic.+ "The mores
(_Sitten_) rest on feelings of pleasure or pain, which either directly
produce actions or call out desires which become causes of action."[2]
"Impulse is not an attribute of living creatures, like instinct. The
only phenomenon to which impulse applies is that men and other animals
imitate what they see others, especially of their own species, do, and
that they accomplish this imitation the more easily, the more their
forefathers practiced the same act. The thing imitated, therefore, must
already exist, and cannot be explained as an impulse." "As soon as
instinct ceased to be sole ruler of living creatures, including inchoate
man, the latter must have made mistakes in the struggle for existence
which would soon have finished his career, but that he had instinct and
the imitation of what existed to guide him. This human primeval
stupidity is the ultimate ground of religion and art, for both come
without any interval, out of the magic which is the immediate
consequence of the struggle for existence when it goes beyond instinct."
"If we want to determine the origin of dress, if we want to define
social relations and achievements, e.g. the origin of marriage, war,
agriculture, cattle breeding, etc., if we want to make studies in the
psyche of nature peoples,--we must always pass through magic and belief
in magic. One who is weak in magic, e.g. a ritually unclean man, has a
'bad body,' and reaches no success. Primitive men, on the other hand,
win their success by means of their magical power and their magical
preparations, and hence become 'the noble and good.' For them there is
no other morality [than this success]. Even the technical dexterities
have certainly not been free from the influence of belief in magic."[3]
+5. The strain of improvement and consistency.+ The folkways, being ways
of satisfying needs, have succeeded more or less well, and therefore
have produced more or less pleasure or pain. Their quality always
consisted in their adaptation to the purpose. If they were imperfectly
adapted and unsuccessful, they produced pain, which drove men on to
learn better. The folkways are, therefore, (1) subject to a strain of
improvement towards better adaptation of means to ends, as long as the
adaptation is so imperfect that pain is produced. They are also (2)
subject to a strain of consistency with each other, because they all
answer their several purposes with less friction and antagonism when
they coöperate and support each other. The forms of industry, the forms
of the family, the notions of property, the constructions of rights, and
the types of religion show the strain of consistency with each other
through the whole history of civilization. The two great cultural
divisions of the human race are the oriental and the occidental. Each is
consistent throughout; each has its own philosophy and spirit; they are
separated from top to bottom by different mores, different standpoints,
different ways, and different notions of what societal arrangements are
advantageous. In their contrast they keep before our minds the possible
range of divergence in the solution of the great problems of human life,
and in the views of earthly existence by which life policy may be
controlled. If two planets were joined in one, their inhabitants could
not differ more widely as to what things are best worth seeking, or what
ways are most expedient for well living.
+6. The aleatory interest.+ If we should try to find a specimen society
in which expedient ways of satisfying needs and interests were found by
trial and failure, and by long selection from experience, as broadly
described in sec. 1 above, it might be impossible to find one. Such a
practical and utilitarian mode of procedure, even when mixed with ghost
sanction, is rationalistic. It would not be suited to the ways and
temper of primitive men. There was an element in the most elementary
experience which was irrational and defied all expedient methods. One
might use the best known means with the greatest care, yet fail of the
result. On the other hand, one might get a great result with no effort
at all. One might also incur a calamity without any fault of his own.
This was the aleatory element in life, the element of risk and loss,
good or bad fortune. This element is never absent from the affairs of
men. It has greatly influenced their life philosophy and policy. On one
side, good luck may mean something for nothing, the extreme case of
prosperity and felicity. On the other side, ill luck may mean failure,
loss, calamity, and disappointment, in spite of the most earnest and
well-planned endeavor. The minds of men always dwell more on bad luck.
They accept ordinary prosperity as a matter of course. Misfortunes
arrest their attention and remain in their memory.
Hence the ills of life are the mode of manifestation of the aleatory
element which has most affected life policy. Primitive men ascribed all
incidents to the agency of men or of ghosts and spirits. Good and ill
luck were attributed to the superior powers, and were supposed to be due
to their pleasure or displeasure at the conduct of men. This group of
notions constitutes goblinism. It furnishes a complete world philosophy.
The element of luck is always present in the struggle for existence.
That is why primitive men never could carry on the struggle for
existence, disregarding the aleatory element and employing a utilitarian
method only. The aleatory element has always been the connecting link
between the struggle for existence and religion. It was only by
religious rites that the aleatory element in the struggle for existence
could be controlled. The notions of ghosts, demons, another world, etc.,
were all fantastic. They lacked all connection with facts, and were
arbitrary constructions put upon experience. They were poetic and
developed by poetic construction and imaginative deduction. The nexus
between them and events was not cause and effect, but magic. They
therefore led to delusive deductions in regard to life and its meaning,
which entered into subsequent action as guiding faiths, and imperative
notions about the conditions of success. The authority of religion and
that of custom coalesced into one indivisible obligation. Therefore the
simple statement of experiment and expediency in the first paragraph
above is not derived directly from actual cases, but is a product of
analysis and inference. It must also be added that vanity and ghost fear
produced needs which man was as eager to satisfy as those of hunger or
the family. Folkways resulted for the former as well as for the latter
(see sec. 9).
+7. All origins are lost in mystery.+ No objection can lie against this
postulate about the way in which folkways began, on account of the
element of inference in it. All origins are lost in mystery, and it
seems vain to hope that from any origin the veil of mystery will ever be
raised. We go up the stream of history to the utmost point for which we
have evidence of its course. Then we are forced to reach out into the
darkness upon the line of direction marked by the remotest course of
the historic stream. This is the way in which we have to act in regard
to the origin of capital, language, the family, the state, religion, and
rights. We never can hope to see the beginning of any one of these
things. Use and wont are products and results. They had antecedents. We
never can find or see the first member of the series. It is only by
analysis and inference that we can form any conception of the
"beginning" which we are always so eager to find.
+8. Spencer on primitive custom.+ Spencer[4] says that "guidance by
custom, which we everywhere find amongst rude peoples, is the sole
conceivable guidance at the outset." Custom is the product of concurrent
action through time. We find it existent and in control at the extreme
reach of our investigations. Whence does it begin, and how does it come
to be? How can it give guidance "at the outset"? All mass actions seem
to begin because the mass wants to act together. The less they know what
it is right and best to do, the more open they are to suggestion from an
incident in nature, or from a chance act of one, or from the current
doctrines of ghost fear. A concurrent drift begins which is subject to
later correction. That being so, it is evident that instinctive action,
under the guidance of traditional folkways, is an operation of the first
importance in all societal matters. Since the custom never can be
antecedent to all action, what we should desire most is to see it arise
out of the first actions, but, inasmuch as that is impossible, the
course of the action after it is started is our field of study. The
origin of primitive customs is always lost in mystery, because when the
action begins the men are never conscious of historical action, or of
the historical importance of what they are doing. When they become
conscious of the historical importance of their acts, the origin is
already far behind.
+9. Good and bad luck; ills of life; goodness and happiness.+
There are in nature numerous antagonistic forces of growth or
production and destruction. The interests of man are between the
two and may be favored or ruined by either. Correct knowledge of
both is required to get the advantages and escape the injuries.
Until the knowledge becomes adequate the effects which are
encountered appear to be accidents or cases of luck. There is no
thrift in nature. There is rather waste. Human interests require
thrift, selection, and preservation. Capital is the condition
precedent of all gain in security and power, and capital is
produced by selection and thrift. It is threatened by all which
destroys material goods. Capital is therefore the essential means
of man's power over nature, and it implies the purest concept of
the power of intelligence to select and dispose of the processes
of nature for human welfare. All the earliest efforts in this
direction were blundering failures. Men selected things to be
desired and preserved under impulses of vanity and superstition,
and misconceived utility and interest. The errors entered into
the folkways, formed a part of them, and were protected by them.
Error, accident, and luck seem to be the only sense there is in
primitive life. Knowledge alone limits their sway, and at least
changes the range and form of their dominion. Primitive folkways
are marked by improvidence, waste, and carelessness, out of which
prudence, foresight, patience, and perseverance are developed
slowly, by pain and loss, as experience is accumulated, and
knowledge increases also, as better methods seem worth while. The
consequences of error and the effects of luck were always mixed.
As we have seen, the ills of life were connected with the
displeasure of the ghosts. _Per contra_, conduct which conformed
to the will of the ghosts was goodness, and was supposed to bring
blessing and prosperity. Thus a correlation was established, in
the faith of men, between goodness and happiness, and on that
correlation an art of happiness was built. It consisted in a
faithful performance of rites of respect towards superior powers
and in the use of lucky times, places, words, etc., with
avoidance of unlucky ones. All uncivilized men demand and expect
a specific response. Inasmuch as they did not get it, and indeed
the art of happiness always failed of results, the great question
of world philosophy always has been, What is the real relation
between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few
generations that men have found courage to say that there is
none. The whole strength of the notion that they are correlated
is in the opposite experience which proves that no evil thing
brings happiness. The oldest religious literature consists of
formulas of worship and prayer by which devotion and obedience
were to produce satisfaction of the gods, and win favor and
prosperity for men.[5] The words "ill" and "evil" have never yet
thrown off the ambiguity between wickedness and calamity. The two
ideas come down to us allied or combined. It was the rites which
were the object of tradition, not the ideas which they
embodied.[6]
+10. Illustrations.+ The notions of blessing and curse are
subsequent explanations by men of great cases of prosperity or
calamity which came to their knowledge. Then the myth-building
imagination invented stories of great virtue or guilt to account
for the prosperity or calamity.[7] The Greek notion of the
Nemesis was an inference from observation of good and ill fortune
in life. Great popular interest attached to the stories of
Croesus and Polycrates. The latter, after all his glory and
prosperity, was crucified by the satrap of Lydia. Croesus had
done all that man could do, according to the current religion, to
conciliate the gods and escape ill fortune. He was very pious and
lived by the rules of religion. The story is told in different
forms. "The people could not make up their minds that a prince
who had been so liberal to the gods during his prosperity had
been abandoned by them at the moment when he had the greatest
need of their aid."[8] They said that he expiated the crime of
his ancestor Gyges, who usurped the throne; that is, they found
it necessary to adduce some guilt to account for the facts, and
they introduced the notion of hereditary responsibility. Another
story was that he determined to sacrifice all his wealth to the
gods. He built a funeral pyre of it all and mounted it himself,
but rain extinguished it. The gods were satisfied. Croesus
afterwards enjoyed the friendship of Cyros, which was good
fortune. Still others rejected the doctrines of correlation
between goodness and happiness on account of the fate of
Croesus. In ancient religion "the benefits which were expected
from the gods were of a public character, affecting the whole
community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks and
herds, and success in war. So long as the community flourished,
the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit
on divine providence, but was rather taken to prove that the
sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."[9] Jehu
and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although
Jehu was commissioned by Elisha to destroy the house of Ahab.[10]
This is like the case of OEdipus, who obeyed an oracle, but
suffered for his act as for a crime. Jehovah caused the ruin of
those who had displeased him, by putting false oracles in the
mouths of prophets.[11] Hezekiah expostulated with God because,
although he had walked before God with a perfect heart and had
done what was right in His sight, he suffered calamity.[12] In
the seventy-third Psalm, the author is perplexed by the
prosperity of the wicked, and the contrast of his own fortunes.
"Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart and washed my hands in
innocency, for all day long have I been plagued, and chastened
every morning." He says that at last the wicked were cast down.
He was brutish and ignorant not to see the solution. It is that
the wicked prosper for a time only. He will cleave unto God. The
book of Job is a discussion of the relation between goodness and
happiness. The crusaders were greatly perplexed by the victories
of the Mohammedans. It seemed to be proved untrue that God would
defend His own Name or the true and holy cause. Louis XIV, when
his armies were defeated, said that God must have forgotten all
which he had done for Him.
+11. Immortality and compensation.+ The notion of immortality has
been interwoven with the notion of luck, of justice, and of the
relation of goodness and happiness. The case was reopened in
another world, and compensations could be assumed to take place
there. In the folk drama of the ancient Greeks luck ruled. It was
either envious of human prosperity or beneficent.[13] Grimm[14]
gives more than a thousand ancient German apothegms, dicta, and
proverbs about "luck." The Italians of the fifteenth century saw
grand problems in the correlation of goodness and happiness.
Alexander VI was the wickedest man known in history, but he had
great and unbroken prosperity in all his undertakings. The only
conceivable explanation was that he had made a pact with the
devil. Some of the American Indians believed that there was an
hour at which all wishes uttered by men were fulfilled.[15] It is
amongst half-civilized peoples that the notion of luck is given
the greatest influence in human affairs. They seek devices for
operating on luck, since luck controls all interests. Hence
words, times, names, places, gestures, and other acts or
relations are held to control luck. Inasmuch as marriage is a
relationship in which happiness is sought and not always found,
wedding ceremonies are connected with acts "for luck." Some of
these still survive amongst us as jests. The fact of the aleatory
element in human life, the human interpretations of it, and the
efforts of men to deal with it constitute a large part of the
history of culture. They have produced groups of folkways, and
have entered as an element into folkways for other purposes.
+12. Tradition and its restraints.+ It is evident that the "ways" of the
older and more experienced members of a society deserve great authority
in any primitive group. We find that this rational authority leads to
customs of deference and to etiquette in favor of the old. The old in
turn cling stubbornly to tradition and to the example of their own
predecessors. Thus tradition and custom become intertwined and are a
strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and
strangles liberty. Children see their parents always yield to the same
custom and obey the same persons. They see that the elders are allowed
to do all the talking, and that if an outsider enters, he is saluted by
those who are at home according to rank and in fixed order. All this
becomes rule for children, and helps to give to all primitive customs
their stereotyped formality. "The fixed ways of looking at things which
are inculcated by education and tribal discipline, are the precipitate
of an old cultural development, and in their continued operation they
are the moral anchor of the Indian, although they are also the fetters
which restrain his individual will."[16]
+13. The concept of "primitive society"; we-group and others-group.+ The
conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of
small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the groups is
determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence. The internal
organization of each group corresponds to its size. A group of groups
may have some relation to each other (kin, neighborhood, alliance,
connubium and commercium) which draws them together and differentiates
them from others. Thus a differentiation arises between ourselves, the
we-group, or in-group, and everybody else, or the others-groups,
out-groups. The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace,
order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to
all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so
far as agreements have modified it. If a group is exogamic, the women in
it were born abroad somewhere. Other foreigners who might be found in it
are adopted persons, guest friends, and slaves.
+14. Sentiments in the in-group and towards the out-group.+ The relation
of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war
towards others-groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of
war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest internal discord
should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies also make
government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent quarrels and
enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and
developed each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup
relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are, the
intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal
organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to
correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt
for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without,--all grow
together, common products of the same situation. These relations and
sentiments constitute a social philosophy. It is sanctified by
connection with religion. Men of an others-group are outsiders with
whose ancestors the ancestors of the we-group waged war. The ghosts of
the latter will see with pleasure their descendants keep up the fight,
and will help them. Virtue consists in killing, plundering, and
enslaving outsiders.
+15. Ethnocentrism+ is the technical name for this view of things in
which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are
scaled and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to
cover both the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its
own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities,
and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways
the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other
folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from
these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised,"
"jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination. The Tupis called
the Portuguese by a derisive epithet descriptive of birds which have
feathers around their feet, on account of trousers.[17] For our present
purpose the most important fact is that ethnocentrism leads a people to
exaggerate and intensify everything in their own folkways which is
peculiar and which differentiates them from others. It therefore
strengthens the folkways.
+16. Illustrations of ethnocentrism.+ The Papuans on New Guinea
are broken up into village units which are kept separate by
hostility, cannibalism, head hunting, and divergences of language
and religion. Each village is integrated by its own language,
religion, and interests. A group of villages is sometimes united
into a limited unity by connubium. A wife taken inside of this
group unit has full status; one taken outside of it has not. The
petty group units are peace groups within and are hostile to all
outsiders.[18] The Mbayas of South America believed that their
deity had bidden them live by making war on others, taking their
wives and property, and killing their men.[19]
+17.+ When Caribs were asked whence they came, they answered, "We
alone are people."[20] The meaning of the name Kiowa is "real or
principal people."[21] The Lapps call themselves "men," or "human
beings."[22] The Greenland Eskimo think that Europeans have been
sent to Greenland to learn virtue and good manners from the
Greenlanders. Their highest form of praise for a European is that
he is, or soon will be, as good as a Greenlander.[23] The
Tunguses call themselves "men."[24] As a rule it is found that
nature peoples call themselves "men." Others are something
else--perhaps not defined--but not real men. In myths the origin
of their own tribe is that of the real human race. They do not
account for the others. The Ainos derive their name from that of
the first man, whom they worship as a god. Evidently the name of
the god is derived from the tribe name.[25] When the tribal name
has another sense, it is always boastful or proud. The Ovambo
name is a corruption of the name of the tribe for themselves,
which means "the wealthy."[26] Amongst the most remarkable people
in the world for ethnocentrism are the Seri of Lower California.
