CHAPTER XXXV
ART AND SOCIAL IDEALISM
ART AS JOYOUS SELF-EXPRESSION—IT DISENGAGES THE IDEAL—ENLARGES SYMPATHY—THE KINSHIP OF ART AND DEMOCRACY—ART AND LEISURE—DEMOCRATIC ART—ART AND SPECIALIZATION—COMMUNITY IDEALS—THE MERGING OF SOCIAL IDEALS IN RELIGIOUS
The art ideal is one of joyous self-expression. It appeals to the imagination because it seeks to bring in a higher freedom by making our activity individual and creative. There is nothing more inspiring, I think, than the lives of brave artists; they seem the pioneers of a better civilization. I am delighted to know that Ruysdael, by love and devotion, put himself into his landscapes and expressed things which others delight to find there. Indeed, I care much less for the landscapes than for this fact of personal self-realization: it gives me a breath of hope and joy, and encourages me in the practice of an art of my own.
The pleasure of creative work and the sharing of this by those who appreciate the product is in fact an almost unlimited source of possible joy. Unlike the pleasure of possessing things we win from others, it increases the more we share it, taking us out of the selfish atmosphere of every-day competition. A work of art is every man’s friend and benefactor, and when we hear a good violinist, or see a good play, or read a good book, we are not punished for our pleasure by the sense of having had it at some one else’s expense. The artist seems the divine man; he is free and creative, like God, and gives without taking away.
It is everywhere the nature of art to show us order and beauty in life. It takes the confused and distracting reality and, by omitting the irrelevant and giving life and color to the significant, enables us to see the real as the ideal. In every-day reality we are like ants in the grass for the bigness of detail: in art we see the landscape. It enlarges, supples, generalizes the mind, giving us life in selected and simplified impressions. Thus almost any genuine art cheers and composes the spirit. One of Millet’s peasants, “The Sower,” for example, or one of Thomas Hardy’s people, differs from anything of the sort we might see more directly as a mournful song differs from the jangle of actual grief: it “reveals man in the repose of his unchanging characteristics,” and deepens our sense of life. So in these noisy and unrestful times people flock to the motion-picture shows, or buy cheap fiction, in an eager quest of the ideal. How idle it is to deprecate, justly or otherwise, the poor taste of the masses, as if art were a matter of mere refinement, and not of urgent need!
Beyond this general function of disengaging the ideal, art has, more particularly, that of defining and animating our ideals of human progress. While the severest solitary thought is necessary in understanding society and in framing plans for its improvement, we must look to the drama and the novel, also to poetry, music, painting, sculpture and architecture, to put flesh and blood upon these abstractions and give them a real hold on the minds of the people. I cannot imagine any broad and rich growth of democracy without a corresponding development of popular art, and one of many indications that our democracy is as yet immature and superficial is its failure to achieve such a development. Our vision of our country is loyal, no doubt, but not deep, mellow, many-colored. The flavor of our civilization is like that of the thin maple-sap just from the tree, not much condensed or deposited in saccharine crystals.
Again, nothing has more power than art to enlarge human sympathy and unite the individual to his fellows. We feel this strongly now and then, as when a multitude rises to sing a patriotic song, but it belongs to all art whose material is drawn from the general human life. And it is in the nature of the higher kinds of art to draw from this general life, where alone idealism has any secure resting-place. So all great art makes us feel our oneness with mankind, and the grandeur of the common lot: the tragedy of King Lear, say, or the Book of Job, or the mediæval churches, or the figures of Michelangelo, or the great symphonies. It is full of noble reminiscence, and of “touches of things human till they rise to touch the spheres.”
Beethoven said that “the purpose of music is to bring about a oneness of emotion, and thus suggest to our minds the coming time of a universal brotherhood,” and certainly nothing can do more than popular art to make such a time possible. As music can melt us into a oneness of emotion, so drama and fiction can arouse and enlarge our social imaginations until we feel the common nature in people who before seemed strange or hostile to us. In this way, for example, Americans learn to find interest and value in the many-colored life of immigrants from Europe.
For much the same reason any high kind of social organization, one that lives in the spirit of the people and is not a mere mechanism, must exist largely through the medium of art, which chiefly has power to animate collective ideals. Those nations whose national aspirations are incarnated and glorified by poetry and painting may justly claim, in this respect, a higher civilization than those whose achievements are merely political, scientific, and industrial. If democracy is to do for the world all it hopes to do, it must develop greatly on this side; especially since a system that is to be worked by the masses is peculiarly dependent upon the diffusion of its ideals.
There is the closest possible relation in principle between the idea of art and that of democracy. The former, like the latter, exalts the inner self-reliance of the individual, saying “look in thy heart and write,” or paint, or sing, or whatever the mode of expression may be. The artist, in the act of creation, is always free, he is attending to, bringing to clearness and realizing that which is revealed to him alone, unfolding his highest individuality in the service of the whole, precisely as each citizen is called to do in a real democracy. And in fact there is nothing more democratic than a community of artists, just because of their preoccupation with what is intrinsic and individual.
Moreover the art spirit, accustomed to cherish individuality, tends to make us impatient of social conditions that are hostile to it. It hates repression and demands democracy as the basis of tolerable living. If we find that our fellow citizens lack self-expression our own life participates in their degradation. It is hardly imaginable that a real artist should be a formalist or a snob. The fact that we are so largely content with products that have no art or individuality in them really indicates a lack of higher freedom in ourselves, a low sense of personality and a domination by lifeless conventions.
If artists and lovers of art are often conservative as regards projects of social improvement, this may perhaps be ascribed to the need of sensitive natures for tranquillity, or to their sense of the value of conventions as a foundation for perfected works.
It is true that art culture requires leisure, but not more than we all ought to have, or than the majority, even now, do have. And idleness is hostile to it, because spiritually unhealthy. A man who is in the habit of doing an honest day’s work, manual or intellectual, will be in a better state to appreciate music or painting, other things equal, than one who is not. His whole being is more normal, more ethical, better prepared for a higher life. And so private wealth is often more a hindrance than a help.
