Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 27

In the case of human societies we discover not merely organically inherited adaptation, which characterizes animal societies, but, in addition, a great body of habits and accommodations which are transmitted in the form of social inheritance. Something that corresponds to social tradition exists, to be sure, in animal societies.

Animals learn by imitation from one another, and there is evidence that this social tradition varies with changes in environment. In man, however, a.s.sociation is based on something more than habits or instinct.

In human society, largely as a result of language, there exists a conscious community of purpose. We have not merely folkways, which by an extension of that term might be attributed to animals, but we have mores and formal standards of conduct.

In a recent notable volume on education, John Dewey has formulated a definition of the educational process which he identifies with the process by which the social tradition of human society is transmitted.

Education, he says in effect, is a self-renewing process, a process in which and through which the social organism lives.

With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the re-creation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery and practices. The continuity of experience, through renewal of the social group, is a literal fact.

Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances the transmission of the social tradition is from the parents to the children. Children are born into the society and take over its customs, habits, and standards of life simply, naturally, and without conflict. But it will at once occur to anyone that the physical life of society is not always continued and maintained in this natural way, i.e., by the succession of parents and children. New societies are formed by conquest and by the imposition of one people upon another. In such cases there arises a conflict of cultures, and as a result the process of fusion takes place slowly and is frequently not complete. New societies are frequently formed by colonization, in which case new cultures are grafted on to older ones. The work of missionary societies is essentially one of colonization in this sense. Finally we have societies growing up, as in the United States, by immigration.

These immigrants, coming as they do from all parts of the world, bring with them fragments of divergent cultures. Here again the process of a.s.similation is slow, often painful, not always complete.

3. Types of Social Groups[92]

Between the two extreme poles--the crowd and the state (nation)--between these extreme links of the chain of human a.s.sociation, what are the other intermediate groups, and what are their distinctive characteristics?

Gustave Le Bon thus cla.s.sifies the different types of crowds (aggregations):

A. Heterogeneous crowds 1. Anonymous (street crowds, for example) 2. Not anonymous (parliamentary a.s.semblies, for example)

B. h.o.m.ogeneous crowds 1. Sects (political, religious, etc.) 2. Castes (military, sacerdotal, etc.) 3. Cla.s.ses (bourgeois, working-men, etc.)

This cla.s.sification is open to criticism. First of all, it is inaccurate to give the name of crowd indiscriminately to every human group.

Literally (from the etymological standpoint) this objection seems to me unanswerable. Tarde more exactly distinguishes between crowds, a.s.sociations, and corporations.

But we retain the generic term of "crowd" because it indicates the first stage of the social group which is the source of all the others, and because with these successive distinctions it does not lend itself to equivocal meaning.

In the second place, it is difficult to understand why Le Bon terms the sect a _h.o.m.ogeneous_ crowd, while he cla.s.sifies parliamentary a.s.semblies among the _heterogeneous_ crowds. The members of a sect are usually far more different from one another in birth, education, profession, social status, than are generally the members of a political a.s.sembly.

Turning from this criticism to note without a.n.a.lyzing heterogeneous crowds, let us then proceed to determine the princ.i.p.al characteristics of the three large types of h.o.m.ogeneous crowds, the cla.s.ses, the castes, the sects.

The heterogeneous crowd is composed of _tout le monde_, of people like you, like me, like the first pa.s.ser-by. _Chance_ unites these individuals physically, the _occasion_ unites them psychologically; they do not know each other, and after the moment when they find themselves together, they may never see each other again. To use a metaphor, it is a psychological meteor, of the most unforeseen, ephemeral, and transitory kind.

On this accidental and fortuitous foundation are formed here and there other crowds, always heterogeneous, but with a certain character of stability or, at least, of periodicity. The audience at a theater, the members of a club, of a literary or social gathering, const.i.tute also a crowd but a different crowd from that of the street. The members of these groups know each other a little; they have, if not a common aim, at least a common custom. They are nevertheless "anonymous crowds," as Le Bon calls them, because they do not have within themselves the nucleus of organization.

Proceeding further, we find crowds still heterogeneous, but not so anonymous--juries, for example, and a.s.semblies. These small crowds experience a new sentiment, unknown to anonymous crowds, that of responsibility which may at times give to their actions a different orientation. Then the parliamentary crowds are to be distinguished from the others because, as Tarde observes with his habitual penetration, they are double crowds: they represent a majority in conflict with one or more minorities, which safeguards them in most cases from unanimity, the most menacing danger which faces crowds.

We come now to h.o.m.ogeneous crowds, of which the first type is the sect.

Here are found again individuals differing in birth, in education, in profession, in social status, but united and, indeed, voluntarily cemented by an extremely strong bond, a common faith and ideal. Faith, religious, scientific, or political, rapidly creates a communion of sentiments capable of giving to those who possess it a high degree of h.o.m.ogeneity and power. History records the deeds of the barbarians under the influence of Christianity, and the Arabs transformed into a sect by Mahomet. Because of their sectarian organization, a prediction may be made of what the future holds in store for the socialists.

The sect is a crowd, picked out and permanent; the crowd is a transitory sect which has not chosen its members. The sect is a chronic kind of crowd; the crowd is an acute kind of sect. The crowd is composed of a mult.i.tude of grains of sand without cohesion; the sect is a block of marble which resists every effort. When a sentiment or an idea, having in itself a reason for existence, slips into the crowd, its members soon crystallize and form a sect. The sect is then the first crystallization of every doctrine. From the confused and amorphous state in which it manifests itself to the crowd, every idea is predestined to define itself in the more specific form of the sect, to become later a party, a school, or a church--scientific, political, or religious.