They observe an attitude of suspicion and hostility to all
outsiders, and strictly forbid marriage with outsiders.[27]
+18.+ The Jews divided all mankind into themselves and Gentiles.
They were the "chosen people." The Greeks and Romans called all
outsiders "barbarians." In Euripides' tragedy of _Iphigenia in
Aulis_ Iphigenia says that it is fitting that Greeks should rule
over barbarians, but not contrariwise, because Greeks are free,
and barbarians are slaves. The Arabs regarded themselves as the
noblest nation and all others as more or less barbarous.[28] In
1896, the Chinese minister of education and his counselors edited
a manual in which this statement occurs: "How grand and glorious
is the Empire of China, the middle kingdom! She is the largest
and richest in the world. The grandest men in the world have all
come from the middle empire."[29] In all the literature of all
the states equivalent statements occur, although they are not so
naïvely expressed. In Russian books and newspapers the civilizing
mission of Russia is talked about, just as, in the books and
journals of France, Germany, and the United States, the
civilizing mission of those countries is assumed and referred to
as well understood. Each state now regards itself as the leader
of civilization, the best, the freest, and the wisest, and all
others as inferior. Within a few years our own
man-on-the-curbstone has learned to class all foreigners of the
Latin peoples as "dagos," and "dago" has become an epithet of
contempt. These are all cases of ethnocentrism.
+19. Patriotism+ is a sentiment which belongs to modern states.
It stands in antithesis to the mediæval notion of catholicity.
Patriotism is loyalty to the civic group to which one belongs by
birth or other group bond. It is a sentiment of fellowship and
coöperation in all the hopes, work, and suffering of the group.
Mediæval catholicity would have made all Christians an in-group
and would have set them in hostility to all Mohammedans and other
non-Christians. It never could be realized. When the great modern
states took form and assumed control of societal interests, group
sentiment was produced in connection with those states. Men
responded willingly to a demand for support and help from an
institution which could and did serve interests. The state drew
to itself the loyalty which had been given to men (lords), and it
became the object of that group vanity and antagonism which had
been ethnocentric. For the modern man patriotism has become one
of the first of duties and one of the noblest of sentiments. It
is what he owes to the state for what the state does for him, and
the state is, for the modern man, a cluster of civic institutions
from which he draws security and conditions of welfare. The
masses are always patriotic. For them the old ethnocentric
jealousy, vanity, truculency, and ambition are the strongest
elements in patriotism. Such sentiments are easily awakened in a
crowd. They are sure to be popular. Wider knowledge always proves
that they are not based on facts. That we are good and others are
bad is never true. By history, literature, travel, and science
men are made cosmopolitan. The selected classes of all states
become associated; they intermarry. The differentiation by states
loses importance. All states give the same security and
conditions of welfare to all. The standards of civic institutions
are the same, or tend to become such, and it is a matter of pride
in each state to offer civic status and opportunities equal to
the best. Every group of any kind whatsoever demands that each of
its members shall help defend group interests. Every group
stigmatizes any one who fails in zeal, labor, and sacrifices for
group interests. Thus the sentiment of loyalty to the group, or
the group head, which was so strong in the Middle Ages, is kept
up, as far as possible, in regard to modern states and
governments. The group force is also employed to enforce the
obligations of devotion to group interests. It follows that
judgments are precluded and criticism is silenced.
+20. Chauvinism.+ That patriotism may degenerate into a vice is
shown by the invention of a name for the vice: chauvinism. It is
a name for boastful and truculent group self-assertion. It
overrules personal judgment and character, and puts the whole
group at the mercy of the clique which is ruling at the moment.
It produces the dominance of watchwords and phrases which take
the place of reason and conscience in determining conduct. The
patriotic bias is a recognized perversion of thought and judgment
against which our education should guard us.
+21. The struggle for existence and the competition of life;
antagonistic coöperation.+ The struggle for existence must be carried on
under life conditions and in connection with the competition of life.
The life conditions consist in variable elements of the environment, the
supply of materials necessary to support life, the difficulty of
exploiting them, the state of the arts, and the circumstances of
physiography, climate, meteorology, etc., which favor life or the
contrary. The struggle for existence is a process in which an individual
and nature are the parties. The individual is engaged in a process by
which he wins from his environment what he needs to support his
existence. In the competition of life the parties are men and other
organisms. The men strive with each other, or with the flora and fauna
with which they are associated. The competition of life is the rivalry,
antagonism, and mutual displacement in which the individual is involved
with other organisms by his efforts to carry on the struggle for
existence for himself. It is, therefore, the competition of life which
is the societal element, and which produces societal organization. The
number present and in competition is another of the life conditions. At
a time and place the life conditions are the same for a number of human
beings who are present, and the problems of life policy are the same.
This is another reason why the attempts to satisfy interest become mass
phenomena and result in folkways. The individual and social elements are
always in interplay with each other if there are a number present. If
one is trying to carry on the struggle for existence with nature, the
fact that others are doing the same in the same environment is an
essential condition for him. Then arises an alternative. He and the
others may so interfere with each other that all shall fail, or they may
combine, and by coöperation raise their efforts against nature to a
higher power. This latter method is industrial organization. The crisis
which produces it is constantly renewed, and men are forced to raise the
organization to greater complexity and more comprehensive power, without
limit. Interests are the relations of action and reaction between the
individual and the life conditions, through which relations the
evolution of the individual is produced. That evolution, so long as it
goes on prosperously, is well living, and it results in the
self-realization of the individual, for we may think of each one as
capable of fulfilling some career and attaining to some character and
state of power by the developing of predispositions which he possesses.
It would be an error, however, to suppose that all nature is a chaos of
warfare and competition. Combination and coöperation are so
fundamentally necessary that even very low life forms are found in
symbiosis for mutual dependence and assistance. A combination can exist
where each of its members would perish. Competition and combination are
two forms of life association which alternate through the whole organic
and superorganic domains. The neglect of this fact leads to many
socialistic fallacies. Combination is of the essence of organization,
and organization is the great device for increased power by a number of
unequal and dissimilar units brought into association for a common
purpose. McGee[30] says of the desert of Papagueria, in southwestern
Arizona, that "a large part of the plants and animals of the desert
dwell together in harmony and mutual helpfulness [which he shows in
detail]; for their energies are directed not so much against one another
as against the rigorous environmental conditions growing out of dearth
of water. This communality does not involve loss of individuality, ...
indeed the plants and animals are characterized by an individuality
greater than that displayed in regions in which perpetuity of the
species depends less closely on the persistence of individuals." Hence
he speaks of the "solidarity of life" in the desert. "The saguaro is a
monstrosity in fact as well as in appearance,--a product of
miscegenation between plant and animal, probably depending for its form
of life history, if not for its very existence, on its commensals."[31]
The Seri protect pelicans from themselves by a partial taboo, which is
not understood. It seems that they could not respect a breeding time, or
establish a closed season, yet they have such an appetite for the birds
and their eggs that they would speedily exterminate them if there were
no restraint. This combination has been well called antagonistic
coöperation. It consists in the combination of two persons or groups to
satisfy a great common interest while minor antagonisms of interest
which exist between them are suppressed. The plants and animals of the
desert are rivals for what water there is, but they combine as if with
an intelligent purpose to attain to a maximum of life under the
conditions. There are many cases of animals who coöperate in the same
way. Our farmers put crows and robins under a protective taboo because
the birds destroy insects. The birds also destroy grain and fruits, but
this is tolerated on account of their services. Madame Pommerol says of
the inhabitants of Sahara that the people of the towns and the nomads
are enemies by caste and race, but allies in interest. The nomads need
refuge and shelter. The townspeople need messengers and transportation.
Hence ties of contract, quarrels, fights, raids, vengeances, and
reconciliations for the sake of common enterprises of plunder.[32]
Antagonistic coöperation is the most productive form of combination in
high civilization. It is a high action of the reason to overlook lesser
antagonisms in order to work together for great interests. Political
parties are constantly forced to do it. In the art of the statesman it
is a constant policy. The difference between great parties and factions
in any parliamentary system is of the first importance; that difference
consists in the fact that parties can suppress minor differences, and
combine for what they think most essential to public welfare, while
factions divide and subdivide on petty differences. Inasmuch as the
suppression of minor differences means a suppression of the emotional
element, while the other policy encourages the narrow issues in regard
to which feeling is always most intense, the former policy allows far
less play to feeling and passion.
+22. Hunger, love, vanity, and fear.+ There are four great motives of
human action which come into play when some number of human beings are
in juxtaposition under the same life conditions. These are hunger, sex
passion, vanity, and fear (of ghosts and spirits). Under each of these
motives there are interests. Life consists in satisfying interests, for
"life," in a society, is a career of action and effort expended on both
the material and social environment. However great the errors and
misconceptions may be which are included in the efforts, the purpose
always is advantage and expediency. The efforts fall into parallel
lines, because the conditions and the interests are the same. It is now
the accepted opinion, and it may be correct, that men inherited from
their beast ancestors psychophysical traits, instincts, and dexterities,
or at least predispositions, which give them aid in solving the problems
of food supply, sex, commerce, and vanity. The result is mass phenomena;
currents of similarity, concurrence, and mutual contribution; and these
produce folkways. The folkways are unconscious, spontaneous,
uncoördinated. It is never known who led in devising them, although we
must believe that talent exerted its leadership at all times. Folkways
come into existence now all the time. There were folkways in stage coach
times, which were fitted to that mode of travel. Street cars have
produced ways which are suited to that mode of transportation in cities.
The telephone has produced ways which have not been invented and imposed
by anybody, but which are devised to satisfy conveniently the interests
which are at stake in the use of that instrument.
+23. Process of making folkways.+ Although we may see the process of
making folkways going on all the time, the analysis of the process is
very difficult. It appears as if there was a "mind" in the crowd which
was different from the minds of the individuals which compose it. Indeed
some have adopted such a doctrine. By autosuggestion the stronger minds
produce ideas which when set afloat pass by suggestion from mind to
mind. Acts which are consonant with the ideas are imitated. There is a
give and take between man and man. This process is one of development.
New suggestions come in at point after point. They are carried out. They
combine with what existed already. Every new step increases the number
of points upon which other minds may seize. It seems to be by this
process that great inventions are produced. Knowledge has been won and
extended by it. It seems as if the crowd had a mystic power in it
greater than the sum of the powers of its members. It is sufficient,
however, to explain this, to notice that there is a coöperation and
constant suggestion which is highly productive when it operates in a
crowd, because it draws out latent power, concentrates what would
otherwise be scattered, verifies and corrects what has been taken up,
eliminates error, and constructs by combination. Hence the gain from the
collective operation is fully accounted for, and the theories of
_Völkerpsychologie_ are to be rejected as superfluous. Out of the
process which has been described have come the folkways during the whole
history of civilization.
The phenomena of suggestion and suggestibility demand some attention
because the members of a group are continually affecting each other by
them, and great mass phenomena very often are to be explained by them.
+24. Suggestion; suggestibility.+ What has been called the psychology of
crowds consists of certain phenomena of suggestion. A number of persons
assembled together, especially if they are enthused by the same
sentiment or stimulated by the same interest, transmit impulses to each
other with the result that all the impulses are increased in a very high
ratio. In other words, it is an undisputed fact that all mental states
and emotions are greatly increased in force by transmission from man to
man, especially if they are attended by a sense of the concurrence and
coöperation of a great number who have a common sentiment or interest.
"The element of psychic coercion to which our thought process is subject
is the characteristic of the operations which we call suggestive."[33]
What we have done or heard occupies our minds so that we cannot turn
from it to something else. The consensus of a number promises triumph
for the impulse, whatever it is. _Ça ira._ There is a thrill of
enthusiasm in the sense of moving with a great number. There is no
deliberation or reason. Therefore a crowd may do things which are either
better or worse than what individuals in it would do. Cases of lynching
show how a crowd can do things which it is extremely improbable that the
individuals would do or consent to, if they were taken separately. The
crowd has no greater guarantee of wisdom and virtue than an individual
would have. In fact, the participants in a crowd almost always throw
away all the powers of wise judgment which have been acquired by
education, and submit to the control of enthusiasm, passion, animal
impulse, or brute appetite. A crowd always has a common stock of
elementary faiths, prejudices, loves and hates, and pet notions. The
common stock is acted on by the same stimuli, in all the persons, at the
same time. The response, as an aggregate, is a great storm of feeling,
and a great impulse to the will. Hence the great influence of omens and
of all popular superstitions on a crowd. Omens are a case of "egoistic
reference."[34] An army desists from a battle on account of an eclipse.
A man starting out on the food quest returns home because a lizard
crosses his path. In each case an incident in nature is interpreted as a
warning or direction to the army or the man. Thus momentous results for
men and nations may be produced without cause. The power of watchwords
consists in the cluster of suggestions which has become fastened upon
them. In the Middle Ages the word "heretic" won a frightful suggestion
of base wickedness. In the seventeenth century the same suggestions were
connected with the words "witch" and "traitor." "Nature" acquired great
suggestion of purity and correctness in the eighteenth century, which it
has not yet lost. "Progress" now bears amongst us a very undue weight of
suggestion. Suggestibility is the quality of liability to suggestive
influence.[35] "Suggestibility is the natural faculty of the brain to
admit any ideas whatsoever, without motive, to assimilate them, and
eventually to transform them rapidly into movements, sensations, and
inhibitions."[36] It differs greatly in degree, and is present in
different grades in different crowds. Crowds of different nationalities
would differ both in degree of suggestibility and in the kinds of
suggestive stimuli to which they would respond. Imitation is due to
suggestibility. Even suicide is rendered epidemic by suggestion and
imitation.[37] In a crisis, like a shipwreck, when no one knows what to
do, one, by acting, may lead them all through imitative suggestibility.
People who are very suggestible can be led into states of mind which
preclude criticism or reflection. Any one who acquires skill in the
primary processes of association, analogy, reiteration, and continuity,
can play tricks on others by stimulating these processes and then giving
them selected data to work upon. A directive idea may be suggested by a
series of ideas which lead the recipient of them to expect that the
series will be continued. Then he will not perceive if the series is
broken. In the Renaissance period no degree of illumination sufficed to
resist the delusion of astrology, because it was supported by a
passionate fantasy and a vehement desire to know the future, and because
it was confirmed by antiquity, the authority of whose opinions was
overwhelmingly suggested by all the faiths and prejudices of the
time.[38]
+25. Suggestion in education. Manias.+ Parents and teachers use
suggestion in rearing children. Persons who enjoy social
preëminence operate suggestion all the time, whether
intentionally or unintentionally. Whatever they do is imitated.
Folkways operate on individuals by suggestion; when they are
elevated to mores they do so still more, for then they carry the
suggestion of societal welfare. Ways and notions may be rejected
by an individual at first upon his judgment of their merits, but
repeated suggestion produces familiarity and dulls the effect
upon him of the features which at first repelled him. Familiar
cases of this are furnished by fashions of dress and by slang. A
new fashion of dress seems at first to be absurd, ungraceful, or
indecent. After a time this first impression of it is so dulled
that all conform to the fashion. New slang seems vulgar. It makes
its way into use. In India the lingam symbol is so common that no
one pays any heed to its sense.[39] This power of familiarity to
reduce the suggestion to zero furnishes a negative proof of the
power of the suggestion. Conventionalization also reduces
suggestion, perhaps to zero. It is a mischievous thing to read
descriptions of crime, vice, horrors, excessive adventures, etc.,
because familiarity lessens the abhorrent suggestions which those
things ought to produce. Swindlers and all others who have an
interest to lead the minds of their fellow-men in a certain
direction employ suggestion. They often develop great practical
skill in the operation, although they do not understand the
science of it. It is one of the arts of the demagogue and stump
orator. A man who wanted to be nominated for an office went
before the convention to make a speech. A great and difficult
question agitated the party. He began by saying that he would
state his position on that question frankly and fully. "But
first," said he, "let me say that I am a Democrat." This brought
out a storm of applause. Then he went on to boast of his services
to the party, and then he stopped without having said a word on
the great question. He was easily nominated. The witch
persecutions rested on suggestion. "Everybody knew" that there
were witches. If not, what were the people who were burned?
Philip IV of France wanted to make the people believe that the
templars were heretics. The people were not ready to believe
this. The king caused the corpse of a templar to be dug up and
burned, as the corpses of heretics were burned. This convinced
the people by suggestion.[40] What "they say," what "everybody
does," and what "everybody knows" are controlling suggestions.