If there be truth in the idea that only a minority can share the life of art, which is questionable, at any rate this minority, in a democratic society, will be one not of wealth or exceptional leisure, or even of education, but of intrinsic sensibility.
There are those who think that something wholly new is to be looked for in an art of democracy, and I suppose that in fact a larger human spirit will be found in the ideals it expresses or implies, just as every social product must reflect the spirit of the age. I do not see, however, that the general conceptions and methods of art, as the great tradition brings them to us, require any change.
Certainly art will never be commonplace or uniform, but always select, distinctive, and as various as life—even as democracy itself is a larger expression of human nature, and not the vulgarizing thing that its opponents have tried to make it out.
Nor will art ever be cheap, in a spiritual sense, and if it is so in a material sense it will be because it is supported and diffused by the community. Devotion to an ideal, material sacrifice, and the higher self-reliance, will always belong to the career of a real artist, as they always have. And as to the appreciator, he must earn his joy by attention, self-culture, and virtue. The only way that masses, under a democratic or any other order, can rise into a higher life, is by becoming worthy of it. A best seller or a motion-picture show appealing to the superficial and undisciplined sentiment of a million people is not the art we look for, though it may be better than none at all. I take it that we should try for a real culture and self-expression without concerning ourselves primarily with numbers, beyond providing for the diffusion of opportunity. Walt Whitman’s verse, so far as it is a noble expression of freedom and brotherhood, is good democratic art, though it has never been popular; but there is nothing especially democratic about the crudity which impairs it; and our New England poets are in no respect more truly American and democratic than in a moral refinement scarcely matched in any other school. If we are to have a form of art that is good in itself and also popular, this will come about, I suppose, by the mutual influence of a line of artists and an appreciating public, each educating and stimulating the other, until the movement penetrates the mass of the people, as has been the case with certain forms of art in Renaissance Italy, or in contemporary France.
We must not forget that democracy is itself one of the arts of a free people. I mean that the common man may find expression in a varied, intelligent, and joyous participation in the community life, outside of working-hours; in the conduct of towns, churches, schools, and other popular institutions, and in communal sports and recreations. There is a great deal of this now, and the possibilities are infinite.
And along with this we need a real art of democratic intercourse, disciplined and considerate, which shall give all of us the joy of self-expression and of feeling that others are expressing themselves in like freedom.
There are many who doubt whether self-expression, and therefore an art spirit, is possible along with the specialization of modern work. But it is not clear that specialization as such can destroy this spirit, even in the task itself, provided one is conscious of working for a worthy whole. The mediæval cathedrals were built by groups of masons, each of whom, no doubt, had his own special and for the most part humble task. If all shared the productive joy, as it is thought they did, it must have been because the work as a whole appealed nobly to the imagination, because there was fellowship and _esprit de corps_ among the members of the group, and because each man felt free to use his intelligence and taste within his own sphere. If your work is suited to you, and you delight in the whole to which it contributes, the chief conditions of an art spirit are present.
It is not so certain as is often alleged that modern factory work, in its actual detail, is and must remain mere drudgery. In general, it is good management to give a man the most intelligent work he is fit for, and, in general, this kind of work will evoke most interest and self-expression. Much of what appears to be drudgery to an onlooker is not really so—there is commonly more room for skill and individuality in manual work than is apparent from the outside—and what is really so should tend to be eliminated by better training and placing, more considerate management, a better spirit of co-operation, and other probable improvements.
No doubt the free play of individuality, for most of us, must be sought outside of working-hours, but there should be something of self-expression and the spirit of art in all work.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of our idealism is that it does not imagine living social wholes. So strong is the individualist tradition in America and England that we hardly permit ourselves to aspire toward an ideal society directly, but think that we must approach it by some distributive formula, like “the greatest good of the greatest number.” Such formulas are unsatisfying to human nature, however justly they may give one aspect of the truth. The ideal society must be an organic whole, capable of being conceived directly, and requiring to be so conceived if it is to lay hold upon our imaginations. Do we not all feel the dispersive, numerical, uninspiring character of “the greatest good of the greatest number” as a call to faith and action? It is like covering a canvas with ten thousand human figures an inch high and crying: “Behold the ideal man!” No number, however vast, and no aggregation of merely individual good can satisfy the need of the imagination for a unitary conception. It is well to dwell at times on personal opportunity, comfort, self-expression, and the like, but at other times, and especially times of spiritual exaltation, we must have the vision of a larger good.
And our conception of life as a race in which every one must have a fair start, is useful but inadequate. It overstresses competition and fails to set before us worthy objects of endeavor. We need a conception more affirmative and inspiring, which shall above all give us something worth while to live for, something that appeals to imagination, hope, and love.
I think those nations were not wholly wrong who, rejecting the extreme doctrines of utilitarian individualism, have maintained the idea and feeling of a transcendent collective reality. Hegel’s view that “the state is the march of God in the world” appears mystical to us, but is in reality no more so than our exaltation of the individual. It is true that in Germany the dominant classes seized upon this doctrine of an ideal whole and made it an instrument for exploiting the masses of the people. But we constantly see that great truths are used for selfish ends, and we have a close parallel in the exploitation of the idea of individual freedom by English and American commercialism to maintain its own ascendancy.
The idealization of the state, the impressing of a unitary life upon the hearts of the people by tradition, poetry, music, architecture, national celebrations and memorials, and by a religion and philosophy teaching the individual that he is a member of a glorious whole to which he owes devotion, is in line with the needs of human nature, however it may be degraded in use by reactionary aims. Our country is backward, inferior to countries far less fortunate, in the richness, beauty, and moral authority of its public life. Our freedom is too commonly cold, harsh, and spiritually poor, and hence not really free. Let us hope that no theories may deter us from building up a national ideal of which love, beauty, and religion can be a part. We need a collective life which, without repressing individuality, personal or local, shall afford central emblems that all may look up to and a discipline in which all may share.
