Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 122

[257] L. T. Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution, A Study in Comparative Ethics_, pp. 13-14. (New York, 1915.)

[258] E. D. Morel, _King Leopold's Rule in Africa_. (London, 1904.)

[259] L. T. Hobhouse, _op. cit._, p. 85.

[260] The whole process of evolution by which a moral order has been established over ever wider areas of social life has been sketched in a masterly manner by Hobhouse in his chapter, "Law and Justice," _op.

cit._, pp. 72-131.

[261] From Lieutenant Joseph S. Smith, _Over There and Back_, pp. 9-22.

(E. P. Dutton & Co., 1917.)

[262] From Herbert Spencer, _The Principles of Sociology_, II, 3-6.

(Williams & Norgate, 1893.)

[263] Adapted from Lewis Leopold, _Prestige_, pp. 16-62. (T. Fisher Unwin, 1913.)

[264] Adapted from Maurice S. Evans, _Black and White in South East Africa_, pp. 15-35. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.)

[265] From W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, pp.

152-447. (Adam and Charles Black, 1907.)

[266] From Georges Sorel, _Reflections on Violence_, pp. 133-37. (B. W.

Huebsch, 1912.)

[267] Adapted from Fernand van Langenhove, _The Growth of a Legend_, pp.

5-275. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916.)

[268] From W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 16-24.

(Adam and Charles Black, 1907.)

[269] Adapted from A. Lawrence Lowell, _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, pp. 3-14. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1913.)

[270] From Robert E. Park, _The Crowd and the Public_. (Unpublished ma.n.u.script.)

[271] Adapted from Walter Lippmann, _Liberty and the News_, pp. 4-15.

(Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.)

[272] From Raymond Dodge, "The Psychology of Propaganda," _Religious Education_, XV (1920), 241-52.

[273] From William G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 53-56. (Ginn & Co., 1906.)

[274] Adapted from Frederic J. Stimson, _Popular Law-Making_, pp. 2-16.

(Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912.)

[275] From Charles A. Ellwood, "Religion and Social Control," in the _Scientific Monthly_, VII (1918), 339-41.

[276] Albert H. Post, _Evolution of Law: Select Readings on the Origin and Development of Legal Inst.i.tutions_, Vol. II, "Primitive and Ancient Legal Inst.i.tutions," complied by Albert Kocourek and John H. Wigmore; translated from the German by Thomas J. McCormack. Section 2, "Ethnological Jurisprudence," p. 12. (Boston, 1915.)

[277] Quoted by James Bryce, "Influence of National Character and Historical Environment on Development of Common Law," annual address to the American Bar a.s.sociation, 1907, _Reports of the American Bar a.s.sociation_, x.x.xI (1907), 447.

[278] Henry S. Maine, _Ancient Law_. Its connection with the early history of society and its relation to modern ideas, pp. 4-5. 14th ed.

(London, 1891.)

[279] For the distinction between the cultural process and the political process see _supra_, pp. 52-53.

CHAPTER XIII

COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Collective Behavior Defined

A collection of individuals is not always, and by the mere fact of its collectivity, a society. On the other hand, when people come together anywhere, in the most casual way, on the street corner or at a railway station, no matter how great the social distances between them, the mere fact that they are aware of one another's presence sets up a lively exchange of influences, and the behavior that ensues is both social and collective. It is social, at the very least, in the sense that the train of thought and action in each individual is influenced more or less by the action of every other. It is collective in so far as each individual acts under the influence of a mood or a state of mind in which each shares, and in accordance with conventions which all quite unconsciously accept, and which the presence of each enforces upon the others.

The amount of individual eccentricity or deviation from normal and accepted modes of behavior which a community will endure without comment and without protest will vary naturally enough with the character of the community. A cosmopolitan community like New York City can and does endure a great deal in the way of individual eccentricity that a smaller city like Boston would not tolerate. In any case, and this is the point of these observations, even in the most casual relations of life, people do not behave in the presence of others as if they were living alone like Robinson Crusoe, each on his individual island. The very fact of their consciousness of each other tends to maintain and enforce a great body of convention and usage which otherwise falls into abeyance and is forgotten. Collective behavior, then, is the behavior of individuals under the influence of an impulse that is common and collective, an impulse, in other words, that is the result of social interaction.

2. Social Unrest and Collective Behavior

The most elementary form of collective behavior seems to be what is ordinarily referred to as "social unrest." Unrest in the individual becomes social when it is, or seems to be, transmitted from one individual to another, but more particularly when it produces something akin to the milling process in the herd, so that the manifestations of discontent in A communicated to B, and from B reflected back to A, produce the circular reaction described in the preceding chapter.

The significance of social unrest is that it represents at once a breaking up of the established routine and a preparation for new collective action. Social unrest is not of course a new phenomenon; it is possibly true, however, that it is peculiarly characteristic, as has been said, of modern life. The contrast between the conditions of modern life and of primitive society suggests why this may be true.

The conception which we ought to form of primitive society, says Sumner, is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the group will be determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence and the internal organization of each group will correspond (1) to the size of the group, and (2) to the nature and intensity of the struggle with its neighbors.

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 const.i.tute 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.[280]

The isolation, territorial and cultural, under which alone it is possible to maintain an organization which corresponds to Sumner's description, has disappeared within comparatively recent times from all the more inhabitable portions of the earth. In place of it there has come, and with increasing rapidity is coming, into existence a society which includes within its limits the total population of the earth and is so intimately bound together that the speculation of a grain merchant in Chicago may increase the price of bread in Bombay, while the act of an a.s.sa.s.sin in a provincial town in the Balkans has been sufficient to plunge the world into a war which changed the political map of three continents and cost the lives, in Europe alone, of 8,500,000 combatants.

The first effect of modern conditions of life has been to increase and vastly complicate the economic interdependence of strange and distant peoples, i.e., to destroy distances and make the world, as far as national relations are concerned, small and tight.

The second effect has been to break down family, local, and national ties, and emanc.i.p.ate the individual man.

When the family ceases, as it does in the city, to be an economic unit, when parents and children have vocations that not only intercept the traditional relations of family life, but make them well nigh impossible, the family ceases to function as an organ of social control. When the different nationalities, with their different national cultures, have so far interpenetrated one another that each has permanent colonies within the territorial limits of the other, it is inevitable that the old solidarities, the common loyalties and the common hatreds that formerly bound men together in primitive kinship and local groups should be undermined.

A survey of the world today shows that vast changes are everywhere in progress. Not only in Europe but in Asia and in Africa new cultural contacts have undermined and broken down the old cultures. The effect has been to loosen all the social bonds and reduce society to its individual atoms. The energies thus freed have produced a world-wide ferment. Individuals released from old a.s.sociations enter all the more readily into new ones. Out of this confusion new and strange political and religious movements arise, which represent the groping of men for a new social order.

3. The Crowd and the Public

Gustave Le Bon, who was the first writer to call attention to the significance of the crowd as a social phenomenon,[281] said that ma.s.s movements mark the end of an old regime and the beginning of a new.