Religious revivals are carried on by suggestion. Mediæval
flagellations and dances were cases of suggestion. In fact, all
popular manias are to be explained by it. Religious bodies
practice suggestion on themselves, especially on their children
or less enthusiastic members, by symbols, pictures, images,
processions, dramatic representations, festivals, relics, legends
of their heroes. In the Middle Ages the crucifix was an
instrument of religious suggestion to produce vivid apprehension
of the death of Jesus. In very many well-known cases the passions
of the crowd were raised to the point of very violent action. The
symbols and images also, by suggestion, stimulate religious
fervor. If numbers act together, as in convents, mass phenomena
are produced, and such results follow as the hysterical epidemics
in convents and the extravagances of communistic sects.[41]
Learned societies and numbers of persons who are interested in
the same subject, by meeting and imparting suggestions, make all
the ideas of each the common stock of all. Hyperboreans have a
mental disease which renders them liable to suggestion. The women
are afflicted by hysteria before puberty. Later they show the
phenomena of "possession,"--dancing and singing,--and still later
catalepsy.[42]
+26. Suggestion in politics.+ The great field for the use of the
devices and apparatus of suggestion at the present time is
politics. Within fifty years all states have become largely
popular. Suggestion is easy when it falls in with popular ideas,
the pet notions of groups of people, the popular common-places,
and the current habits of thought and feeling. Newspapers,
popular literature, and popular oratory show the effort to
operate suggestion along these lines. They rarely correct; they
usually flatter the accepted notions. The art of adroit
suggestion is one of the great arts of politics. Antony's speech
over the body of Cæsar is a classical example of it. In politics,
especially at elections, the old apparatus of suggestion is
employed again,--flags, symbols, ceremonies, and celebrations.
Patriotism is systematically cultivated by anniversaries,
pilgrimages, symbols, songs, recitations, etc. Another very
remarkable case of suggestion is furnished by modern
advertisements. They are adroitly planned to touch the mind of
the reader in a way to get the reaction which the advertiser
wants. The advertising pages of our popular magazines furnish
evidence of the faiths and ideas which prevail in the masses.
+27. Suggestion and criticism.+ Suggestion is a legitimate
device, if it is honestly used, for inculcating knowledge or
principles of conduct; that is, for education in the broadest
sense of the word. Criticism is the operation by which suggestion
is limited and corrected. It is by criticism that the person is
protected against credulity, emotion, and fallacy. The power of
criticism is the one which education should chiefly train. It is
difficult to resist the suggestion that one who is accused of
crime is guilty. Lynchers generally succumb to this suggestion,
especially if the crime was a heinous one which has strongly
excited their emotions against the unknown somebody who
perpetrated it. It requires criticism to resist this suggestion.
Our judicial institutions are devised to hold this suggestion
aloof until the evidence is examined. An educated man ought to be
beyond the reach of suggestions from advertisements, newspapers,
speeches, and stories. If he is wise, just when a crowd is filled
with enthusiasm and emotion, he will leave it and will go off by
himself to form his judgment. In short, individuality and
personality of character are the opposites of suggestibility.
Autosuggestion properly includes all the cases in which a man is
"struck by an idea," or "takes a notion," but it is more strictly
applied to fixed ideas and habits of thought. An irritation
suggests parasites, and parasites suggest an irritation. The fear
of stammering causes stammering. A sleeping man drives away a fly
without waking. If we are in a pose or rôle, we act as we have
heard that people act in that pose or rôle.[43] A highly trained
judgment is required to correct or select one's own ideas and to
resist fixed ideas. The supreme criticism is criticism of one's
self.
+28. Folkways due to false inference.+ Furthermore, folkways have been
formed by accident, that is, by irrational and incongruous action, based
on pseudo-knowledge. In Molembo a pestilence broke out soon after a
Portuguese had died there. After that the natives took all possible
measures not to allow any white man to die in their country.[44] On the
Nicobar islands some natives who had just begun to make pottery died.
The art was given up and never again attempted.[45] White men gave to
one Bushman in a kraal a stick ornamented with buttons as a symbol of
authority. The recipient died leaving the stick to his son. The son
soon died. Then the Bushmen brought back the stick lest all should
die.[46] Until recently no building of incombustible materials could be
built in any big town of the central province of Madagascar, on account
of some ancient prejudice.[47] A party of Eskimos met with no game. One
of them returned to their sledges and got the ham of a dog to eat. As he
returned with the ham bone in his hand he met and killed a seal. Ever
afterwards he carried a ham bone in his hand when hunting.[48] The
Belenda women (peninsula of Malacca) stay as near to the house as
possible during the period. Many keep the door closed. They know no
reason for this custom. "It must be due to some now forgotten
superstition."[49] Soon after the Yakuts saw a camel for the first time
smallpox broke out amongst them. They thought the camel to be the agent
of the disease.[50] A woman amongst the same people contracted an
endogamous marriage. She soon afterwards became blind. This was thought
to be on account of the violation of ancient customs.[51] A very great
number of such cases could be collected. In fact they represent the
current mode of reasoning of nature people. It is their custom to reason
that, if one thing follows another, it is due to it. A great number of
customs are traceable to the notion of the evil eye, many more to ritual
notions of uncleanness.[52] No scientific investigation could discover
the origin of the folkways mentioned, if the origin had not chanced to
become known to civilized men. We must believe that the known cases
illustrate the irrational and incongruous origin of many folkways. In
civilized history also we know that customs have owed their origin to
"historical accident,"--the vanity of a princess, the deformity of a
king, the whim of a democracy, the love intrigue of a statesman or
prelate. By the institutions of another age it may be provided that no
one of these things can affect decisions, acts, or interests, but then
the power to decide the ways may have passed to clubs, trades unions,
trusts, commercial rivals, wire-pullers, politicians, and political
fanatics. In these cases also the causes and origins may escape
investigation.
+29. Harmful folkways.+ There are folkways which are positively harmful.
Very often these are just the ones for which a definite reason can be
given. The destruction of a man's goods at his death is a direct
deduction from other-worldliness; the dead man is supposed to want in
the other world just what he wanted here. The destruction of a man's
goods at his death was a great waste of capital, and it must have had a
disastrous effect on the interests of the living, and must have very
seriously hindered the development of civilization. With this custom we
must class all the expenditure of labor and capital on graves, temples,
pyramids, rites, sacrifices, and support of priests, so far as these
were supposed to benefit the dead. The faith in goblinism produced
other-worldly interests which overruled ordinary worldly interests.
Foods have often been forbidden which were plentiful, the prohibition of
which injuriously lessened the food supply. There is a tribe of Bushmen
who will eat no goat's flesh, although goats are the most numerous
domestic animals in the district.[53] Where totemism exists it is
regularly accompanied by a taboo on eating the totem animal. Whatever
may be the real principle in totemism, it overrules the interest in an
abundant food supply. "The origin of the sacred regard paid to the cow
must be sought in the primitive nomadic life of the Indo-European race,"
because it is common to Iranians and Indians of Hindostan.[54] The
Libyans ate oxen but not cows.[55] The same was true of the
Phoenicians and Egyptians.[56] In some cases the sense of a food taboo
is not to be learned. It may have been entirely capricious. Mohammed
would not eat lizards, because he thought them the offspring of a
metamorphosed clan of Israelites.[57] On the other hand, the protective
taboo which forbade killing crocodiles, pythons, cobras, and other
animals enemies of man was harmful to his interests, whatever the
motive. "It seems to be a fixed article of belief throughout southern
India, that all who have willfully or accidentally killed a snake,
especially a cobra, will certainly be punished, either in this life or
the next, in one of three ways: either by childlessness, or by leprosy,
or by ophthalmia."[58] Where this faith exists man has a greater
interest to spare a cobra than to kill it. India furnishes a great
number of cases of harmful mores. "In India every tendency of humanity
seems intensified and exaggerated. No country in the world is so
conservative in its traditions, yet no country has undergone so many
religious changes and vicissitudes."[59] "Every year thousands perish of
disease that might recover if they would take proper nourishment, and
drink the medicine that science prescribes, but which they imagine that
their religion forbids them to touch." "Men who can scarcely count
beyond twenty, and know not the letters of the alphabet, would rather
die than eat food which had been prepared by men of lower caste, unless
it had been sanctified by being offered to an idol; and would kill their
daughters rather than endure the disgrace of having unmarried girls at
home beyond twelve or thirteen years of age."[60] In the last case the
rule of obligation and duty is set by the mores. The interest comes
under vanity. The sanction of the caste rules is in a boycott by all
members of the caste. The rules are often very harmful. "The authority
of caste rests partly on written laws, partly on legendary fables or
narratives, partly on the injunctions of instructors and priests, partly
on custom and usage, and partly on the caprice and convenience of its
votaries."[61] The harm of caste rules is so great that of late they
have been broken in some cases, especially in regard to travel over sea,
which is a great advantage to Hindoos.[62] The Hindoo folkways in regard
to widows and child marriages must also be recognized as socially
harmful.
+30. How "true" and "right" are found.+ If a savage puts his hand too
near the fire, he suffers pain and draws it back. He knows nothing of
the laws of the radiation of heat, but his instinctive action conforms
to that law as if he did know it. If he wants to catch an animal for
food, he must study its habits and prepare a device adjusted to those
habits. If it fails, he must try again, until his observation is "true"
and his device is "right." All the practical and direct element in the
folkways seems to be due to common sense, natural reason, intuition, or
some other original mental endowment. It seems rational (or
rationalistic) and utilitarian. Often in the mythologies this ultimate
rational element was ascribed to the teaching of a god or a culture
hero. In modern mythology it is accounted for as "natural."
Although the ways adopted must always be really "true" and "right" in
relation to facts, for otherwise they could not answer their purpose,
such is not the primitive notion of true and right.
+31. The folkways are "right." Rights. Morals.+ The folkways are the
"right" ways to satisfy all interests, because they are traditional, and
exist in fact. They extend over the whole of life. There is a right way
to catch game, to win a wife, to make one's self appear, to cure
disease, to honor ghosts, to treat comrades or strangers, to behave when
a child is born, on the warpath, in council, and so on in all cases
which can arise. The ways are defined on the negative side, that is, by
taboos. The "right" way is the way which the ancestors used and which
has been handed down. The tradition is its own warrant. It is not held
subject to verification by experience. The notion of right is in the
folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought
to them to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is
because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves the
authority of the ancestral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are
at the end of our analysis. The notion of right and ought is the same in
regard to all the folkways, but the degree of it varies with the
importance of the interest at stake. The obligation of conformable and
coöperative action is far greater under ghost fear and war than in other
matters, and the social sanctions are severer, because group interests
are supposed to be at stake. Some usages contain only a slight element
of right and ought. It may well be believed that notions of right and
duty, and of social welfare, were first developed in connection with
ghost fear and other-worldliness, and therefore that, in that field
also, folkways were first raised to mores. "Rights" are the rules of
mutual give and take in the competition of life which are imposed on
comrades in the in-group, in order that the peace may prevail there
which is essential to the group strength. Therefore rights can never be
"natural" or "God-given," or absolute in any sense. The morality of a
group at a time is the sum of the taboos and prescriptions in the
folkways by which right conduct is defined. Therefore morals can never
be intuitive. They are historical, institutional, and empirical.
World philosophy, life policy, right, rights, and morality are all
products of the folkways. They are reflections on, and generalizations
from, the experience of pleasure and pain which is won in efforts to
carry on the struggle for existence under actual life conditions. The
generalizations are very crude and vague in their germinal forms. They
are all embodied in folklore, and all our philosophy and science have
been developed out of them.
+32. The folkways are "true."+ The folkways are necessarily "true" with
respect to some world philosophy. Pain forced men to think. The ills of
life imposed reflection and taught forethought. Mental processes were
irksome and were not undertaken until painful experience made them
unavoidable.[63] With great unanimity all over the globe primitive men
followed the same line of thought. The dead were believed to live on as
ghosts in another world just like this one. The ghosts had just the same
needs, tastes, passions, etc., as the living men had had. These
transcendental notions were the beginning of the mental outfit of
mankind. They are articles of faith, not rational convictions. The
living had duties to the ghosts, and the ghosts had rights; they also
had power to enforce their rights. It behooved the living therefore to
learn how to deal with ghosts. Here we have a complete world philosophy
and a life policy deduced from it. When pain, loss, and ill were
experienced and the question was provoked, Who did this to us? the world
philosophy furnished the answer. When the painful experience forced the
question, Why are the ghosts angry and what must we do to appease them?
the "right" answer was the one which fitted into the philosophy of ghost
fear. All acts were therefore constrained and trained into the forms of
the world philosophy by ghost fear, ancestral authority, taboos, and
habit. The habits and customs created a practical philosophy of welfare,
and they confirmed and developed the religious theories of goblinism.
+33. Relation of world philosophy and folkways.+ It is quite impossible
for us to disentangle the elements of philosophy and custom, so as to
determine priority and the causative position of either. Our best
judgment is that the mystic philosophy is regulative, not creative, in
its relation to the folkways. They reacted upon each other. The faith in
the world philosophy drew lines outside of which the folkways must not
go. Crude and vague notions of societal welfare were formed from the
notion of pleasing the ghosts, and from such notions of expediency as
the opinion that, if there were not children enough, there would not be
warriors enough, or that, if there were too many children, the food
supply would not be adequate. The notion of welfare was an inference and
resultant from these mystic and utilitarian generalizations.
+34. Definition of the mores.+ When the elements of truth and right are
developed into doctrines of welfare, the folkways are raised to another
plane. They then become capable of producing inferences, developing into
new forms, and extending their constructive influence over men and
society. Then we call them the mores. The mores are the folkways,
including the philosophical and ethical generalizations as to societal
welfare which are suggested by them, and inherent in them, as they grow.
+35. Taboos.+ The mores necessarily consist, in a large part, of taboos,
which indicate the things which must not be done. In part these are
dictated by mystic dread of ghosts who might be offended by certain
acts, but they also include such acts as have been found by experience
to produce unwelcome results, especially in the food quest, in war, in
health, or in increase or decrease of population. These taboos always
contain a greater element of philosophy than the positive rules, because
the taboos contain reference to a reason, as, for instance, that the
act would displease the ghosts. The primitive taboos correspond to the
fact that the life of man is environed by perils. His food quest must be
limited by shunning poisonous plants. His appetite must be restrained
from excess. His physical strength and health must be guarded from
dangers. The taboos carry on the accumulated wisdom of generations,
which has almost always been purchased by pain, loss, disease, and
death. Other taboos contain inhibitions of what will be injurious to the
group. The laws about the sexes, about property, about war, and about
ghosts, have this character. They always include some social philosophy.
They are both mystic and utilitarian, or compounded of the two.
Taboos may be divided into two classes, (1) protective and (2)
destructive. Some of them aim to protect and secure, while others aim to
repress or exterminate. Women are subject to some taboos which are
directed against them as sources of possible harm or danger to men, and
they are subject to other taboos which put them outside of the duties or
risks of men. On account of this difference in taboos, taboos act
selectively, and thus affect the course of civilization. They contain
judgments as to societal welfare.
+36. No primitive philosophizing; myths; fables; notion of societal
welfare.+ It is not to be understood that primitive men philosophize
about their experience of life. That is our way; it was not theirs. They
did not formulate any propositions about the causes, significance, or
ultimate relations of things. They made myths, however, in which they
often presented conceptions which are deeply philosophical, but they
represented them in concrete, personal, dramatic and graphic ways. They
feared pain and ill, and they produced folkways by their devices for
warding off pain and ill. Those devices were acts of ritual which were
planned upon their vague and crude faiths about ghosts and the other
world. We develop the connection between the devices and the faiths, and
we reduce it to propositions of a philosophic form, but the primitive
men never did that. Their myths, fables, proverbs, and maxims show that
the subtler relations of things did not escape them, and that reflection
was not wanting, but the method of it was very different from ours. The
notion of societal welfare was not wanting, although it was never
consciously put before themselves as their purpose. It was pestilence,
as a visitation of the wrath of ghosts on all, or war, which first
taught this idea, because war was connected with victory over a
neighboring group. The Bataks have a legend that men once married their
fathers' sisters' daughters, but calamities followed and so those
marriages were tabooed.[64] This inference and the cases mentioned in
sec. 28 show a conception of societal welfare and of its relation to
states and acts as conditions.
+37. The imaginative element.+ The correct apprehension of facts and
events by the mind, and the correct inferences as to the relations
between them, constitute knowledge, and it is chiefly by knowledge that
men have become better able to live well on earth. Therefore the
alternation between experience or observation and the intellectual
processes by which the sense, sequence, interdependence, and rational
consequences of facts are ascertained, is undoubtedly the most important
process for winning increased power to live well. Yet we find that this
process has been liable to most pernicious errors. The imagination has
interfered with the reason and furnished objects of pursuit to men,
which have wasted and dissipated their energies. Especially the
alternations of observation and deduction have been traversed by vanity
and superstition which have introduced delusions. As a consequence, men
have turned their backs on welfare and reality, in order to pursue
beauty, glory, poetry, and dithyrambic rhetoric, pleasure, fame,
adventure, and phantasms. Every group, in every age, has had its
"ideals" for which it has striven, as if men had blown bubbles into the
air, and then, entranced by their beautiful colors, had leaped to catch
them. In the very processes of analysis and deduction the most
pernicious errors find entrance. We note our experience in every action
or event. We study the significance from experience. We deduce a
conviction as to what we may best do when the case arises again.