A deeper community spirit is needed throughout our society. Our towns, cities, and country neighborhoods should have more unity, individuality, and pride, with the local traditions, art, fellowship, and public institutions that express these. We want popular choruses, pageants, social centres, local arts and crafts, an indigenous painting, architecture, and sculpture, a vivid communal life leading up from the neighborhood to the nation.[84]
Our idea of our country has plenty of vigor but lacks definite forms into which to flow. It does not sufficiently connect with real life, and, in ordinary times, is too commonly ineffective in raising us out of selfishness and confusion. Our picture of the republic is mostly a child’s sketch, without beauty of form or depth and harmony of color.
The direct and moving vision of the nation is sometimes to be had in our literature, though by no means in such various and familiar forms as we need. You will find it, for example, in Lowell’s ode, read in 1865 to commemorate Harvard students lost in the Civil War. I will not quote from it at length because its spirit is too impassioned to be congruous here, but read the ode as a whole, or the last two strophes, or even the concluding lines, beginning—
“O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair”
and you will see what I mean.
Ideals of human wholes like the community, the nation, the Commonwealth of Man, merge indistinguishably into the conception of a greater life, the object of faith and hope, continuous in some way with ours, but immeasurably transcending it. The human mind must ever conceive some kind of a life of God or “kingdom of heaven” answering to its need of a satisfying universe. And this conception is of the same essence and spirit as that of social wholes, which partake of this continuity, make a like appeal to faith and hope, and a like demand for devotion and sacrifice. If we put aside formal doctrine it seems clear that the kind of religion the modern world appears to be embracing, one which feels what is upward and onward in human life as our part in the life of God, is a kind of higher patriotism, hardly separable from our nobler ideals of our country. And patriotism, as it becomes exalted in times of trial, takes on a religious spirit.
It seems likely that social and religious worship, if I may use that term for both, will draw together again and abandon that somewhat artificial separation which political exigencies have brought about. I do not mean that ancient institutions now associated with them will lose their separate identity, so that we shall have a state church or an ecclesiastical state; forms of organization persist; but it would not be surprising if a growing unity of spirit and principle should bring the two into practical co-operation.
In the public schools the children learn group forms of play, in which they are accustomed to strive for a whole, and to put its success above their private aims; and they come to feel also that their personality is inseparable from the life of the community of which the school is a part. The spirit of mutual aid and public service should pass easily from the playground to the city, the state, and the nation. Along with this we look for a rise of communal art, in the form of music, plays, pageants, and municipal decoration, which shall enlist the feelings and hallow the larger life with cherished associations. To this we may add whatever ritual of patriotism shall be found expressive of the national spirit, a spirit animated, we hope, by membership in an international federation. And it is only a continuation of this enlarging membership and service to go on, by the aid of symbols and worship, from these visible social wholes to the invisible wholes, also social, of religious faith, to the Great Life in which our life is merged.
On the other side we see the church and the institutions connected with it reaching out toward social ideals and functions, recognizing that the salvation of the individual, possible only through that of society, calls for co-operation and service, without which worship is partial and unreal.
Indeed this spirit, whether we call it religious or social, is by no means confined to the visible institutions of the state or the church. It belongs to the spirit of the time, and may be felt in the several branches of learning, in philanthropy, in socialism, in the labor movement, and in the world of industry and trade. The conditions of life favor it, and in spite of all setbacks we may expect it to have an irresistible growth.
INDEX
Actors, fame of, 119
Adaptation, mutual, 9, 202; intelligent, 351 ff. See also Tentative Process and Selection
Addams, Jane, 182, 193
Address, a factor in success, 96
Advertising, 291
Agreement not essential to public opinion, 378 ff.
_Alma mater_, all should have one, 73 ff.
Anderson, B. M., Jr., 291, 298
Architecture, 15, 49
Art, 15, 16, 23, 49, 288, 291; valuation of, 320, 333, 337; suppression of originality in, 373; and social idealism, 344, 410–422
Art spirit, in motivation, 142, 321; rise of, 345
Art-work, as culture, 68, 71
Artists, fame of, 119
Athletics, 130, 146
Austria-Hungary, 279
Babies, natural selection among, 229
Bacon, Francis, 114
Bacon, Roger, 116
Bagehot, W., 370
Beethoven, 412
Belgium, 262, 271
Beliefs, in relation to degeneration, 186 f.
Bible, 10, 360
Biological process, 197–208
Biologists, particularism of, 205 ff., 226 f.
Biology, as study of process, 396
Birth-control, 212 f., 237
Bismarck, 264
Blackmar and Gillin, 44
Bohemians, 271
Boy Scouts, 149
Boyle, 115
Bristol, Lucius M., 37, 44
Browne, Sir T., 108, 123, 174
Bryce, James, 402
Bücher, Karl, 273
Burke, 70, 383
Burroughs, J., 123
Cancellation of impracticable ideas, 374
Caste, 57. See also Classes
Cathedrals, building of, 416
Causation, in social process, 43 ff.; in degeneration, 161 ff.
Centralization, under the influence of war, 245 f.
Change, social, as a source of degeneracy, 180 ff.
Character, is what “works,” 14; judged by little things, 100
Charity, in relation to survival of types, 226 ff.
Children, in relation to opportunity, 57 ff.; discipline of, 148 ff.
China, 190
Chinese, 279
Christianity, 31, 35, 110, 177, 189 f., 222
Church, mediæval, 24, 25, 109, 113, 132, 139, 187, 286, 288, 291, 301, 339, 367, 390, 421. See also Religion
Cities, badly governed, 205
City, as an impersonal organism, 24
Civil War, American, 40, 42, 197, 258, 266
Civilization, modern, why it does not enervate, 126 f.; and race exhaustion, 220 f.
Clan system, disintegration of, 188
Class-conflict, 268 ff.
Class-consciousness, 274
Classes, social, in relation to opportunity, 78–87; in relation to propagation, 218–238, 249; as a factor in valuation, 302 ff., 316, 334 ff., 347 f., 369 f.; study of, 402, 418
Climate, as a social institution, 46
Collier, John, 419
Commercialism, 23, 192 f., 298, 304, 316, 325, 339, 391, 418
Communication, 198, 248, 255, 269, 361 f.
Community culture, 74
Community spirit, in education, 62; in relation to culture, 72 ff., 130, 137 ff., 419 ff. See also Team-work
Competition, 40 f., 55 ff., 83 ff., 125 ff., 294, 384, 385 f.
Competitive spirit, 125–136
Composure, a factor in success, 94
Conflict, 15; place of in social process, 35–42, 56; of standards, 106, 126, 127, 175, 179, 181; between social and biological processes, 202 f.; selection by, 228; group, in relation to modern integration, 241–254; of classes, 268 ff.; in the drama, 360 f.; of ideas, 371 ff.
Conformity, 109
Consciousness, in social process, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 15, 16, 20 ff.; national, 257. See also Intelligence
Conservatism, 383
Constructive method of reform, 177 f.
Control, rational, 41 f., 65, 317 ff., 382–394; in relation to progress, 405 f.
Control, social, of propagation and the survival of types, 205, 209–317, 226–238; of poverty, 227; of group conflict, 247 f.; in international relations, 255–267
Co-operation, in relation to conflict, 35–42. See also Community spirit and Team-work
Courage, 91 ff., 95
Crime, 203 f., 207
Crisis, commercial, 25, 32
Criticism, 392 f.
Crusades, 253
Culture, 67–77, 369
Custom, in valuation, 294
Cycles, social, 30–34; business, 32 ff.
Czechs, 276
Dante, 123
Darwin, 20, 29, 95, 115, 206, 353, 373, 395 f., 400, 407
Darwinism, and war, 241, 373
Degenerate Process, Some Factors in, 180–194
Degeneration, social, 25 f.; of nations, 33 f., 126; of groups, 106; organic view of, 153–168; and will, 169–179; hereditary, in relation to poverty, 226 ff.; to fecundity, 230 f.
Delinquency, juvenile, 155, 159
Democracy, 17, 118; discipline in, 144–149; and race exhaustion, 220 f.; modern growth of, 248 f.; favorable to internationalism, 257 ff.; and classes, 269 ff., 348; must be differentiated, 364 ff.; in relation to art, 410–422 _passim_
Democratic spirit, 62, 73
Depravity of human nature, 176
Determinism, 44, 47 f., 401
Devine, E. T., 234
Discipline, 132 ff., 144–149, 183; of women, 346 f.
Discussion, 357, 361, 363, 367, 371, 378 ff.
Displacement, a cause of degeneracy, 180 ff.
Dissipation, and fecundity, 231
Distribution, theory of, 302
Doggedness, 92
Drama, the, an interpretation of social process, 359 ff.; community, 419
Dramatic, the, in relation to fame, 114, 121
Dramatic character, of intelligence, 358 ff.; of public opinion, 378; of social science, 395 ff.
Dugdale, Richard, 205, 224
Dürkheim, E., 400
Economic determinism, 44, 47 f.
Economic discipline, 147
Economic factors in biological survival, 218–238
Economic internationalism, 266
Economic man, 135, 356
Economic motives, 128 ff.
Economists, their narrow view of motivation, 135 f. See also Political Economy
Education, and opportunity, 61 ff.; individuality in, 61 ff.; in relation to culture, 68 ff.; should provide formative social groups, 73, 132, 146, 149, 206, 245, 421
Ellis, Havelock, 229
Ellwood, C. A., 44
Elmira Reformatory, 185
Emerson, 22, 50, 94, 100, 113, 117
Emulation in service, 128 ff., 137–143
England, 33, 45, 245, 246, 264; poverty in, 233
English, the, 274
Environment, economic, 46 f., 101, 107; in relation to heredity, 197–208; as source of poverty, etc., 227, 236; in modern life, 249 f.
Equality, of opportunity, 61 ff., 82 ff., 86; as a social ideal, 81, 82, 86 f.
_Esprit de corps._ See Team-work, Community Spirit
Eugenic ideals, 212 f.
Eugenics, 166, 206, 216, 219 ff., 232, 317, 347, 385
Europe, modern unity of, 264; caste in, 273
Evolution, doctrine of, its social growth, 13, 19. See also Tentative Process, Selection, Survival, Progress, Darwinism
Experiment, 8 ff., 30, 55 ff.
Faith, 93, 94, 107, 408
Fame, 112–124
Family, social continuity of, 7; in relation to opportunity, 80 f.; discipline in, 146, 148; normal, size of, 210 f.; sentiment of, needed, 213; degenerate, 224; fecundity of degenerate, 230 f., 244; place of in modern life, 251
Fashion, 12, 31 f., 299, 346
Fear, a poor motive, 132 f., 135
Feeble-minded, report on, 167
Finns, 276
Folkways, 244
Foods, valuation of, 293
Force, international, 267
Ford, Henry, 133
Formalism, in education, 62 f., 145, 168, 386 ff.
France, 33, 237, 258, 344, 415
Free speech, 365 ff.
Freedom, organic, 28 f.; negative idea of, 143; and discipline, 144 ff.; of the will, 170 f., 182; of women, 215 f.
Funerals, valuation of, 294
Galton, 203; his scheme of eugenics, 219 f., 386 f.
Gangs, 176, 178
Garibaldi, 114, 261
Genius, 17, 104 f., 203, 220, 229, 339, 387
Germans, 144, 276, 277, 366
Germany, 148, 241, 245, 246, 258, 263, 264, 265, 274, 418
Gibbon, 114
Gillin, J. L., 44
God, 5, 14, 43, 93, 94, 107, 108, 134, 140, 253, 262, 365, 373, 418, 420
Goethe, 36, 69, 70, 117, 264, 389, 392, 402, 406
Golf-clubs, valuation of, 337
Grant, General, 197
Great epochs, 121
“Greatest good of the greatest number,” 417
Group play, 421
Groups, social, process of, 7, 9, 11; organization of, 19 f., 28; in education, 62, 73; cultural, influence of upon fame, 120 ff.; necessary to emulation, 138 ff.; primary, 180 f.; complication of, 247; as a factor in valuation, 336 ff.; need of specialized, 364, 369; technical, 390, 391
Growth, adaptive, 3 ff.; reciprocal, 9; downward, 154 ff.