Undoubtedly this is just what we ought to do in order to live well. The
process presents us a constant reiteration of the sequence,--act,
thought, act. The error is made if we allow suggestions of vanity,
superstition, speculation, or imagination to become confused with the
second stage and to enter into our conviction of what it is best to do
in such a case. This is what was done when goblinism was taken as the
explanation of experience and the rule of right living, and it is what
has been done over and over again ever since. Speculative and
transcendental notions have furnished the world philosophy, and the
rules of life policy and duty have been deduced from this and introduced
at the second stage of the process,--act, thought, act. All the errors
and fallacies of the mental processes enter into the mores of the age.
The logic of one age is not that of another. It is one of the chief
useful purposes of a study of the mores to learn to discern in them the
operation of traditional error, prevailing dogmas, logical fallacy,
delusion, and current false estimates of goods worth striving for.
+38. The ethical policy of the schools and the success policy.+ Although
speculative assumptions and dogmatic deductions have produced the
mischief here described, our present world philosophy has come out of
them by rude methods of correction and purification, and "great
principles" have been deduced which now control our life philosophy;
also ethical principles have been determined which no civilized man
would now repudiate (truthfulness, love, honor, altruism). The
traditional doctrines of philosophy and ethics are not by any means
adjusted smoothly to each other or to modern notions. We live in a war
of two antagonistic ethical philosophies: the ethical policy taught in
the books and the schools, and the success policy. The same man acts at
one time by the school ethics, disregarding consequences, at another
time by the success policy, in which the consequences dictate the
conduct; or we talk the former and act by the latter.[65]
+39. Recapitulation.+ We may sum up this preliminary analysis as
follows: men in groups are under life conditions; they have needs which
are similar under the state of the life conditions; the relations of the
needs to the conditions are interests under the heads of hunger, love,
vanity, and fear; efforts of numbers at the same time to satisfy
interests produce mass phenomena which are folkways by virtue of
uniformity, repetition, and wide concurrence. The folkways are attended
by pleasure or pain according as they are well fitted for the purpose.
Pain forces reflection and observation of some relation between acts and
welfare. At this point the prevailing world philosophy (beginning with
goblinism) suggests explanations and inferences, which become entangled
with judgments of expediency. However, the folkways take on a philosophy
of right living and a life policy for welfare. Then they become mores,
and they may be developed by inferences from the philosophy or the rules
in the endeavor to satisfy needs without pain. Hence they undergo
improvement and are made consistent with each other.
+40. The scope and method of the mores.+ In the present work the
proposition to be maintained is that the folkways are the widest, most
fundamental, and most important operation by which the interests of men
in groups are served, and that the process by which folkways are made is
the chief one to which elementary societal or group phenomena are due.
The life of society consists in making folkways and applying them. The
science of society might be construed as the study of them. The
relations of men to each other, when they are carrying on the struggle
for existence near each other, consist in mutual reactions (antagonisms,
rivalries, alliances, coercions, and coöperations), from which result
societal concatenations and concretions, that is, more or less fixed
positions of individuals and subgroups towards each other, and more or
less established sequences and methods of interaction between them, by
which the interests of all members of the group are served. The same
might be said of all animals. The social insects especially show us
highly developed results of the adjustment of adjacent interests and
life acts into concatenations and concretions. The societal concretions
are due to the folkways in this way,--that the men, each struggling to
carry on existence, unconsciously coöperate to build up associations,
organization, customs, and institutions which, after a time, appear full
grown and actual, although no one intended, or planned, or understood
them in advance. They stand there as produced by "ancestors." These
concretions of relation and act in war, labor, religion, amusement,
family life, and civil institutions are attended by faiths, doctrines of
philosophy (myths, folklore), and by precepts of right conduct and duty
(taboos). The making of folkways is not trivial, although the acts are
minute. Every act of each man fixes an atom in a structure, both
fulfilling a duty derived from what preceded and conditioning what is to
come afterwards by the authority of traditional custom. The structure
thus built up is not physical, but societal and institutional, that is
to say, it belongs to a category which must be defined and studied by
itself. It is a category in which custom produces continuity, coherence,
and consistency, so that the word "structure" may properly be applied to
the fabric of relations and prescribed positions with which societal
functions are permanently connected. The process of making folkways is
never superseded or changed. It goes on now just as it did at the
beginning of civilization. "Use and wont" exert their force on all men
always. They produce familiarity, and mass acts become unconscious. The
same effect is produced by customary acts repeated at all recurring
occasions. The range of societal activity may be greatly enlarged,
interests may be extended and multiplied, the materials by which needs
can be supplied may become far more numerous, the processes of societal
coöperation may become more complicated, and contract or artifice may
take the place of custom for many interests; but, if the case is one
which touches the ways or interests of the masses, folkways will develop
on and around it by the same process as that which has been described as
taking place from the beginning of civilization. The ways of carrying on
war have changed with all new inventions of weapons or armor, and have
grown into folkways of commanding range and importance. The factory
system of handicrafts has produced a body of folkways in which artisans
live, and which distinguish factory towns from commercial cities or
agricultural villages. The use of cotton instead of linen has greatly
affected modern folkways. The applications of power and machinery have
changed the standards of comfort of all classes. The folkways, however,
have kept their character and authority through all the changes of form
which they have undergone.
+41. Integration of the mores of a group or age.+ In further development
of the same interpretation of the phenomena we find that changes in
history are primarily due to changes in life conditions. Then the
folkways change. Then new philosophies and ethical rules are invented to
try to justify the new ways. The whole vast body of modern mores has
thus been developed out of the philosophy and ethics of the Middle Ages.
So the mores which have been developed to suit the system of great
secular states, world commerce, credit institutions, contract wages and
rent, emigration to outlying continents, etc., have become the norm for
the whole body of usages, manners, ideas, faiths, customs, and
institutions which embrace the whole life of a society and characterize
an historical epoch. Thus India, Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome,
the Middle Ages, Modern Times, are cases in which the integration of the
mores upon different life conditions produced societal states of
complete and distinct individuality (ethos). Within any such societal
status the great reason for any phenomenon is that it conforms to the
mores of the time and place. Historians have always recognized
incidentally the operation of such a determining force. What is now
maintained is that it is not incidental or subordinate. It is supreme
and controlling. Therefore the scientific discussion of a usage, custom,
or institution consists in tracing its relation to the mores, and the
discussion of societal crises and changes consists in showing their
connection with changes in the life conditions, or with the readjustment
of the mores to changes in those conditions.
+42. Purpose of the present work.+ "Ethology" would be a convenient term
for the study of manners, customs, usages, and mores, including the
study of the way in which they are formed, how they grow or decay, and
how they affect the interests which it is their purpose to serve. The
Greeks applied the term "ethos" to the sum of the characteristic usages,
ideas, standards, and codes by which a group was differentiated and
individualized in character from other groups. "Ethics" were things
which pertained to the ethos and therefore the things which were the
standard of right. The Romans used "mores" for customs in the broadest
and richest sense of the word, including the notion that customs served
welfare, and had traditional and mystic sanction, so that they were
properly authoritative and sacred. It is a very surprising fact that
modern nations should have lost these words and the significant
suggestions which inhere in them. The English language has no derivative
noun from "mores," and no equivalent for it. The French _moeurs_ is
trivial compared with "mores." The German _Sitte_ renders "mores" but
very imperfectly. The modern peoples have made morals and morality a
separate domain, by the side of religion, philosophy, and politics. In
that sense, morals is an impossible and unreal category. It has no
existence, and can have none. The word "moral" means what belongs or
appertains to the mores. Therefore the category of morals can never be
defined without reference to something outside of itself. Ethics, having
lost connection with the ethos of a people, is an attempt to systematize
the current notions of right and wrong upon some basic principle,
generally with the purpose of establishing morals on an absolute
doctrine, so that it shall be universal, absolute, and everlasting. In a
general way also, whenever a thing can be called moral, or connected
with some ethical generality, it is thought to be "raised," and
disputants whose method is to employ ethical generalities assume
especial authority for themselves and their views. These methods of
discussion are most employed in treating of social topics, and they are
disastrous to sound study of facts. They help to hold the social
sciences under the dominion of metaphysics. The abuse has been most
developed in connection with political economy, which has been almost
robbed of the character of a serious discipline by converting its
discussions into ethical disquisitions.
+43. Why use the word mores.+ "Ethica," in the Greek sense, or
"ethology," as above defined, would be good names for our present work.
We aim to study the ethos of groups, in order to see how it arises, its
power and influence, the modes of its operation on members of the group,
and the various attributes of it (ethica). "Ethology" is a very
unfamiliar word. It has been used for the mode of setting forth manners,
customs, and mores in satirical comedy. The Latin word "mores" seems to
be, on the whole, more practically convenient and available than any
other for our purpose, as a name for the folkways with the connotations
of right and truth in respect to welfare, embodied in them. The analysis
and definition above given show that in the mores we must recognize a
dominating force in history, constituting a condition as to what can be
done, and as to the methods which can be employed.
+44. Mores are a directive force.+ Of course the view which has been
stated is antagonistic to the view that philosophy and ethics furnish
creative and determining forces in society and history. That view comes
down to us from the Greek philosophy and it has now prevailed so long
that all current discussion conforms to it. Philosophy and ethics are
pursued as independent disciplines, and the results are brought to the
science of society and to statesmanship and legislation as authoritative
dicta. We also have _Völkerpsychologie_, _Sozialpolitik_, and other
intermediate forms which show the struggle of metaphysics to retain
control of the science of society. The "historic sense," the
_Zeitgeist_, and other terms of similar import are partial recognitions
of the mores and their importance in the science of society. It can be
seen also that philosophy and ethics are products of the folkways. They
are taken out of the mores, but are never original and creative; they
are secondary and derived. They often interfere in the second stage of
the sequence,--act, thought, act. Then they produce harm, but some
ground is furnished for the claim that they are creative or at least
regulative. In fact, the real process in great bodies of men is not one
of deduction from any great principle of philosophy or ethics. It is one
of minute efforts to live well under existing conditions, which efforts
are repeated indefinitely by great numbers, getting strength from habit
and from the fellowship of united action. The resultant folkways become
coercive. All are forced to conform, and the folkways dominate the
societal life. Then they seem true and right, and arise into mores as
the norm of welfare. Thence are produced faiths, ideas, doctrines,
religions, and philosophies, according to the stage of civilization and
the fashions of reflection and generalization.
+45. Consistency in the mores.+ The tendency of the mores of a period to
consistency has been noticed (sec. 5). No doubt this tendency is greatly
strengthened when people are able to generalize "principles" from acts.
This explains the modern belief that principles are causative. The
passion for equality, the universal use of contract, and the sentiments
of humanitarianism are informing elements in modern society. Whence did
they come? Undoubtedly they came out of the mores into which they return
again as a principle of consistency. Respect for human life, horror at
cruelty and bloodshed, sympathy with pain, suffering, and poverty
(humanitarianism), have acted as "causes" in connection with the
abolition of slavery, the reform of the criminal law and of prisons, and
sympathy with the oppressed, but humanitarianism was a generalization
from remoter mores which were due to changes in life conditions. The
ultimate explanation of the rise of humanitarianism is the increased
power of man over nature by the acquisition of new land, and by advance
in the arts. When men ceased to crowd on each other, they were all
willing to adopt ideas and institutions which made the competition of
life easy and kindly.
+46. The mores of subgroups.+ Each class or group in a society has its
own mores. This is true of ranks, professions, industrial classes,
religious and philosophical sects, and all other subdivisions of
society. Individuals are in two or more of these groups at the same
time, so that there is compromise and neutralization. Other mores are
common to the whole society. Mores are also transmitted from one class
to another. It is necessary to give precision to the notion of classes.
+47. What are classes?+ Galton[66] made a classification of society by a
standard which he did not strictly define. He called it "their natural
gifts." It might be understood to be mental power, reputation, social
success, income from societal work, or societal value. Ammon took up the
idea and developed it, making a diagrammatic representation of it, which
is reproduced on the following page.[67]
+48.+ If we measure and classify a number of persons by any physical
characteristic (stature, weight) we find that the results always fall
under a curve of probable error. That they should do so is, in fact, a
truism. If a number of persons with different degrees of power and
resistance are acted on by the same influences, it is most probable that
the greatest number of them will reach the same and a mean degree of
self-realization, and others in proportion to their power and
resistance. The fact has been statistically verified so often, and for
such a great variety of physical traits, that we may infer its truth for
all traits of mind and character for which we have no units, and which
we cannot therefore measure or statistically classify.
X
|
*
*|*
* | * Genius
*--|--*
* | * Talent
* | *
P *-------|-------* Q
* | *
* | *
* | *
* | * M } T
* | * e } h
* | * d } e
* | * i }
* | * o } M
M---*--------------------|--------------------*-----c--N--} a
* |D * r } s
* |C * i } s
* |B * t } e
* R |A S * y } s
*---------------|---------------*
* |a *
Unskilled and * |b * Illiterate
* |c *
* |d *
*-----|-----*
* | * Proletariat
*--|--*
Defective, * | * Dependent and
*|*
Delinquent
*
|
x
+49. Classes rated by societal value.+ If we take societal value as the
criterion of the classification of society, it has the advantage of
being germane to the interests which are most important in connection
with classification, but it is complex. There is no unit of it.
Therefore we could never verify it statistically. It conforms, in the
main, to mental power, but it must contain also a large element of
practical sense, health, and opportunity (luck). On the simplest
analysis, there are four elements,--intellectual, moral, economic, and
physical; but each of these is composite. If one of them is present in a
high degree, and the others in a low degree, the whole is inharmonic,
and not highly advantageous. The highest societal value seems to go with
a harmonious combination, although it may be of lower grades. A man of
talent, practical sense, industry, perseverance, and moral principle is
worth more to society than a genius, who is not morally responsible, or
not industrious. Societal value also conforms, in a general way, to
worldly success and to income from work contributed to the industrial
organization, for genius which was not effective would have no societal
value. On the other hand, however, so long as scientific work and books
of the highest value to science and art pay the authors nothing, the
returns of the market, and income, only imperfectly measure societal
value. All these limitations being allowed for, nevertheless societal
value is a concrete idea, especially on its negative side (paupers,
tramps, social failures, and incompetents). The defective, dependent,
and delinquent classes are already fully differentiated, and are made
objects of statistical enumeration. The rest only differ in degree. If,
therefore, all were rated and scaled by this value, the results would
fall under a curve of probable error. In the diagram the axis _Xx_ is
set perpendicular and the ordinates are divided equally upon it in order
to make the divisions correspond to "up" and "down" as we use those
words in social discussion. Then _MN_ is the line of the greatest
number. From _O_ upwards we may cut off equal sections, _OA_, _AB_,
etc., to indicate grades of societal value above that of the greatest
number, and from _O_ downwards we may cut off equal sections of the same
magnitude to indicate grades of societal value less than that of the
greatest number. At the top we have a small number of men of genius.
Below these we may cut off another section which includes the men of
talent. At the bottom we find the dependent, defective, and delinquent
classes which are a burden on society. Above them is another stratum,
the proletariat, which serves society only by its children. Persons of
this class have no regular mode of earning a living, but are not, at the
moment at which the classification is made, dependent. These are the
only ones to whom the term "proletarian" could with any propriety be
applied. Next above these is another well-defined stratum,--the
self-supporting, but unskilled and illiterate. Then all who fall between
_PQ_ and _RS_ are characterized by mediocrity, and they constitute "the
masses." In all new countries, and as it would seem at the present time
also in central Europe, there is a very strong current upwards from the
lower to the upper strata of _PQRS_. Universal education tends to
produce such a current. Talented men of the period are very often born
in humble circumstances, but succeed in taking their true place in the
societal scale. It is true, of course, that there is a counter-current
of degenerate sons and grandsons. The present diagram is made
unsymmetrical with respect to _MN_ to express the opinion that the upper
strata of _PQRS_ (the lower professional and the semiprofessional
classes) are now, in any civilized society, larger in proportion than
symmetry would indicate.[68] The line _MN_ is therefore a mode, and the
class upon it is the modal class of the society, by means of which one
society might be compared with another.
+50.+ Galton estimated the number of men of genius in all history at
four hundred. An important fraction of these were related by blood. The
"men of the time" he rates at four hundred and fifty in a million, and
the more distinguished of them at two hundred and fifty in a million.