Guizot, 126
Hamerton, P. G., 373
Handicaps to success, 96 f., 172
Hardy, Thomas, 411
Hawaiian Islands, 190
Hayes, E. C., 44
Hegel, 418
Hereditary degeneracy, 156
Heredity and environment, 154 f., 197 ff.
History, does it repeat itself?, 34
Hobhouse, L. T., 352
Honor, national, 262 ff.; as a value, 312, 313
Horace, 121
Human nature, motivation of, 125–143 _passim_; in degeneracy, 155 ff.; “depravity” of, 176 f.; in nations, 260 ff.
Human-nature values, 285 ff., 295, 300, 342
Humanism, modern, 249
Idealism, social, and art, 410 ff.
Ideals, the basis of discipline, 147 f.; primary, 258; national, 261 ff.; of the upper class, 304 ff.; in production, 343
Ideas, their social process, 3 ff., 12 ff., 16, 19; diversification and conflict of, 363–377 (See the synopsis on p. 363)
Illusion of centrality, 50
Imagination, social, 90, 94, 158
Imitation, 51
Immigrants, 204 ff., 232, 234, 412
Immigration, of alien races, 277 ff., 370 f.
Impersonal forms of life, 4 f., 6, 12 ff., 22 ff., 251
Income, of classes, 303
India, 190
Individual, as a factor in valuation, 289, 299 ff., 322 f. See also Persons
Individualism, 29, 189, 190, 246, 418
Individuality, in education, 61 ff.; in modern life, 249 f.; national, 265, 369; in relation to art, 413 f.
Industrial revolution, 45 f.
Infancy, prolongation of, 59
Inheritance, right of, 335 f.
Initiative, 91 ff., 95; in valuation, 300, 338 ff.
Insanity, 161 f.
Instinct, 198 f.
Institutional values, 285 ff., 295, 333 ff., 342
Institutions, essential to intelligence, 355
Intelligence, 8, 9, 58 ff.; as a factor in success, 90 f., 199; in social function, 351–362
Internationalism, 255 ff.
Invention, 17
Inventions, valuation of, 338 f.
Inventors, not remembered, 115, 119
Investment, and class-conflict, 271
Isolation, moral, 181, 242, 246; social value of, 368 ff.
Italy, 415
James, William, 286, 331
Japan, 190
Japanese, 274, 277 f.
Jesus, 35; his fame an institution, 116, 139, 360
Jews, 7, 33, 99, 121, 183
Johnson, A. S., 344
Johnson, Doctor Samuel, 115
Kafirs, 188
Keller, A. G., 47, 375
Kidd, Dudley, 188
King, W. I., 218, 303
Kingsley, Miss, 189
Labor, 37, 60, 65; motivation of, 131, 133 ff., 142 f.; and degeneration, 184; as a class, 268 ff.; valuation of, 325, 347 f. See also Classes
Language, as impersonal organism, 4, 6, 8, 14, 23, 284, 383; analogous to pecuniary valuation, 310, 332 f.; in assimilation, 371
Lanier, Sidney, 377
Law and culture, 70
Leadership, fame as, 112, 365
Leisure and art, 414
Librarians, motives of, 131
Liebknecht, 381
Lincoln, 93, 113, 116, 128
Literary class, influence of upon fame, 117 ff.
Literature, as culture, 68 f.; and class, 304; valuation of, 319 f.
Logan, James, 133
Lowell’s Ode, 419 f.
Luther, 10, 22
Macaulay, 114
Machiavelli, 105
Maladjustment, 180 ff.
Malthus, 13, 237
Marcus Aurelius, 366
Market, as an institution, 296 ff., 309 ff.
Marriage, selection in, 214 ff., 223; statistics of, 400
Mastery, requisite for culture, 72
Maternal instinct, 213
Mendel, 116
Meredith, George, 383
Method, tentative, 3 ff., 30; in the study of degeneration, 165 f.; of sociology, 395–404
Metternich, 255
Middle Ages, values in, 289, 367
Might and Right, 109 ff., 242
Militarism, as impersonal organism, 5, 47, 111, 148, 242, 246, 258
Military training, compulsory, 145 f., 149
Millet (the painter), 411
Milton, 174
Minimum standards, 385 f.
Minorities, 380 f.
Misery, distinguished from poverty, 234; and survival, 237
Missionaries, 187 ff., 190
Mitchell, Wesley C., 32
Monastic system, 203
Montaigne, 102, 122
Monte Carlo, 32
Montesquieu, 344
Moral unity of nations, 242 f., 260, 262
Morality, and success, 99–111, 203 f., 242, 358, 406
_Mores_, 23; of maintenance, 47, 187, 217, 245, 289; harmful, 375, 385
Motion-pictures, 415
_Motiv_, of social forms, 12
Motivation, 125–143; by pecuniary values, 309 ff.; by self-expression, 321 ff.
Myth, 4, 6; in relation to fame, 116, 122
Nansen, 189
Napoleon I, 103, 116, 261, 264, 353
Napoleon III, 259
Nationality, principle of, 256 ff.
Nations, organization of by conflict, 38, 40, 245; decay of, 33 f.; morality of, 105, 187; loyalty to, 141; and discipline, 147 f.; progress of, 241; society of, 255 ff., 277, 356
Negroes, 188 f., 232, 275, 276, 278
Nomenclature, of inheritance, 207 f.
Non-conformity, 106 ff., 300, 338, 367, 373, 380 f.
Novicow, J., 37
Nucleation, of groups and persons in modern life, 252
Opportunity, 11, 55–66, 78–87, 125, 181, 220, 221, 237 f., 250, 307 f.
Organic view, as opposed to particularism, 43–51; of degeneration, 153 ff.