These latter he defines by saying that a man, to be included amongst
them, "should have distinguished himself pretty frequently, either by
purely original work, or as a leader of opinion." He finds that
illustrious men are only one in a million. On the other hand, idiots and
imbeciles in England and Wales are one in four hundred, of whom thirty
per cent can be educated so as to be equal to one third of a normal man
each; forty per cent can be made worth two thirds of a man; twenty-five
or thirty per cent pass muster in a crowd. Above these are silly persons
whose relatives shield them from public knowledge. Then above these come
the Dundreary type.[69]
+51. Class; race; group solidarity.+ If the group which is classified is
a large one, and especially if it is a genetic unit (race, tribe, or
nation), there are no gaps in the series. Each individual falls into his
place by virtue of his characteristic differences. Just as no two are
anthropologically alike, so we may believe that no two are alike or
equal in societal value. That all men should be alike or equal, by any
standard whatever, is contrary to all the facts of human nature and all
the conditions of human life. Any group falls into subdivisions, the
members of each of which are approximately equal, when measured by any
standard, because the classification is imperfect. If we make it more
refined, the subdivisions must be subdivided again. We are in a dilemma:
we cannot describe mankind at all without categories, and if we go on to
make our categories more and more exact, each one of them would at last
contain only one person. Two things result which are practically
important, and which furnish us with scientific concepts which we can
employ in further study: (1) The classification gives us the notion of
the relative position of one, or a subdivision, in the entire group.
This is the sense of "class."[70] (2) The characteristic differences
furnish the notion of individuality and personality. The concept of a
race, as the term is now used, is that of a group clustered around a
mean with respect to some characteristic, and great confusion in the use
of the word "race" arises from the attempt to define races by their
boundaries, when we really think of them by the mean or mode, e.g. as to
skin color. The coherence, unity, and solidarity of a genetic group is
a very striking fact. It seems to conceal a play of mystic forces. It
is, in fact, no more mysterious than the run of dice. The propositions
about it would all become, in the last analysis, identical propositions;
e.g. it is most probable that we shall meet with the thing which is
present in the greatest number; or, it is most probable that the most
probable thing will happen. In the middle of the nineteenth century,
when attention was first called to the solidarity and internal
correlations of groups, especially if they were large and genetic, it
was believed that occult and far-reaching laws had been discovered. That
opinion has long been abandoned. If there are four dice in a box, each
having from one to six dots on its faces, the chance of throwing four
sixes is just the same as that of throwing four ones. The mean of the
sums of the dots which may fall uppermost is fourteen, which can be
produced by one hundred and forty-six throws. Suppose that the
components of social value are four,--intellectual, moral, physical,
economic,--represented by the four dice, and that the degrees are
represented by the dots. We should get four sixes once in twelve hundred
and ninety-six throws. Of the one hundred and forty-six throws which
give the mean fourteen, seventy-two show one six up. That might be a
Hercules fit only for a dime museum. Seventy-eight of the combinations
are inharmonious, but have one strong element.[71] In societal matters
it is by no means indifferent whether the equal sums of societal value
are made up of very unequal, or of harmonious, components. So in a group
of a million persons the chance of a great genius, who would stand alone
towards _X_ is just the same as that of an utter idiot who would stand
alone towards _x_, and the reason why the number at the mode is so great
is that the societal value is the sum of components, of which many sums
may be equal, although the components are very unequal. Two strata at
equal distances above and below _O_ are equal in number, so far as their
useful powers and resistances go, but education introduces a new
component which destroys their equality and forces a redistribution.
Galton[72] suggests that, if people who would when adults fall in
classes _V_, _W_, or _X_ in our diagram could be recognized in infancy,
and could be bought for money, it would be a great bargain for a nation,
England for instance, to buy them for much money and rear them as
Englishmen. Farr estimated the baby of an agricultural laborer as worth
£5, capital value. A baby who could be reared to take a place in the
class _X_ would have a capital value of thousands of pounds. The capital
value would be like that of land of different degrees of natural
advantage, but none of it yet exploited.
+52. The masses and the mores.+ In connection with the mores the masses
are of very great importance. The historical or selected classes are
those which, in history, have controlled the activities and policy of
generations. They have been differentiated at one time by one standard,
at another time by another. The position which they held by inheritance
from early society has given them prestige and authority. Merit and
societal value, according to the standards of their time, have entered
into their status only slightly and incidentally. Those classes have had
their own mores. They had the power to regulate their lives to some
extent according to their own choice, a power which modern civilized men
eagerly desire and strive for primarily by the acquisition of wealth.
The historical classes have, therefore, selected purposes, and have
invented ways of fulfilling them. Their ways have been imitated by the
masses. The classes have led the way in luxury, frivolity, and vice, and
also in refinement, culture, and the art of living. They have introduced
variation. The masses are not large classes at the base of a social
pyramid; they are the core of the society. They are conservative. They
accept life as they find it, and live on by tradition and habit. In
other words, the great mass of any society lives a purely instinctive
life just like animals. We must not be misled by the conservatism of
castes and aristocracies, who resist change of customs and institutions
by virtue of which they hold social power. The conservatism of the
masses is of a different kind. It is not produced by interests, but it
is instinctive. It is due to inertia. Change would make new effort
necessary to win routine and habit. It is therefore irksome. The masses,
moreover, have not the power to reach out after "improvements," or to
plan steps of change by which needs might be better satisfied. The mores
of any society, at a period, may be characterized by the promptness or
reluctance of the masses to imitate the ways of the classes. It is a
question of the first importance for the historian whether the mores of
the historical classes of which he finds evidence in documentary remains
penetrated the masses or not. The masses are the real bearers of the
mores of the society. They carry tradition. The folkways are their ways.
They accept influence or leadership, and they imitate, but they do so as
they see fit, being controlled by their notions and tastes previously
acquired. They may accept standards of character and action from the
classes, or from foreigners, or from literature, or from a new religion,
but whatever they take up they assimilate and make it a part of their
own mores, which they then transmit by tradition, defend in its
integrity, and refuse to discard again. Consequently the writings of the
literary class may not represent the faiths, notions, tastes, standards,
etc., of the masses at all. The literature of the first Christian
centuries shows us scarcely anything of the mores of the time, as they
existed in the faith and practice of the masses. Every group takes out
of a new religion which is offered to it just what it can assimilate
with its own traditional mores. Christianity was a very different thing
amongst Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, Germans, and Slavs. It would be a great
mistake to suppose that any people ever accepted and held philosophical
or religious teaching as it was offered to them, and as we find it
recorded in the books of the teachers. The mores of the masses admit of
no such sudden and massive modification by doctrinal teaching. The
process of assimilation is slow, and it is attended by modifying
influences at every stage. What the classes adopt, be it good or ill,
may be found pervading the mass after generations, but it will appear as
a resultant of all the vicissitudes of the folkways in the interval. "It
was the most frightful feature of the corruption of ancient Rome, that
it extended through every class in the community."[73] "As in the
Renaissance, so now [in the Catholic reaction] vice trickled downward
from above, infiltrating the mass of the people with its virus."[74] It
is the classes who produce variation; it is the masses who carry forward
the traditional mores.
+53. Fallacies about the masses and classes.+ It is a fallacy to infer
that the masses have some occult wisdom or inspiration by virtue of
which they select what is wise, right, and good from what the classes
offer. There is, also, no device by which it is possible to obtain from
the masses, in advance or on demand, a judgment on any proposed changes
or innovations. The masses are not an oracle. If any answers can be
obtained on the problems of life, such answers will come rather from the
classes. The two sections of society are such that they may coöperate
with advantage to the good of all. Neither one has a right or a better
claim to rule the society.
+54. Action of the masses on thoughts.+ Fifty years ago Darwin put some
knowledge into the common stock. The peasants and artisans of his time
did nothing of the kind. What the masses do with thoughts is that they
rub them down into counters just as they take coins from the mint and
smooth them down by wear until they are only disks of metal. The masses
understand, for instance, that Darwin said that "men are descended from
monkeys." Only summary and glib propositions of that kind can ever get
currency. The learned men are all the time trying to recoin them and
give them at least partial reality. Ruskin set afloat some notions of
art criticism, which have penetrated all our cultivated classes. They
are not lost, but see what has become of them in fifty years by
popularization. A little later a new gospel of furniture and house
decoration was published. The masses have absorbed it. See what they
have made of it. Eastlake wanted no machine work, but machinery was not
to be defeated. It can make lopsided things if those are the fashion,
and it can make all the construction show if Eastlake has got the notion
into the crowd that the pegs ought to be on the outside. Thinking and
understanding are too hard work. If any one wants to blame the masses
let him turn to his own case. He will find that he thinks about and
understands only his own intellectual pursuit. He could not give the
effort to every other department of knowledge. In other matters he is
one of the masses and does as they do. He uses routine, set formulæ,
current phrases, caught up from magazines and newspapers of the better
class.
+55. Organization of the masses.+ Masses of men who are on a substantial
equality with each other never can be anything but hopeless savages. The
eighteenth-century notion that men in a state of nature were all equal
is wrong-side up. Men who were equal would be in a state of nature such
as was imagined. They could not form a society. They would be forced to
scatter and wander, at most two or three together. They never could
advance in the arts of civilization. The popular belief that out of some
such horde there has come by the spontaneous development of innate
forces all the civilization which we possess is entirely unfounded.
Masses of men who are approximately equal are in time exterminated or
enslaved. Only when enslaved or subjugated are some of them carried up
with their conquerors by organization and discipline (negroes and
Indians amongst us). A horde in which the only differences are those of
age and sex is not capable of maintaining existence. It fights because
only by conquering or being conquered can it endure. When it is
subjugated and disciplined it consists of workers to belabor the ground
for others, or tax payers to fill a treasury from which others may
spend, or food for gunpowder, or voting material for demagogues. It is
an object of exploitation. At one moment, in spite of its aggregate
muscle, it is helpless and imbecile; the next moment it is swept away
into folly and mischief by a suggestion or an impulse. Organization,
leadership, and discipline are indispensable to any beneficial action by
masses of men. If we ignore this fact, we see the machine and the boss
evolved out of the situation which we create.
+56. Institutions of civil liberty.+ Institutions also must be produced
which will hold the activities of society in channels of order,
deliberation, peace, regulated antagonism of interests, and justice,
according to the mores of the time. These institutions put an end to
exploitation and bring interests into harmony under civil liberty. But
where do the institutions come from? The masses have never made them.
They are produced out of the mores by the selection of the leading men
and classes who get control of the collective power of the society and
direct it to the activities which will (as they think) serve the
interests which they regard as most important. If changes in life
conditions occur, the interests to be served change. Great inventions
and discoveries, the opening of new continents, new methods of
agriculture and commerce, the introduction of money and financial
devices, improved state organization, increase the economic power of the
society and the force at the disposal of the state. Industrial interests
displace military and monarchical interests as the ones which the state
chiefly aims to serve, not because of any tide of "progress," but
because industrialism gives greater and more varied satisfactions to the
rulers. The increase of _power_ is the primary condition. The classes
strive with each other for the new power. Peace is necessary, for
without peace none of them can enjoy power. Compromise, adjustment of
interests, antagonistic coöperation (sec. 21), harmony, are produced,
and institutions are the regulative processes and apparatus by which
warfare is replaced by system. The historical process has been full of
error, folly, selfishness, violence, and craft. It is so still. The
point which is now important for us is that the masses have never
carried on the struggles and processes by which civilized society has
been made into an arena, within which exploitation of man by man is to
some extent repressed, and where individual self-realization has a large
scope, under the institutions of civil liberty. It is the historical and
selected classes which have done this, often enough without intending or
foreseeing the results of actions which they inaugurated with quite
other, perhaps selfish, class purposes in view. A society is a whole
made up of parts. All the parts have a legitimate share in the acts and
sufferings of the society. All the parts contribute to the life and work
of the society. We inherit all the consequences of all their acts. Some
of the consequences are good and some are bad. It is utterly impossible
to name the classes which have done useful work and made beneficial
sacrifices only, and the other classes which have been idle burdens and
mischief makers only. All that has been done has been done by all. It is
evident that no other view than this can be rational and true, for one
reason because the will and intention of the men of to-day in what they
do has so little to do with the consequences to-morrow of what they do.
The notion that religion, or marriage, or property, or monarchy, as we
have inherited them, can be proved evil, or worthy of condemnation and
contempt on account of the selfishness and violence interwoven with
their history, is one of the idlest of all the vagaries of the social
philosophers.
+57. The common man.+ Every civilized society has to carry below the
lowest sections of the masses a dead weight of ignorance, poverty,
crime, and disease. Every such society has, in the great central section
of the masses, a great body which is neutral in all the policy of
society. It lives by routine and tradition. It is not brutal, but it is
shallow, narrow-minded, and prejudiced. Nevertheless it is harmless. It
lacks initiative and cannot give an impulse for good or bad. It produces
few criminals. It can sometimes be moved by appeals to its fixed ideas
and prejudices. It is affected in its mores by contagion from the
classes above it. The work of "popularization" consists in bringing
about this contagion. The middle section is formed around the
mathematical mean of the society, or around the mathematical mode, if
the distribution of the subdivisions is not symmetrical. The man on the
mode is the "common man," the "average man," or the "man in the street."
Between him and the democratic political institutions--the pulpit, the
newspapers, and the public library--there is a constant reaction by
which mores are modified and preserved. The aim of all the institutions
and literature in a modern state is to please him. His aim is to get out
of them what suits him. The yellow newspapers thrive and displace all
the others because he likes them. The trashy novels pay well because his
wife and daughters like them. The advertisements in the popular
magazines are addressed to him. They show what he wants. The "funny
items" are adjusted to his sense of humor. Hence all these things are
symptoms. They show what he "believes in," and they strengthen his
prejudices. If all art, literature, legislation, and political power are
to be cast at his feet, it makes some difference who and what he is. His
section of society determines the mores of the whole.
+58. "The people." Popular impulses.+ In a democratic state the great
middle section would rule if it was organized independently of the rest.
It is that section which constitutes "the people" in the special
technical sense in which that expression is current in political use. It
is to it that the Jeffersonian doctrines about the "wisdom" of the
people would apply. That section, however, is never organized
independently; that is to say, "the people" never exist as a body
exercising political power. The middle section of a group may be
enthused by an impulse which is adapted to its ways and notions. It
clings to persons, loves anecdotes, is fond of light emotions, and
prides itself on its morality. If a man wins popularity in that section,
the impulse which his name can give to it may be irresistible
(Jefferson, Jackson). The middle section is greatly affected by
symbolism. "The flag" can be developed into a fetich. A cult can be
nourished around it. Group vanity is very strong in it. Patriotic
emotions and faiths are its favorite psychological exercises, if the
conjuncture is favorable and the material well-being is high. When the
middle section is stirred by any spontaneous and consentaneous impulses
which arise from its nature and ways, it may produce incredible results
with only a minimum of organization. "A little prosperity and some
ideas, as Aristotle saw, are the ferment which sets the masses in
ebullition. This offers an opportunity. A beginning is made. The further
development is unavoidable."[75]
+59. Agitation.+ Every impulse given to the masses is, in its nature,
spasmodic and transitory. No systematic enterprise to enlighten the
masses ever can be carried out. Campaigns of education contain a
fallacy. Education takes time. It cannot be treated as subsidiary for a
lifetime and then be made the chief business for six months with the
desired result. A campaign of education is undemocratic. It implies that
some one is teacher and somebody else pupil. It can only result in the
elucidation of popular interests and the firmer establishment of popular
prejudice. On the other hand, an agitation which appeals skillfully to
pet notions and to latent fanaticism may stampede the masses. The Middle
Ages furnished a number of cases. The Mahdis who have arisen in
Mohammedan Africa, and other Moslem prophets, have produced wonderful
phenomena of this kind. The silver agitation was begun, in 1878, by a
systematic effort of three or four newspapers in the middle West,
addressed to currency notions which the greenback proposition had
popularized. What is the limit to the possibilities of fanaticism and
frenzy which might be produced in any society by agitation skillfully
addressed to the fallacies and passions of the masses? The answer lies
in the mores, which determine the degree of reserved common sense, and
the habit of observing measure and method, to which the masses have been
accustomed. It follows that popular agitation is a desperate and
doubtful method. The masses, as the great popular jury which, at last,
by adoption or rejection, decides the fate of all proposed changes in
the mores, needs stability and moderation. Popular agitation introduces
into the masses initiative and creative functions which destroy its
judgment and call for quite other qualities.
+60. The ruling element in the masses.+ The masses are liable to
controlling influences from elements which they contain. When crises
arise in a democratic state attention is concentrated on the most
numerous strata nearest to _MN_ (see the diagram, p. 40), but they
rarely possess self-determination unless the question at issue appeals
directly to popular interest or popular vanity. Moreover, those strata
cannot rule unless they combine with those next above and below. So the
critical question always is, in regard to the masses _PQRS_, which parts
of it will move the whole of it. Generally the question is, more
specifically, What is the character of the strata above a line through
_A_ or _B_, and what is their relation to the rest of _PQRS_? If the
upper part of the section _PQRS_ consists of employers and the lower
part of employés, and if they hate and fight each other, coherence and
sympathy in the society will cease, the mores will be characterized by
discord, passion, and quarrelsomeness, and political crises will arise
which may reach any degree of severity, for the political parties will
soon coincide with the class sections. The upper part of _PQRS_ is made
up of the strata which possess comfort without luxury, but also culture,
intelligence, and the best family mores. They are generally disciplined
classes, with strong moral sense, public spirit, and sense of
responsibility. If we are not in error as to the movement in civilized
states of the present time from the lower into the upper strata of
_PQRS_, by virtue of ambition and education, then it follows that the
upper strata are being constantly reënforced by all the elements in the
society which have societal value, after those elements have been
developed and disciplined by labor and self-denial. The share which the
upper strata of the masses have in determining the policy of the masses
is therefore often decisive of public welfare. On the other hand, it is
when the masses are controlled by the strata next above _RS_ that there
is most violent impulsiveness in societal movements. The movements and
policies which are characterized as revolutionary have their rise in
these classes, although, in other cases, these classes also adhere most
stubbornly to popular traditions in spite of reason and fact. Trade
unionism is, at the present time, a social philosophy and a programme of
policy which has its origin in the sections of the masses next above
_RS_.
The French Revolution began with the highest strata of the masses, and
the control of it passed on down from one to another of the lower
strata, until it reached the lowest,--the mob gathered in the slums of a
great city.
+61. The mores and institutions.+ Institutions and laws are produced out
of mores. An institution consists of a concept (idea, notion, doctrine,
interest) and a structure. The structure is a framework, or apparatus,
or perhaps only a number of functionaries set to coöperate in prescribed
ways at a certain conjuncture. The structure holds the concept and
furnishes instrumentalities for bringing it into the world of facts and
action in a way to serve the interests of men in society. Institutions
are either crescive or enacted. They are crescive when they take shape
in the mores, growing by the instinctive efforts by which the mores are
produced. Then the efforts, through long use, become definite and
specific. Property, marriage, and religion are the most primary
institutions. They began in folkways. They became customs. They
developed into mores by the addition of some philosophy of welfare,
however crude. Then they were made more definite and specific as regards
the rules, the prescribed acts, and the apparatus to be employed. This
produced a structure and the institution was complete. Enacted
institutions are products of rational invention and intention. They
belong to high civilization. Banks are institutions of credit founded on
usages which can be traced back to barbarism. There came a time when,
guided by rational reflection on experience, men systematized and
regulated the usages which had become current, and thus created positive
institutions of credit, defined by law and sanctioned by the force of
the state. Pure enacted institutions which are strong and prosperous are
hard to find. It is too difficult to invent and create an institution,
for a purpose, out of nothing. The electoral college in the constitution
of the United States is an example. In that case the democratic mores of
the people have seized upon the device and made of it something quite
different from what the inventors planned. All institutions have come
out of mores, although the rational element in them is sometimes so
large that their origin in the mores is not to be ascertained except by
an historical investigation (legislatures, courts, juries, joint stock
companies, the stock exchange). Property, marriage, and religion are
still almost entirely in the mores. Amongst nature men any man might
capture and hold a woman at any time, if he could. He did it by superior
force which was its own supreme justification. But his act brought his
group and her group into war, and produced harm to his comrades. They
forbade capture, or set conditions for it. Beyond the limits, the
individual might still use force, but his comrades were no longer
responsible. The glory to him, if he succeeded, might be all the
greater. His control over his captive was absolute. Within the
prescribed conditions, "capture" became technical and institutional, and
rights grew out of it. The woman had a status which was defined by
custom, and was very different from the status of a real captive.
Marriage was the institutional relation, in the society and under its
sanction, of a woman to a man, where the woman had been obtained in the
prescribed way. She was then a "wife." What her rights and duties were
was defined by the mores, as they are to-day in all civilized society.
+62. Laws.+ Acts of legislation come out of the mores. In low
civilization all societal regulations are customs and taboos, the origin
of which is unknown. Positive laws are impossible until the stage of
verification, reflection, and criticism is reached. Until that point is
reached there is only customary law, or common law. The customary law
may be codified and systematized with respect to some philosophical
principles, and yet remain customary. The codes of Manu and Justinian
are examples. Enactment is not possible until reverence for ancestors
has been so much weakened that it is no longer thought wrong to
interfere with traditional customs by positive enactment. Even then
there is reluctance to make enactments, and there is a stage of
transition during which traditional customs are extended by
interpretation to cover new cases and to prevent evils. Legislation,
however, has to seek standing ground on the existing mores, and it soon
becomes apparent that legislation, to be strong, must be consistent with
the mores.[76] Things which have been in the mores are put under police
regulation and later under positive law. It is sometimes said that
"public opinion" must ratify and approve police regulations, but this
statement rests on an imperfect analysis. The regulations must conform
to the mores, so that the public will not think them too lax or too
strict. The mores of our urban and rural populations are not the same;
consequently legislation about intoxicants which is made by one of these
sections of the population does not succeed when applied to the other.
The regulation of drinking places, gambling places, and disorderly
houses has passed through the above-mentioned stages. It is always a
question of expediency whether to leave a subject under the mores, or to
make a police regulation for it, or to put it into the criminal law.
Betting, horse racing, dangerous sports, electric cars, and vehicles are
cases now of things which seem to be passing under positive enactment
and out of the unformulated control of the mores. When an enactment is
made there is a sacrifice of the elasticity and automatic
self-adaptation of custom, but an enactment is specific and is provided
with sanctions. Enactments come into use when conscious purposes are
formed, and it is believed that specific devices can be framed by which
to realize such purposes in the society. Then also prohibitions take the
place of taboos, and punishments are planned to be deterrent rather than
revengeful. The mores of different societies, or of different ages, are
characterized by greater or less readiness and confidence in regard to
the use of positive enactments for the realization of societal purposes.
+63. How laws and institutions differ from mores.+ When folkways have
become institutions or laws they have changed their character and are to
be distinguished from the mores. The element of sentiment and faith
inheres in the mores. Laws and institutions have a rational and
practical character, and are more mechanical and utilitarian. The great
difference is that institutions and laws have a positive character,
while mores are unformulated and undefined. There is a philosophy
implicit in the folkways; when it is made explicit it becomes technical
philosophy. Objectively regarded, the mores are the customs which
actually conduce to welfare under existing life conditions. Acts under
the laws and institutions are conscious and voluntary; under the
folkways they are always unconscious and involuntary, so that they have
the character of natural necessity. Educated reflection and skepticism
can disturb this spontaneous relation. The laws, being positive
prescriptions, supersede the mores so far as they are adopted. It
follows that the mores come into operation where laws and tribunals
fail. The mores cover the great field of common life where there are no
laws or police regulations. They cover an immense and undefined domain,
and they break the way in new domains, not yet controlled at all. The
mores, therefore, build up new laws and police regulations in time.
+64. Difference between mores and some cognate things.+ Products of
intentional investigation or of rational and conscious reflection,
projects formally adopted by voluntary associations, rational methods
consciously selected, injunctions and prohibitions by authority, and all
specific conventional arrangements are not in the mores. They are
differentiated by the rational and conscious element in them. We may
also make a distinction between usages and mores. Usages are folkways
which contain no principle of welfare, but serve convenience so long as
all know what they are expected to do. For instance, Orientals, to show
respect, cover the head and uncover the feet; Occidentals do the
opposite. There is no inherent and necessary connection between respect
and either usage, but it is an advantage that there should be a usage
and that all should know and observe it. One way is as good as another,
if it is understood and established. The folkways as to public decency
belong to the mores, because they have real connection with welfare
which determines the only tenor which they can have. The folkways about
propriety and modesty are sometimes purely conventional and sometimes
inherently real. Fashions, fads, affectations, poses, ideals, manias,
popular delusions, follies, and vices must be included in the mores.
They have characteral qualities and characteral effect. However
frivolous or foolish they may appear to people of another age, they have
the form of attempts to live well, to satisfy some interest, or to win
some good. The ways of advertisers who exaggerate, use tricks to win
attention, and appeal to popular weakness and folly; the ways of
journalism; electioneering devices; oratorical and dithyrambic
extravagances in politics; current methods of humbug and
sensationalism,--are not properly part of the mores but symptoms of
them. They are not products of the concurrent and coöperative effort of
all members of the society to live well. They are devices made with
conscious ingenuity to exert suggestion on the minds of others. The
mores are rather the underlying facts in regard to the faiths, notions,
tastes, desires, etc., of that society at that time, to which all these
modes of action appeal and of whose existence they are evidence.
+65. What is goodness or badness of the mores.+ It is most important to
notice that, for the people of a time and place, their own mores are
always good, or rather that for them there can be no question of the
goodness or badness of their mores. The reason is because the standards
of good and right are in the mores. If the life conditions change, the
traditional folkways may produce pain and loss, or fail to produce the
same good as formerly. Then the loss of comfort and ease brings doubt
into the judgment of welfare (causing doubt of the pleasure of the gods,
or of war power, or of health), and thus disturbs the unconscious
philosophy of the mores. Then a later time will pass judgment on the
mores. Another society may also pass judgment on the mores. In our
literary and historical study of the mores we want to get from them
their educational value, which consists in the stimulus or warning as to
what is, in its effects, societally good or bad. This may lead us to
reject or neglect a phenomenon like infanticide, slavery, or witchcraft,
as an old "abuse" and "evil," or to pass by the crusades as a folly
which cannot recur. Such a course would be a great error. Everything in
the mores of a time and place must be regarded as justified with regard
to that time and place. "Good" mores are those which are well adapted to
the situation. "Bad" mores are those which are not so adapted. The mores
are not so stereotyped and changeless as might appear, because they are
forever moving towards more complete adaptation to conditions and
interests, and also towards more complete adjustment to each other.
People in mass have never made or kept up a custom in order to hurt
their own interests. They have made innumerable errors as to what their
interests were and how to satisfy them, but they have always aimed to
serve their interests as well as they could. This gives the standpoint
for the student of the mores. All things in them come before him on the
same plane. They all bring instruction and warning. They all have the
same relation to power and welfare. The mistakes in them are component
parts of them. We do not study them in order to approve some of them
and condemn others. They are all equally worthy of attention from the
fact that they existed and were used. The chief object of study in them
is their adjustment to interests, their relation to welfare, and their
coördination in a harmonious system of life policy. For the men of the
time there are no "bad" mores. What is traditional and current is the
standard of what ought to be. The masses never raise any question about
such things. If a few raise doubts and questions, this proves that the
folkways have already begun to lose firmness and the regulative element
in the mores has begun to lose authority. This indicates that the
folkways are on their way to a new adjustment. The extreme of folly,
wickedness, and absurdity in the mores is witch persecutions, but the
best men of the seventeenth century had no doubt that witches existed,
and that they ought to be burned. The religion, statecraft,
jurisprudence, philosophy, and social system of that age all contributed
to maintain that belief. It was rather a culmination than a
contradiction of the current faiths and convictions, just as the dogma
that all men are equal and that one ought to have as much political
power in the state as another was the culmination of the political
dogmatism and social philosophy of the nineteenth century. Hence our
judgments of the good or evil consequences of folkways are to be kept
separate from our study of the historical phenomena of them, and of
their strength and the reasons for it. The judgments have their place in
plans and doctrines for the future, not in a retrospect.
+66. More exact definition of the mores.+ We may now formulate a more
complete definition of the mores. They are the ways of doing things
which are current in a society to satisfy human needs and desires,
together with the faiths, notions, codes, and standards of well living
which inhere in those ways, having a genetic connection with them. By
virtue of the latter element the mores are traits in the specific
character (ethos) of a society or a period. They pervade and control the
ways of thinking in all the exigencies of life, returning from the world
of abstractions to the world of action, to give guidance and to win
revivification. "The mores [_Sitten_] are, before any beginning of
reflection, the regulators of the political, social, and religious
behavior of the individual. Conscious reflection is the worst enemy of
the mores, because mores begin unconsciously and pursue unconscious
purposes, which are recognized by reflection often only after long and
circuitous processes, and because their expediency often depends on the
assumption that they will have general acceptance and currency,
uninterfered with by reflection."[77] "The mores are usage in any group,
in so far as it, on the one hand, is not the expression or fulfillment
of an absolute natural necessity [e.g. eating or sleeping], and, on the
other hand, is independent of the arbitrary will of the individual, and
is generally accepted as good and proper, appropriate and worthy."[78]
+67. Ritual.+ The process by which mores are developed and established
is ritual. Ritual is so foreign to our mores that we do not recognize
its power. In primitive society it is the prevailing method of activity,
and primitive religion is entirely a matter of ritual. Ritual is the
perfect form of drill and of the regulated habit which comes from drill.
Acts which are ordained by authority and are repeated mechanically
without intelligence run into ritual. If infants and children are
subjected to ritual they never escape from its effects through life.
Galton[79] says that he was, in early youth, in contact with the
Mohammedan ritual idea that the left hand is less worthy than the right,
and that he never overcame it. We see the effect of ritual in breeding,
courtesy, politeness, and all forms of prescribed behavior. Etiquette is
social ritual. Ritual is not easy compliance with usage; it is strict
compliance with detailed and punctilious rule. It admits of no exception
or deviation. The stricter the discipline, the greater the power of
ritual over action and character. In the training of animals and the
education of children it is the perfection, inevitableness,
invariableness, and relentlessness of routine which tells. They should
never experience any exception or irregularity. Ritual is connected with
words, gestures, symbols, and signs. Associations result, and, upon a
repetition of the signal, the act is repeated, whether the will assents
or not. Association and habit account for the phenomena. Ritual gains
further strength when it is rhythmical, and is connected with music,
verse, or other rhythmical arts. Acts are ritually repeated at the
recurrence of the rhythmical points. The alternation of night and day
produces rhythms of waking and sleeping, of labor and rest, for great
numbers at the same time, in their struggle for existence. The seasons
also produce rhythms in work. Ritual may embody an idea of utility,
expediency, or welfare, but it always tends to become perfunctory, and
the idea is only subconscious. There is ritual in primitive
therapeutics, and it was not eliminated until very recent times. The
patient was directed, not only to apply remedies, but also to perform
rites. The rites introduced mystic elements. This illustrates the
connection of ritual with notions of magical effects produced by rites.
All ritual is ceremonious and solemn. It tends to become sacred, or to
make sacred the subject-matter with which it is connected. Therefore, in
primitive society, it is by ritual that sentiments of awe, deference to
authority, submission to tradition, and disciplinary coöperation are
inculcated. Ritual operates a constant suggestion, and the suggestion is
at once put in operation in acts. Ritual, therefore, suggests
sentiments, but it never inculcates doctrines. Ritual is strongest when
it is most perfunctory and excites no thought. By familiarity with
ritual any doctrinal reference which it once had is lost by familiarity,
but the habits persist. Primitive religion is ritualistic, not because
religion makes ritual, but because ritual makes religion. Ritual is
something to be done, not something to be thought or felt. Men can
always perform the prescribed act, although they cannot always think or
feel prescribed thoughts or emotions. The acts may bring up again, by
association, states of the mind and sentiments which have been connected
with them, especially in childhood, when the fantasy was easily affected
by rites, music, singing, dramas, etc. No creed, no moral code, and no
scientific demonstration can ever win the same hold upon men and women
as habits of action, with associated sentiments and states of mind,
drilled in from childhood. Mohammedanism shows the power of ritual. Any
occupation is interrupted for the prayers and prescribed genuflections.
The Brahmins also observe an elaborate daily ritual. They devote to it
two hours in the morning, two in the evening, and one at midday.[80]
Monks and nuns have won the extreme satisfaction of religious sentiment
from the unbroken habit of repeated ritual, with undisturbed opportunity
to develop the emotional effects of it.
+68. The ritual of the mores.+ The mores are social ritual in which we
all participate unconsciously. The current habits as to hours of labor,
meal hours, family life, the social intercourse of the sexes, propriety,
amusements, travel, holidays, education, the use of periodicals and
libraries, and innumerable other details of life fall under this ritual.
Each does as everybody does. For the great mass of mankind as to all
things, and for all of us for a great many things, the rule to do as all
do suffices. We are led by suggestion and association to believe that
there must be wisdom and utility in what all do. The great mass of the
folkways give us discipline and the support of routine and habit. If we
had to form judgments as to all these cases before we could act in them,
and were forced always to act rationally, the burden would be
unendurable. Beneficent use and wont save us this trouble.