Organism, impersonal, 4 ff.; international, 5, 255 ff.; meaning of social, 26 ff.; in relation to freedom, 28 f.; valuation by an impersonal, 284
Organization, social, unconscious, 16, 20 ff.; as a process, 19–29, 36, 55 ff.; cyclical character of, 30 ff.; and culture, 67 f.; and success, 89 f.; must support human nature, 176 f.; large-scale modern, 246 ff.; international, 255 ff.; and valuation, 309 ff., 329 ff., 336 ff.; and art, 413
Organizing capacity, 259
Originality, 390
Overlapping, of social forms, 6, 27 f.
Ox, diverse values of, 289 f.
Painting, schools of, 23
Palissy, 115
Panama Canal, 143
Paris, 12, 32
Parmelee, Maurice, 44
Particularism, intellectual, 43–51; in social reform, 160 ff.; biological, 205 ff., 226 f.; state-conflict, 241 ff., 394
Patriotism, and discipline, 145; in modern life, 252 f.; nature of, 261 ff.; and religion, 418 ff.
Peace. See Control, Social
Pecuniary motive, 129 f., 143
Personality, in relation to groups, 7, 8; a factor in culture, 69; in success, 89 ff.; great, alleged decline of, 123; standards of, 153 f.; and modern groups, 249 ff., 387
Persons, general relation of to social process, 3, 6, 8, 10 f., 16, 19, 20, 21 f., 27, 55 ff., 67 ff., 112, 154 ff.
Physical factors, 44, 46 f., 51
Plato, 50, 99, 102, 124
Play, organized, 146, 148
Poles, 271, 276
Political economy, 297 ff., 397, 403
_Pons asinorum_ of sociology, 207
Poverty, 48; organized, might be abolished, 85 f., 161 f.; and propagation, 226–238
Pragmatism, 8
Primary ideals, 249
Primary or intimate groups, 62, 73 ff., 137, 148 ff., 421
Privilege. See Classes
Professional spirit, 131 f., 138, 140
Progress, 35, 41; group conflict theory of, 241 f.; of pecuniary valuation, 326 f., 329–348; tentative character of, 405–409
Progress-values, 341 ff.
Propagation, impulse to, 211 ff.; and poverty, 226 ff.
Prostitution, 184
Psalms, on success and morality, 99
Psychological tests, 64, 235, 389
Public opinion, 270, 378–381
Punishment, 132, 160
Race, 202; questions of, 274 ff., 358, 379
Race exhaustion, 220 f.
Race suicide, 211 ff., 218 f.
Races, contact of backward and civilized, 187 ff.; loosed by communication, 247
Radicalism, value of, 368, 374
Reform, organic, 157 f.
Religion, 5, 14, 75; and patriotism, 75 f., 253, 266, 76, 253 f., 289, 330 f., 377, 408 f., 420 f. See also Christianity, Church
Rembrandt, 116
Responsibility, organic view of, 158 f.
Revolution, industrial, 45 f.; and class, 268; Russian, 271
Rhythm, in social process, 32 f.
Richelieu, 94
Roman Empire, 126
Ross, E. A., 209
Rousseau, 373
Rural culture, 74 f.
Rural degeneracy, 192
Ruskin, 15, 324
Russia, 271
Ruysdael, 410
Saint Louis (the King), 103
Sainte-Beuve, 118, 392
Savage peoples, demoralization of, 187, 209
Scott, Sir W., 114, 118
Seager, Henry R., 78, 308
Seasonal workers, 185
Security, sense of, in motivation, 139 ff.
Selection, in social process, 8 ff., 55 ff., 112, 117, 155, 181, 201 f.; in marriage, 214 ff.; artificial, 235 f., 284 f.; of ideas, 371 ff.
Self-consciousness, merged in the group, 137
Self-development and success, 88 f., 100
Self-expression, as motive, 321 ff., 410, 416 f.
Self-possession, an American trait, 144
Self-reliance, 90, 93, 95, 107, 113, 182
Self-respect, loss of, 173
Self-seeking, lower and higher, 128
Sensualism, 176
Sentiment, organization of, 25; a factor in discussion, 357
Service, social, a condition of success, 88 f., 100; emulation in, 128 ff., 145
Sexes, conflict of, 36; choice of, 214 ff., 361
Sexual impulses, 175, 177, 211 f.
Sexual vice, 191 f., 269
Shakespeare, 99, 114
Small, Albion W., 28
Sociability, may lead to degeneration, 176, 194
Social science, 43, 389, 395–404 (see the synopsis on p. 395), 405
Social work, as a profession, 340, 359
Socialism, 44, 367, 368
Society, in what sense organic, 26 ff.
Sociologist, qualifications of, 28, 401
Sociology, scientific character of, 395–404. See also Social science, Statistical method
_Socius_, in relation to culture, 67; nation as, 261
Soldiers, motives of, 130, 140
Solidarity, modern, 246 ff.; of classes, 271 ff.
“Soul” of impersonal organisms, 14
Spain, 33
Specialist, not a particularist, 49
Speculation, business, 32
Spencer, Anna Garlin, 65
Spencer, Herbert, 31
Spencer and Gillen, 188
Stagnation, 189 ff.
Standards, group, 102 ff.; of higher emulation, 138, 143, 153 f., 181, 186 ff.; in marriage, 216 f.; eugenic, 224, 228 f., 232, 233 f., 238; international, 262 ff., 343, 376; of service, 384 ff.
Stanley, H. M., 36, 92
State, idealization of, 147 f., 417 ff.
Statistical method, 32, 165, 166 ff., 386 ff., 398 ff.
Sterilization, 235
Stock-market, 359
Strain, mental, 181, 184
Struggle for existence, 233 ff.; among nations, 241 ff.
Success, theory of, 88–98; and morality, 99–111; necessary to confidence, 172; and eugenics, 221 ff.; and heredity, 230 f.; national, 241 ff.
Suicide, statistical study of, 399 f.
Sumner, W. G., 23, 47, 188
Superficiality in education, 72
Survey, social, 168
Survival, of the fittest, 8; biological, 201 ff., 209 ff.; in relation to classes, 218–238; of nations, 241 ff.