+69. Group interests and policy.+ Groups select, consciously and
unconsciously, standards of group well living. They plan group careers,
and adopt purposes through which they hope to attain to group
self-realization. The historical classes adopt the decisions which
constitute these group plans and acts, and they impose them on the
group. The Greeks were enthused at one time by a national purpose to
destroy Troy, at another time by a national necessity to ward off
Persian conquest. The Romans conceived of their rivalry with Carthage as
a struggle from which only one state could survive. Spain, through an
effort to overthrow the political power of the Moors in the peninsula
and to make it all Christian, was educated up to a national purpose to
make Spain a pure "Christian" state, in the dogmatic and ecclesiastical
sense of the word. Moors and Jews were expelled at great cost and loss.
Germany and Italy cherished for generations a national hope and desire
to become unified states. Some attempts to formulate or interpret the
Monroe doctrine would make it a national policy and programme for the
United States. In lower civilization group interests and purposes are
less definite. We must believe that barbarous tribes often form notions
of their group interests, and adopt group policies, especially in their
relations with neighboring groups. The Iroquois, after forming their
confederation, made war on neighboring tribes in order either to
subjugate them or to force them to come into the peace pact. Pontiac and
Tecumseh united the red men in a race effort to drive the whites out of
North America.
+70. Group interests and folkways.+ Whenever a group has a group purpose
that purpose produces group interests, and those interests overrule
individual interests in the development of folkways. A group might adopt
a pacific and industrial purpose, but historical cases of this kind are
very few. It used to be asserted that the United States had as its great
social purpose to create a social environment which should favor that
development of the illiterate and unskilled classes into an independent
status for which the economic conditions of a new country give
opportunity, and it was asserted that nothing could cause a variation
from this policy, which was said to be secured in the political
institutions and political ideas of the people. Within a few years the
United States has been affected by an ambition to be a world power. (A
world power is a state which expects to have a share in the settlement
of every clash of interests and collision of state policies which occurs
anywhere on the globe.) There is no reason to wonder at this action of a
democracy, for a democracy is sure to resent any suggestion that it is
limited in its functions, as compared with other political forms. At the
same time that the United States has moved towards the character of a
world power it has become militant. Other states in the past which have
had group purposes have been militant. Even when they arrived at
commerce and industry they have pursued policies which involved them in
war (Venice, Hansa, Holland). Since the group interests override the
individual interests, the selection and determination of group purposes
is a function of the greatest importance and an act of the greatest
effect on individual welfare. The interests of the society or nation
furnish an easy phrase, but such phrases are to be regarded with
suspicion. Such interests are apt to be the interests of a ruling clique
which the rest are to be compelled to serve. On the other hand, a really
great and intelligent group purpose, founded on correct knowledge and
really sound judgment, can infuse into the mores a vigor and consistent
character which will reach every individual with educative effect. The
essential condition is that the group purpose shall be "founded on
correct knowledge and really sound judgment." The interests must be
real, and they must be interests of the whole, and the judgment as to
means of satisfying them must be correct.
+71. Force in the folkways.+ Here we notice also the intervention of
force. There is always a large element of force in the folkways. It
constitutes another modification of the theory of the folkways as
expedient devices, developed in experience, to meet the exigencies of
life. The organization of society under chiefs and medicine men greatly
increased the power of the society to serve its own interests. The same
is true of higher political organizations. If Gian Galeazzo Visconti or
Cesare Borgia could have united Italy into a despotic state, it is an
admissible opinion that the history of the peninsula in the following
four or five hundred years would have been happy and prosperous, and
that, at the present time, it would have had the same political system
which it has now. However, chiefs, kings, priests, warriors, statesmen,
and other functionaries have put their own interests in the place of
group interests, and have used the authority they possessed to force the
societal organization to work and fight for their interests. The force
is that of the society itself. It is directed by the ruling class or
persons. The force enters into the mores and becomes a component in
them. Despotism is in the mores of negro tribes, and of all Mohammedan
peoples. There is an element of force in all forms of property,
marriage, and religion. Slavery, however, is the grandest case of force
in the mores, employed to make some serve the interests of others, in
the societal organization. The historical classes, having selected the
group purposes and decided the group policy, use the force of the
society itself to coerce all to acquiesce and to work and fight in the
determined way without regard to their individual interests. This they
do by means of discipline and ritual. In different kinds of mores the
force is screened by different devices. It is always present, and
brutal, cruel force has entered largely into the development of all our
mores, even those which we think most noble and excellent.
+72. Might and right.+ Modern civilized states of the best form are
often called jural states because the concept of rights enters so
largely into all their constitutions and regulations. Our political
philosophy centers around that concept, and all our social discussions
fall into the form of propositions and disputes about rights. The
history of the dogma of rights has been such that rights have been
believed to be self-evident and self-existent, and as having prevailed
especially in primitive society. Rights are also regarded as the
opposite of force. These notions only prove the antagonism between our
mores and those of earlier generations. In fact, it is a characteristic
of our mores that the form of our thinking about all points of political
philosophy is set for us by the concept of rights. Nothing but might has
ever made right, and if we include in might (as we ought to) elections
and the decisions of courts, nothing but might makes right now. We must
distinguish between the anterior and the posterior view of the matter in
question. If we are about to take some action, and are debating the
right of it, the might which can be brought to support one view of it
has nothing to do with the right of it. If a thing has been done and is
established by force (that is, no force can reverse it), it is right in
the only sense we know, and rights will follow from it which are not
vitiated at all by the force in it. There would be no security at all
for rights if this were not so. We find men and parties protesting,
declaiming, complaining of what is done, and which they say is not
"right," but only force. An election decides that those shall have power
who will execute an act of policy. The defeated party denounces the
wrong and wickedness of the act. It is done. It may be a war, a
conquest, a spoliation; every one must help to do it by paying taxes and
doing military service or other duty which may be demanded of him. The
decision of a lawsuit leaves one party protesting and complaining. He
always speaks of "right" and "rights." He is forced to acquiesce. The
result is right in the only sense which is real and true. It is more to
the purpose to note that an indefinite series of consequences follow,
and that they create or condition rights which are real and just. Many
persons now argue against property that it began in force and therefore
has no existence in right and justice. They might say the same of
marriage or religion. Some do say the same of the state. The war of the
United States with Mexico in 1845 is now generally regarded as
unjustified. That cannot affect the rights of all kinds which have been
contracted in the territory then ceded by Mexico or under the status
created on the land obtained by the treaty of peace with that country.
The whole history of mankind is a series of acts which are open to
doubt, dispute, and criticism, as to their right and justice, but all
subsequent history has been forced to take up the consequences of those
acts and go on. The disputants about "rights" often lose sight of the
fact that the world has to go on day by day and dispute must end. It
always ends in force. The end always leaves some complaining in terms of
right and rights. They are overborne by force of some kind. Therefore
might has made all the right which ever has existed or exists now. If it
is proposed to reverse, reform, or change anything which ever was done
because we now think that it was wrong, that is a new question and a new
case, in which the anterior view alone is in place. It is for the new
and future cases that we study historical cases and form judgments on
them which will enable us to act more wisely. If we recognize the great
extent to which force now enters into all which happens in society, we
shall cease to be shocked to learn the extent to which it has been
active in the entire history of civilization. The habit of using jural
concepts, which is now so characteristic of our mores, leads us into
vague and impossible dreams of social affairs, in which metaphysical
concepts are supposed to realize themselves, or are assumed to be real.
+73. Status in the folkways.+ If now we form a conception of the
folkways as a great mass of usages, of all degrees of importance,
covering all the interests of life, constituting an outfit of
instruction for the young, embodying a life policy, forming character,
containing a world philosophy, albeit most vague and unformulated, and
sanctioned by ghost fear so that variation is impossible, we see with
what coercive and inhibitive force the folkways have always grasped the
members of a society. The folkways create status. Membership in the
group, kin, family, neighborhood, rank, or class are cases of status.
The rights and duties of every man and woman were defined by status. No
one could choose whether he would enter into the status or not. For
instance, at puberty every one was married. What marriage meant, and
what a husband or wife was (the rights and duties of each), were fixed
by status. No one could alter the customary relations. Status, as
distinguished from institutions and contract, is a direct product of the
mores. Each case of status is a nucleus of leading interest with the
folkways which cluster around it. Status is determined by birth.
Therefore it is a help and a hindrance, but it is not liberty. In modern
times status has become unpopular and our mores have grown into the
forms of contract under liberty. The conception of status has been lost
by the masses in modern civilized states. Nevertheless we live under
status which has been defined and guaranteed by law and institutions,
and it would be a great gain to recognize and appreciate the element of
status which historically underlies the positive institutions and which
is still subject to the action of the mores. Marriage (matrimony or
wedlock) is a status. It is really controlled by the mores. The law
defines it and gives sanctions to it, but the law always expresses the
mores. A man and a woman make a contract to enter into it. The mode of
entering into it (wedding) is fixed by custom. The law only ratifies it.
No man and woman can by contract make wedlock different for themselves
from the status defined by law, so far as social rights and duties are
concerned. The same conception of marriage as a status in the mores is
injured by the intervention of the ecclesiastical and civil formalities
connected with it. An individual is born into a kin group, a tribe, a
nation, or a state, and he has a status accordingly which determines
rights and duties for him. Civil liberty must be defined in accordance
with this fact; not outside of it, or according to vague metaphysical
abstractions above it. The body of the folkways constitutes a societal
environment. Every one born into it must enter into relations of give
and take with it. He is subjected to influences from it, and it is one
of the life conditions under which he must work out his career of
self-realization. Whatever liberty may be taken to mean, it is certain
that liberty never can mean emancipation from the influence of the
societal environment, or of the mores into which one was born.
+74. Conventionalization.+ If traditional folkways are subjected to
rational or ethical examination they are no longer naïve and
unconscious. It may then be found that they are gross, absurd, or
inexpedient. They may still be preserved by conventionalization.
Conventionalization creates a set of conditions under which a thing may
be tolerated which would otherwise be disapproved and tabooed. The
special conditions may be created in fact, or they may be only a fiction
which all agree to respect and to treat as true. When children, in play,
"make believe" that something exists, or exists in a certain way, they
employ conventionalization. Special conditions are created in fact when
some fact is regarded as making the usual taboo inoperative. Such is the
case with all archaic usages which are perpetuated on account of their
antiquity, although they are not accordant with modern standards. The
language of Shakespeare and the Bible contains words which are now
tabooed. In this case, as in very many others, the conventionalization
consists in ignoring the violation of current standards of propriety.
Natural functions and toilet operations are put under conventionalization,
even in low civilization. The conventionalization consists in ignoring
breaches of the ordinary taboo. On account of accidents which may occur,
wellbred people are always ready to apply conventionalization to mishaps
of speech, dress, manner, etc. In fairy stories, fables, romances, and
dramas all are expected to comply with certain conventional understandings
without which the entertainment is impossible; for instance, when beasts
are supposed to speak. In the mythologies this kind of conventionalization
was essential. One of us, in studying mythologies, has to acquire a
knowledge of the conventional assumptions with which the people who
believed in them approached them. Modern Hindoos conventionalize the
stories of their mythology.[81] What the gods are said to have done is
put under other standards than those now applied to men. Everything in
the mythology is on a plane by itself. It follows that none of the
rational or ethical judgments are formed about the acts of the gods
which would be formed about similar acts of men, and the corruption of
morals which would be expected as a consequence of the stories and
dramas is prevented by the conventionalization. There is no deduction
from what gods do to what men may do. The Greeks of the fifth century
B.C. rationalized on their mythology and thereby destroyed it. The
mediæval church claimed to be under a conventionalization which would
prevent judgment on the church and ecclesiastics according to current
standards. Very many people heeded this conventionalization, so that
they were not scandalized by vice and crime in the church. This
intervention of conventionalization to remove cases from the usual
domain of the mores into a special field, where they can be protected
and tolerated by codes and standards modified in their favor, is of very
great importance. It accounts for many inconsistencies in the mores. In
this way there may be nakedness without indecency, and tales of adultery
without lewdness. We observe a conventionalization in regard to the
Bible, especially in regard to some of the Old Testament stories. The
theater presents numerous cases of conventionalization. The asides,
entrances and exits, and stage artifices, require that the spectators
shall concede their assent to conventionalities. The dresses of the
stage would not be tolerated elsewhere. It is by conventionalization
that the literature and pictorial representations of science avoid
collision with the mores of propriety, decency, etc. In all artistic
work there is more or less conventionalization. Uncivilized people, and
to some extent uneducated people amongst ourselves, cannot tell what a
picture represents or means because they are not used to the
conventionalities of pictorial art. The ancient Saturnalia and the
carnival have been special times of license at which the ordinary social
restrictions have been relaxed for a time by conventionalization. Our
own Fourth of July is a day of noise, risk, and annoyance, on which
things are allowed which would not be allowed at any other time. We
consent to it because "it is Fourth of July." The history of wedding
ceremonies presents very many instances of conventionalization. Jests
and buffoonery have been tolerated for the occasion. They became such an
annoyance that people revolted against them, and invented means to
escape them. Dress used in bathing, sport, the drama, or work is
protected by conventionalization. The occasion calls for a variation
from current usage, and the conventionalization, while granting
toleration, defines it also, and makes a new law for the exceptional
case. It is like taboo, and is, in fact, the form of taboo in high
civilization. Like taboo, it has two aspects,--it is either destructive
or protective. The conventionalization bars out what might be offensive
(i.e. when a thing may be done only under the conditions set by
conventionalization), or it secures toleration for what would otherwise
be forbidden. Respect, reverence, sacredness, and holiness, which are
taboos in low civilization, become conventionalities in high
civilization.
+75. Conventions indispensable.+ Conventionality is often denounced as
untrue and hypocritical. It is said that we ought to be natural.
Respectability is often sneered at because it is a sum of
conventionalities. The conventionalizations which persist are the
resultant of experiments and experience as to the devices by which to
soften and smoothen the details of life. They are indispensable. We
might as well renounce clothes as to try to abolish them.
+76. The ethos or group character.+ All that has been said in this
chapter about the folkways and the mores leads up to the idea of the
group character which the Greeks called the ethos, that is, the totality
of characteristic traits by which a group is individualized and
differentiated from others. The great nations of southeastern Asia were
long removed from familiar contact with the rest of mankind and
isolated from each other, while they were each subjected to the
discipline and invariable rule of traditional folkways which covered all
social interests except the interferences of a central political
authority, which perpetrated tyranny in its own interest. The
consequence has been that Japan, China, and India have each been molded
into a firm, stable, and well-defined unit group, having a character
strongly marked both actively and passively. The governing classes of
Japan have, within fifty years, voluntarily abandoned their traditional
mores, and have adopted those of the Occident, while it does not appear
that they have lost their inherited ethos. The case stands alone in
history and is a cause of amazement. In the war with Russia, in 1904,
this people showed what a group is capable of when it has a strong
ethos. They understand each other; they act as one man; they are capable
of discipline to the death. Our western tacticians have had rules for
the percentage of loss which troops would endure, standing under fire,
before breaking and running. The rule failed for the Japanese. They
stood to the last man. Their prowess at Port Arthur against the
strongest fortifications, and on the battlefields of Manchuria,
surpassed all record. They showed what can be done in the way of
concealing military and naval movements when every soul in the
population is in a voluntary conspiracy not to reveal anything. These
traits belong to a people which has been trained by generations of
invariable mores. It is apparently what the mediæval church wanted to
introduce in Europe, but the Japanese have got it without selfish
tyranny of the ruling persons and classes. Of course, it admits of no
personal liberty, and the consequences of introducing occidental notions
of liberty into it have yet to be seen. "The blacksmith squats at his
anvil wielding a hammer such as no western smith could use without long
practice. The carpenter pulls instead of pushing his extraordinary plane
and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the
wrong. Keys must be turned, to open or close a lock, in what we are
accustomed to think the wrong direction." "The swordsman, delivering his
blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment
of striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it indeed, as other
Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw."[82] In
family manners the Japanese are gentle. Cruelty even to animals appears
to be unknown. "One sees farmers coming to town, trudging patiently
beside their horses or oxen, aiding their dumb companions to bear the
burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will
turn out of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather
than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid chicken."[83] Etiquette is refined,
elaborate, and vigorous. Politeness has been diffused through all ranks
from ancient times.[84] "The discipline of the race was self-imposed.