Symbolism, in fame, 116 ff., 139, 187
Sympathy, of concussion, 39; and success, 95 f.; and competition, 127; in business, 132; in reform, 157; fostered by art, 412 ff.
Tarde, 372
Taxation, as a means of reform, 85
Teachability, due to heredity, 200
Teachers, 63, 131; motivation of, 141
Team-work, 37, 129, 146, 157, 244, 264, 265, 388, 416. See also Community spirit
Temptation, is it beneficial?, 174 f.
Tentative process, 3–18, 19 ff., 30, 36, 55 ff., 353, 355, 408. See also Selection, Survival
Terra del Fuego, survival in, 229
Thompson, W. S., 219
Tintoretto, 116
Torquemada, 366
Transition, conflict of ideas in a time of, 376 f.
Trial and error, 8
Trusts, 40 f.
Twins, in different environments, 200 f.
Types, social, 198, 201; hereditary, 198, 201, 209 ff.; improvement of, 224 f.; under poverty, 226 ff.; social tests of, 233 f., 235 f.
Unconscious social process, 5, 14 ff., 20 ff., 103, 284
Unemployment, and responsibility, 158 f., 185
United States, 47 f., 144, 245, 246, 257, 266, 276, 278, 407
Universities, organizing process in, 20; motivation in, 141, 292; valuation in, 339 f., 367, 369; as setters of standards, 391 f.
Vacher de Lapouge, 221
Valuation, sexual, 214 f.; as a social process, 283–292; pecuniary, institutional character of, 293–308; sphere of pecuniary, 309–328; progress of, 329–348
Variation, social, 17, 363 ff.
Vice, 177, 184, 193 f., 231
Villages, degenerate, 156 f., 168, 191
Vocational selection, 64 f., 83, 318, 344
Vocational training, 65, 67 f., 70 ff.
Voluntary association, 7, 149, 249
War, 38, 39 f.; moral equivalent for, 126 f.; industrial, 186; as revealer, 243, 246; prehistoric, 243; modern, 247, 248, 259; of classes, 273 ff.
War, the Great, 39 f., 42, 123, 162, 259
Ward, L. F., 37
Warner, A. G., 231
Wars, Napoleonic, 255
Washington, 113, 116
Wellington, composure of, 94
Wells, H. G., 142
Whitman, Walt, 415
Will, 21; freedom of, 28 f., 170 ff.; in degeneration, 169–179
Women, industrial education of, 65, 71; change in ideas regarding, 372
Women’s movement, effect of on race welfare, 215 ff.; on valuation, 346
Wordsworth, 118
“Working,” as a cause of growth, 8 ff., 12, 13 ff., 19, 23
-----
Footnote 1:
Compare the chapter on Gothic Palaces in Ruskin’s Stones of Venice.
Footnote 2:
Professor Albion W. Small puts it as follows: “Described with respect to form rather than content, the social process is a tide of separating and blending social processes, consisting of incessant decomposition and recomposition of relations within persons and between persons, in a continuous evolution of types of persons and of associations.” (American Journal of Sociology, 18, 210.)
Footnote 3:
“I rather demur to _Dinosaurus_ not having ‘free will,’ as surely we have.” (More Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. I, 155.)
Footnote 4:
W. C. Mitchell, Business Cycles, 581.
Footnote 5:
Autobiography of Henry M. Stanley, 535.
Footnote 6:
Among the writers who have expounded conflict and co-operation as phases of a single organic process are J. Novicow, in Les luttes entre sociétés humaines, and Lester F. Ward, in Pure Sociology. Professor L. M. Bristol gives a summary of their views in his Social Adaptation.
Footnote 7:
The word means, in general, devotion to a small part as against the whole, and is most commonly used in historical writing to describe excessive attachment to localities or factions as against nations or other larger unities.
Footnote 8:
American sociologists are, with a few exceptions, opponents of particularism and upholders of the organic view. Among recent writers of which this is notably true I may mention C. A. Ellwood, in his Introduction to Social Psychology and other works, E. C. Hayes, in his Introduction to the Study of Sociology and his papers on methodology, Maurice Parmelee, in his works on poverty and criminology, L. M. Bristol, in his Social Adaptation, Blackmar and Gillin, in their Outlines of Sociology, and A. J. Todd, in his Theories of Social Progress.
Footnote 9:
Compare the views of Professor A. G. Keller, as expressed in his Societal Evolution, 141 _ff._
Footnote 10:
Other varieties of particularism are discussed in Chapters XV, XVIII, XXI and XXII.
Footnote 11:
In chapter V of her work.
Footnote 12:
Conversations with Eckermann, April 1, 1827.
Footnote 13:
Morley’s Burke, 8.
Footnote 14:
See § 138 of his Introduction to Economics.
Footnote 15:
If the reader cares for my view as to whether social stratification tends to increase or diminish, I beg to refer to the discussion of that subject in part IV of my Social Organization.
Footnote 16:
Herndon and Weik, Abraham Lincoln, vol. II, 54, 55.
Footnote 17:
How Germany Makes War, 111.
Footnote 18:
Psalm 37.
Footnote 19:
_Ibid._
Footnote 20:
_Ibid._
Footnote 21:
I Peter 3:12.
Footnote 22:
See his Essay, Of Glory.
Footnote 23:
Tout, The Empire and the Papacy, 412.
Footnote 24:
Religio Medici, par. 18.
Footnote 25:
From the Advancement of Learning.
Footnote 26:
No. 106.
Footnote 27:
Emerson, Spiritual Laws.
Footnote 28:
Goethe.
Footnote 29:
Of Glory.
Footnote 30:
John Burroughs in his essay, Recent Phases of Literary Criticism.
Footnote 31:
Plato, Symposium.
Footnote 32:
Guizot, France, chap. V.
Footnote 33:
There is a fuller discussion in the chapter on The Sphere of Pecuniary Valuation.
Footnote 34:
James Logan in System, December, 1916.