The people have gradually created their own social conditions."[85]
"Demeanor was [in ancient times] most elaborately and mercilessly
regulated, not merely as to obeisances, of which there were countless
grades, varying according to sex as well as class, but even in regard to
facial expression, the manner of smiling, the conduct of the breath, the
way of sitting, standing, walking, rising."[86] "With the same merciless
exactitude which prescribed rules for dress, diet, and manner of life,
all utterance was regulated both positively and negatively, but
positively much more than negatively.... Education cultivated a system
of verbal etiquette so multiform that only the training of years could
enable any one to master it. The astonishment evoked by Japanese
sumptuary laws, particularly as inflicted upon the peasantry, is
justified, less by their general character than by their implacable
minuteness,--their ferocity of detail." "That a man's house is his
castle cannot be asserted in Japan, except in the case of some high
potentate. No ordinary person can shut his door to lock out the rest of
the world. Everybody's house must be open to visitors; to close its
gates by day would be regarded as an insult to the community, sickness
affording no excuse. Only persons in very great authority have the right
of making themselves inaccessible.... By a single serious mistake a man
may find himself suddenly placed in solitary opposition to the common
will,--isolated, and most effectively ostracized." "The events of the
[modern] reconstruction strangely illustrate the action of such
instinct [of adaptation] in the face of peril,--the readjustment of
internal relations to sudden changes of environment. The nation had
found its old political system powerless before the new conditions, and
it transformed that system. It had found its military organization
incapable of defending it, and it reconstructed that organization. It
had found its educational system useless in the presence of unforeseen
necessities, and it had replaced that system, simultaneously crippling
the power of Buddhism, which might otherwise have offered serious
opposition to the new developments required."[87] To this it must be
added that people who have had commercial and financial dealings with
Japanese report that they are untruthful and tricky in transactions of
that kind. If they cannot "reform" these traits there will be important
consequences of them in the developments of the near future.
+77. Chinese ethos.+ It is evident that we have in the Japanese a case
of an ethos, from the habits of artisans to the manners of nobles and
the military system, which is complete, consistent, authoritative, and
very different from our own. A similar picture of the Chinese might be
drawn, from which it would appear that they also have a complete and
firm ethos, which resembles in general the Japanese, but has its
individual traits and characteristic differences.[88] The ethos of the
Japanese, from the most ancient times, has been fundamentally militant.
That of the Chinese is industrial and materialistic.
+78. Hindoo ethos.+ The Hindoos, again, have a strongly marked ethos.
They have a name for it--_kharma_, which Nivedita says might be
translated "national righteousness." It "applies to that whole system of
complex action and interaction on planes moral, intellectual, economic,
industrial, political, and domestic, which we know as India, or the
national habit.... By their attitude to it, Pathan, Mogul, and
Englishman are judged, each in his turn, by the Indian peasantry."[89]
The ethos of one group always furnishes the standpoint from which it
criticises the ways of any other group.
+79. European ethos.+ We are familiar with the notion of "national
character" as applied to the nations of Europe, but these nations do not
have each an ethos. There is a European ethos, for the nations have so
influenced each other for the last two thousand years that there is a
mixed ethos which includes local variations. The European _kharma_ is
currently called Christian. In the ancient world Egypt and Sparta were
the two cases of groups with the firmest and best-defined ethos. In
modern European history the most marked case is that of Venice. In no
one of these cases did the elements of moral strength and societal
health preponderate, but the history of each showed the great stability
produced by a strong ethos. Russia has a more complete and defined ethos
than any other state in Europe, although the efforts which have been
made since Peter the Great to break down the traditions and limitations
of the national ethos, and to adopt the ethos of western Europe, have
produced weakness and confusion. It is clear what is the great power of
a strong ethos. The ethos of any group deserves close study and
criticism. It is an overruling power for good or ill. Modern scholars
have made the mistake of attributing to _race_ much which belongs to the
ethos, with a resulting controversy as to the relative importance of
nature and nurture. Others have sought a "soul of the people" and have
tried to construct a "collective psychology," repeating for groups
processes which are now abandoned for individuals. Historians, groping
for the ethos, have tried to write the history of "the people" of such
and such a state. The ethos individualizes groups and keeps them apart.
Its opposite is cosmopolitanism. It degenerates into patriotic vanity
and chauvinism. Industrialism weakens it, by extending relations of
commerce with outside groups. It coincides better with militancy. It has
held the Japanese people like a single mailed fist for war. What
religion they have has lost all character except that of a cohesive
agent to hold the whole close organization tight together.
[1] JAI, XX, 140.
[2] Lazarus in _Ztsft. für Völkerpsy_., I, 452.
[3] Preuss in _Globus_, LXXXVII, 419.
[4] _Princ. of Sociology_, sec. 529.
[5] Rogers, _Babyl. and Assyria_, I, 304; Jastrow, in
Hastings, _Dict. Bible_, Supp. vol., 554.
[6] Pietschmann, _Phoenizier_, 154.
[7] Pietschmann, _Phoenizier_, 115.
[8] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, III, 618.
[9] W. R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 259.
[10] Hosea i. 4; 2 Kings ix. 8.
[11] 1 Kings xxii. 22; Judges ix. 23; Ezek. xiv. 9; 2 Thess. ii.
11.
[12] 2 Kings xx. 3.
[13] Reich, _Mimus_, 718.
[14] _Teuton. Mythol._, 1777.
[15] Leland and Prince, _Kuloskap_, 150.
[16] _Globus_, LXXXVII, 128.
[17] Martius, _Ethnog. Brasil._, 51.
[18] Krieger, _New Guinea_, 192.
[19] Tylor, _Anthropology_, 225.
[20] Martius, _Ethnog. Brasil._, 51.
[21] _Bur. Eth._, XIV, 1078.
[22] Wiklund, _Om Lapparna i Sverige_, 5.
[23] Fries, _Grönland_, 139.
[24] Hiekisch, _Tungusen_, 48.
[25] Hitchcock in _U. S. Nat. Mus._, 1890, 432.
[26] Ratzel, _Hist. Mankind_, II, 539.
[27] _Bur. Eth._, XVII (Part I), 154.
[28] Von Kremer, _Kulturgesch. d. Orients_, II, 236.
[29] Bishop, _Korea_, 438.
[30] _Amer. Anthrop._, VIII, 365.
[31] Cf. also _Bur. Eth._, XVII (Part I), 190.
[32] _Une Femme chez les Sahariennes_, 105.
[33] Stoll, _Suggestion und Hypnotismus_, 702.
[34] Friedmann, _Wahnideen im Völkerleben_, 222.
[35] Binet, _La Suggestibilité_, treats of its use in education.
[36] Lefevre, _La Suggestion_, 102.
[37] Funck-Brentano, _Le Suicide_, 117.
[38] Burckhardt, _Renaissance_, 512.
[39] Nivedita, _Web of Indian Life_, 212.
[40] Schotmüller, _Untergang des Templer-Ordens_, I, 136.
[41] Regnard, _Les Maladies Epidemiques de l'Esprit_.
[42] _Globus_, LXXXV, 262.
[43] Lefèvre, _Suggestion_, 98.
[44] Bastian, _San Salvador_, 104.
[45] Ratzel, _Anthropogeog._, II, 699.
[46] Lichtenstein, _South Africa_, II, 61.
[47] Sibree, _Great African Island_, 301.
[48] _Bur. Eth._, XVIII (Part I), 325.
[49] _Ztsft. f. Eth._, XXVIII, 170.
[50] Wilken, _Volkenkunde_, 546.
[51] Sieroshevski, _Yakuty_, 558.
[52] See Chapter XIV.
[53] Ratzel, _Hist. Mankind_, II, 276.
[54] W. R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 299.
[55] Herodotus, IV, 186.
[56] Porphyry, _De Abstin._, II, 11; _Herodotus_, II, 41.
[57] W. R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 88.
[58] Monier-Williams, _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 324.
[59] _Ibid._, 101.
[60] Wilkins, _Hinduism_, 299.
[61] _Ibid._, 125.
[62] JASB, IV, 353.
[63] Fritsch, _Eingeborenen Südafr._, 57.
[64] _Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde_, XLI, 203.
[65] See Chapter XX
[66] _Hereditary Genius_, 34.
[67] Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung_, 53.
[68] Ammon made the diagram symmetrical.
[69] _Hereditary Genius_, 25, 47.
[70] Lapouge affirms that "in different historical periods, and
over the whole earth, racial differences between classes of the
same people are far greater than between analogous classes of
different peoples," and that "between different classes of the
same population there may be greater racial differences than
between different populations" (_Pol. Anth. Rev._, III, 220,
228). He does not give his definition of class.
[71] Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung_, 49.
[72] PSM, LX, 218.
[73] Lecky, _Morals_, I, 262.
[74] Symonds, _Catholic Reaction_, I, 455.
[75] Gumplowicz, _Soziologie_, 126.
[76] "In the reigns of Theodosius and Honorius, imperial edicts
and rescripts were paralyzed by the impalpable, quietly
irresistible force of a universal social need or
sentiment."--Dill, _Rome from Nero to M. Aurel._, 255.
[77] v. Hartmann, _Phänom. des Sittl. Bewusztseins_, 73.
[78] Lazarus in _Ztsft. für Völkerpsy._, I, 439.
[79] _Human Faculty_, 216.
[80] Wilkins, _Mod. Hinduism_, 195.
[81] Wilkins, _Mod. Hinduism_, 317.
[82] Hearn, _Japan_, 11.
[83] _Ibid._, 16.
[84] _Ibid._, 391.
[85] _Ibid._, 199.
[86] _Ibid._, 191.
[87] Hearn, _Japan_, 107, 187, 411.
[88] Williams, _Middle Kingdom_; Smith, _Chinese
Characteristics_.
[89] Nivedita, _Web of Indian Life_, 150.
CHAPTER II
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MORES
Introduction.--The mores have the authority of facts.--Whites
and blacks in southern society.--The mores are unrecorded.--
Inertia and rigidity of the mores.--Persistency of the mores.--
Persistency against new religion.--Roman law.--Effects of Roman
law on later mores.--Variability of the mores.--The mores of
New England.--Revolution.--The possibility of modifying the
mores.--Russia.--Emancipation in Russia and in the United
States.--Arbitrary change in the mores.--The case of Japan.--
The case of India.--The reforms of Joseph II.--Adoption of the
mores of another age.--What changes are possible.--Dissent from
the mores. Group orthodoxy.--Retreat and isolation to start new
mores.--Social policy.--Degenerate and evil mores.--The
correction of aberrations in the mores.--The mores of advance
and decline; cases.--The Greek temper in prosperity.--Greek
pessimism.--Greek degeneracy.--Sparta.--The optimism of
advance and prosperity.--Antagonism between an individual and
the mores of the group.--Antagonism of earlier and later
mores.--Antagonism between groups in respect to mores.--
Missions and mores.--Missions and antagonistic mores.--
Modification of the mores by agitation.--Capricious interest of
the masses.--How the group becomes homogeneous.--Syncretism.--
The art of administering society.
In this chapter we have to study the persistency of the mores with their
inertia and rigidity, even against a new religion or a new "law," i.e. a
new social system (secs. 80-87); then their variability under changed
life conditions or under revolution (secs. 88-90); then the possibility
of making them change by intelligent effort, considering the cases of
Japan, India, and the reforms of Joseph II (secs. 91-97); or the
possibility of changing one's self to adopt the mores of another group
or another age (secs. 98-99). We shall then consider the dissent of an
individual or a sect from the current mores, with judgment of
disapproval on them (secs. 100-104), and the chance of correcting them
(sec. 105). Next we shall consider the great movements of the mores,
optimism and pessimism, which correspond to a rising or falling economic
conjuncture (secs. 106-111). Then come the antagonisms between an
individual and the mores, between the mores of an earlier and a later
time, and between the groups in respect to mores, with a notice of the
problem of missions (secs. 112-118). Finally, we come to consider
agitation to produce changes in the mores, and we endeavor to study the
ways in which the changes in the mores do come about, especially
syncretism (secs. 119-121).
+80. The mores have the authority of facts.+ The mores come down to us
from the past. Each individual is born into them as he is born into the
atmosphere, and he does not reflect on them, or criticise them any more
than a baby analyzes the atmosphere before he begins to breathe it. Each
one is subjected to the influence of the mores, and formed by them,
before he is capable of reasoning about them. It may be objected that
nowadays, at least, we criticise all traditions, and accept none just
because they are handed down to us. If we take up cases of things which
are still entirely or almost entirely in the mores, we shall see that
this is not so. There are sects of free-lovers amongst us who want to
discuss pair marriage (sec. 374). They are not simply people of evil
life. They invite us to discuss rationally our inherited customs and
ideas as to marriage, which, they say, are by no means so excellent and
elevated as we believe. They have never won any serious attention. Some
others want to argue in favor of polygamy on grounds of expediency. They
fail to obtain a hearing. Others want to discuss property. In spite of
some literary activity on their part, no discussion of property,
bequest, and inheritance has ever been opened. Property and marriage are
in the mores. Nothing can ever change them but the unconscious and
imperceptible movement of the mores. Religion was originally a matter of
the mores. It became a societal institution and a function of the state.
It has now to a great extent been put back into the mores. Since laws
with penalties to enforce religious creeds or practices have gone out of
use any one may think and act as he pleases about religion. Therefore it
is not now "good form" to attack religion. Infidel publications are now
tabooed by the mores, and are more effectually repressed than ever
before. They produce no controversy. Democracy is in our American mores.
It is a product of our physical and economic conditions. It is
impossible to discuss or criticise it. It is glorified for popularity,
and is a subject of dithyrambic rhetoric. No one treats it with complete
candor and sincerity. No one dares to analyze it as he would aristocracy
or autocracy. He would get no hearing and would only incur abuse. The
thing to be noticed in all these cases is that the masses oppose a deaf
ear to every argument against the mores. It is only in so far as things
have been transferred from the mores into laws and positive institutions
that there is discussion about them or rationalizing upon them. The
mores contain the norm by which, if we should discuss the mores, we
should have to judge the mores. We learn the mores as unconsciously as
we learn to walk and eat and breathe. The masses never learn how we
walk, and eat, and breathe, and they never know any reason why the mores
are what they are. The justification of them is that when we wake to
consciousness of life we find them facts which already hold us in the
bonds of tradition, custom, and habit. The mores contain embodied in
them notions, doctrines, and maxims, but they are facts. They are in the
present tense. They have nothing to do with what ought to be, will be,
may be, or once was, if it is not now.
+81. Blacks and whites in southern society.+ In our southern states,
before the civil war, whites and blacks had formed habits of action and
feeling towards each other. They lived in peace and concord, and each
one grew up in the ways which were traditional and customary. The civil
war abolished legal rights and left the two races to learn how to live
together under other relations than before. The whites have never been
converted from the old mores. Those who still survive look back with
regret and affection to the old social usages and customary sentiments
and feelings. The two races have not yet made new mores. Vain attempts
have been made to control the new order by legislation. The only result
is the proof that legislation cannot make mores. We see also that mores
do not form under social convulsion and discord. It is only just now
that the new society seems to be taking shape. There is a trend in the
mores now as they begin to form under the new state of things. It is not
at all what the humanitarians hoped and expected. The two races are
separating more than ever before. The strongest point in the new code
seems to be that any white man is boycotted and despised if he
"associates with negroes" (sec. 114, at the end). Some are anxious to
interfere and try to control. They take their stand on ethical views of
what is going on. It is evidently impossible for any one to interfere.
We are like spectators at a great natural convulsion. The results will
be such as the facts and forces call for. We cannot foresee them. They
do not depend on ethical views any more than the volcanic eruption on
Martinique contained an ethical element. All the faiths, hopes,
energies, and sacrifices of both whites and blacks are components in the
new construction of folkways by which the two races will learn how to
live together. As we go along with the constructive process it is very
plain that what once was, or what any one thinks ought to be, but
slightly affects what, at any moment, is. The mores which once were are
a memory. Those which any one thinks ought to be are a dream. The only
thing with which we can deal are those which are.
+82. The mores are unrecorded.+ A society is never conscious of its
mores until it comes in contact with some other society which has
different mores, or until, in higher civilization, it gets information
by literature. The latter operation, however, affects only the literary
classes, not the masses, and society never consciously sets about the
task of making mores. In the early stages mores are elastic and plastic;
later they become rigid and fixed. They seem to grow up, gain strength,
become corrupt, decline, and die, as if they were organisms. The phases
seem to follow each other by an inherent necessity, and as if
independent of the reason and will of the men affected, but the changes
are always produced by a strain towards better adjustment of the mores
to conditions and interests of the society, or of the controlling
elements in it. A society does not record its mores in its annals,
because they are to it unnoticed and unconscious. When we try to learn
the mores of any age or people we have to seek our information in
incidental references, allusions, observations of travelers, etc.
Generally works of fiction, drama, etc., give us more information about
the mores than historical records. It is very difficult to construct
from the Old Testament a description of the mores of the Jews before the
captivity. It is also very difficult to make a complete and accurate
picture of the mores of the English colonies in North America in the
seventeenth century. The mores are not recorded for the same reason that
meals, going to bed, sunrise, etc., are not recorded, unless the regular
course of things is broken.
+83. Inertia and rigidity of the mores.+ We see that we must conceive of
the mores as a vast system of usages, covering the whole of life, and
serving all its interests; also containing in themselves their own
justificatio
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/24253