Footnote 35:
Henry Ford in System, November, 1916.
Footnote 36:
H. G. Wells.
Footnote 37:
Kuno Francke in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1914.
Footnote 38:
The Atlantic Monthly, September, 1911.
Footnote 39:
Areopagitica.
Footnote 40:
The Survey, vol. 29, p. 419.
Footnote 41:
The Chicago Commons Year-Book, 1911.
Footnote 42:
Any one who cares for a moving yet trustworthy account of the way city conditions affect the young may find it in Jane Addams’s books, especially The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, and A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil.
Footnote 43:
See the Annual Report for 1909.
Footnote 44:
See his Folkways, sec. 115.
Footnote 45:
The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 7.
Footnote 46:
Kafir Socialism, 41, 42.
Footnote 47:
_Ibid._, 145.
Footnote 48:
_Ibid._, 192, 193.
Footnote 49:
Savage Childhood, 108.
Footnote 50:
Travels in West Africa, 403.
Footnote 51:
See his Hereditary Genius.
Footnote 52:
The very statement of the problem as one of “heredity and environment” implies a biological point of view, because the biological factor, heredity, is made central while the social is merely a surrounding condition or “environment.”
Footnote 53:
Professor E. A. Ross, in his Foundations of Sociology, has a good summary of the earlier literature of social selection, and a bibliography. See pp. 327 _ff._
Footnote 54:
According to the estimates of W. I. King, in his Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the number of families in each of these classes, excluding single men and women, would have been, in 1910: Well-to-do families, 1,437,190; families in want, 1,870,000; families in an intermediate state, 14,970,000. See Chap. IX, Table XLIII, from which these figures are computed.
Footnote 55:
See the three articles on Race Suicide in the United States, by W. S. Thompson, The Scientific Monthly, July, August, and September, 1917.
Footnote 56:
Galton’s practical eugenic programme is given in Sociological Papers (an early publication of the English Sociological Society), vol. I, 45 _ff._ For the general argument, see his Hereditary Genius.
Footnote 57:
The view that race degenerates under civilization is developed at length and with much pessimistic ardor by G. Vacher de Lapouge in his work, Les sélections sociales.
Footnote 58:
Apart from the mixture of races, or changes in their relative numbers.
Footnote 59:
A. G. Warner, American Charities (Revised Edition), 60.
Footnote 60:
Professor Edward T. Devine suggests this distinction in his book, Misery and Its Causes.
Footnote 61:
I hardly need say, regarding the class revolution in Russia, that that country was lacking in those conditions of intelligence, communication, and economic development which my argument assumes to exist.
Footnote 62:
See his Industrial Evolution, translation, p. 382.
Footnote 63:
The human-nature values, of course, vary much less than the institutional values. Thus fashions vary infinitely, but conformity, the human-nature basis of allegiance to fashion, remains much the same.
Footnote 64:
_Pecunia_, from _pecus_, cattle.
Footnote 65:
B. M. Anderson, Jr., Social Value, p. 116.
Footnote 66:
They are recognized a great deal, and with the best results, by economists interested, as most are, in practical reforms.
Footnote 67:
See, for example, the penetrating study of Social Value by B. M. Anderson, Jr.
It is curious that although orthodox economics has mostly ignored the importance of institutional processes, its own history offers as good an illustration of this importance as could be desired. I mean that the spirit and underlying ideas of the science can be understood only as the product of a school of thought, of a special institutional development.
Footnote 68:
By calling these values “personal” I mean merely that they tend to enrich persons; their economic character is multifarious.
Footnote 69:
Production has a special institutional development of its own which I shall not attempt to discuss in this connection.
Footnote 70:
Compare W. I. King, Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, chap. IX.
Footnote 71:
In this connection the reader will, no doubt, recall the work of Professor Veblen along this line.
Footnote 72:
Perhaps I may be allowed to refer in this connection to the more extended, though inadequate, treatment of classes in my Social Organization.
Footnote 73:
For a very strong statement by a conservative economist of the power of class over opportunities and personal values, I may refer to the treatment of the subject by Professor Seager in his Introduction to Economics, § 138. Compare _ante_, Chapter VIII.
Footnote 74:
Professor A. S. Johnson in a Phi Beta Kappa address has vigorously presented this line of thought. He holds that: “The ultimate need of the new industrialism ... is ... artists and poets who shall translate society and social man into terms of values worth serving.”
Footnote 75:
The most satisfactory account I know of the stages of synthesis in the development of intelligence, from the simplest assimilation of stimulus and consequence—as when a burnt child dreads the fire—to the most complex purposive action—as in the development and application of science—is found in L. T. Hobhouse’s Mind in Evolution, chaps. V-XIV.
Footnote 76:
Physics and Politics, 214.
Footnote 77:
Thoughts About Art, 255.
Footnote 78:
Societal Evolution, 63.
Footnote 79:
Lanier, To Richard Wagner.
Footnote 80:
I touch but briefly upon public opinion in this book because I have already treated it at considerable length in my Social Organization.
Footnote 81:
See his Hereditary Genius. Among other criticisms of his views was a pamphlet I published called Genius, Fame and the Comparison of Races (No. 197 of the Publications of the American Academy of Political and Social Science). There is a good account of the literature of the subject in Lester F. Ward’s Applied Sociology.
Footnote 82:
Quoted _ante_, p. 29.
Footnote 83:
Darwin, Descent of Man, chap. IV.
Footnote 84:
“The dispositions of human nature which made synthetic drama at the beginning are ready to make it again. They never needed drama as they do now in their day of exile. A community drama which knew how to use these varied dispositions toward expression—not only song and dance, but the instinct of workmanship, the latent passion which is in multitudes of people for shaping material things into beautiful forms for social use—such a community theatre would become a profound economic necessity, would command kinds of power and quantities of power whose existence we scarcely guess, would create a new social situation in the lives of all those it touched, and would in time be the parent of new art forms and social forms unforeseen, propitious, splendid.”—John Collier in The Survey, vol. 36, p. 259.
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