Any faith, whether it be Islamism, Buddhism, Christianity, patriotism, socialism, anarchy, cannot but pa.s.s through this sectarian phase. It is the first step, the point where the human group in leaving the twilight zone of the anonymous and mobile crowd raises itself to a definition and to an integration which then may lead up to the highest and most perfect human group, the nation.

If the sect is composed of individuals united by a common idea and aim, in spite of diversity of birth, education, and social status, the caste unites, on the contrary, those who could have--and who have sometimes--diverse ideas and aspirations, but who are brought together through ident.i.ty of profession. The sect corresponds to the community of faith, the caste to the community of professional ideas. The sect is a _spontaneous_ a.s.sociation; the caste is, in many ways, a _forced_ a.s.sociation. After having chosen a profession--let it be priest, soldier, magistrate--a man belongs necessarily to a caste. A person, on the contrary, does not necessarily belong to a sect. And when one belongs to a caste--be he the most independent man in the world--he is more or less under the influence of that which is called _esprit de corps_.

The caste represents the highest degree of organization to which the h.o.m.ogeneous crowd is susceptible. It is composed of individuals who by their tastes, their education, birth, and social status, resemble each other in the fundamental types of conduct and mores. There are even certain castes, the military and sacerdotal, for example, in which the members at last so resemble one another in appearance and bearing that no disguise can conceal the nature of their profession.

The caste offers to its members ideas already molded, rules of conduct already approved; it relieves them, in short, of the fatigue of thinking with their own brains. When the caste to which an individual belongs is known, all that is necessary is to press a b.u.t.ton of his mental mechanism to release a series of opinions and of phrases already made which are identical in every individual of the same caste.

This harmonious collectivity, powerful and eminently conservative, is the most salient a.n.a.logy which the nations of the Occident present to that of India. In India the caste is determined by birth, and it is distinguished by a characteristic trait: the persons of one caste can live with, eat with, and marry only individuals of the same caste.

In Europe it is not only birth, but circ.u.mstances and education which determine the entrance of an individual into a caste; to marry, to frequent, to invite to the same table only people of the same caste, exists practically in Europe as in India. In Europe the above-mentioned prescriptions are founded on convention, but they are none the less observed. We all live in a confined circle, where we find our friends, our guests, our sons- and daughters-in-law.

Misalliances are a.s.suredly possible in Europe; they are impossible in India. But if there religion prohibits them, with us public opinion and convention render them very rare. And at bottom the a.n.a.logy is complete.

The cla.s.s is superior to the caste in extent. If the psychological bond of the sect is community of faith, and that of the caste community of profession, the psychological bond of the cla.s.s is community of interests.

Less precise in its limits, more diffuse and less compact than the caste or the sect, the cla.s.s represents today the veritable crowd in a dynamic state, which can in a moment's time descend from that place and become statically a crowd. And it is from the sociological standpoint the most terrible kind of crowd; it is that which today has taken a bellicose att.i.tude, and which by its att.i.tude and precepts prepares the brutal blows of mobs.

We speak of the "conflict of the cla.s.ses," and from the theoretical point of view and in the normal and peaceful life that signifies only a contest of ideas by legal means. Always depending upon the occasion, the audacity of one or many men, the character of the situation, the conflict of the cla.s.ses is transformed into something more material and more violent--into revolt or into revolution.

Finally we arrive at the state (nation). Tocqueville said that the cla.s.ses which compose society form so many distinct nations. They are the greatest collectivities before coming to the nation, the state.

This is the most perfect type of organization of the crowd, and the final and supreme type, if there is not another collectivity superior in number and extension, the collectivity formed by race.

The bond which unites all the citizens of a state is language and nationality. Above the state there are only the crowds determined by race, which comprise many states. And these are, like the states and like the cla.s.ses, human aggregates which in a moment could be transformed into violent crowds. But then, and justly, because their evolution and their organization are more developed, their mobs are called armies, and their violences are called wars, and they have the seal of legitimacy unknown in other crowds. In this order of ideas war could be defined as the supreme form of collective crimes.

4. _Esprit de Corps_, Morale, and Collective Representations of Social Groups[93]

War is no doubt the least human of human relationships. It can begin only when persuasion ends, when arguments fitted to move minds are replaced by the blasting-powder fitted to move rocks and hills. It means that one at least of the national wills concerned has deliberately set aside its human quality--as only a human will can do--and has made of itself just such a material obstruction or menace. Hence war seems, and is often called, a contest of brute forces. Certainly it is the extremest physical effort men make, every resource of vast populations bent to increase the sum of power at the front, where the two lines writhe like wrestlers laboring for the final fall.

Yet it is seldom physical force that decides a long war. For war summons skill against skill, head against head, staying-power against staying-power, as well as numbers and machines against machines and numbers. When an engine "exerts itself" it spends more power, eats more fuel, but uses no nerve; when a man exerts himself, he must bend his will to it. The extremer the physical effort, the greater the strain on the inner or moral powers. Hence the paradox of war: just because it calls for the maximum material performance, it calls out a maximum of moral resource. As long as guns and bayonets have men behind them, the quality of the men, the quality of their minds and wills, must be counted with the power of the weapons.

And as long as men fight in nations and armies, that subtle but mighty influence that pa.s.ses from man to man, the temper and spirit of the group, must be counted with the quality of the individual citizen and soldier. But how much does this intangible, psychological factor count?

Napoleon in his day reckoned it high: "In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one."

For war, completely seen, is no mere collision of physical forces; it is a collision of will against will. It is, after all, the mind and will of a nation--a thing intangible and invisible--that a.s.sembles the materials of war, the fighting forces, the ordnance, the whole physical array. It is this invisible thing that wages the war; it is this same invisible thing that on one side or the other must admit the finish and so end it.

As things are now, it is the element of "morale" that controls the outcome.

I say, as things are now; for it is certainly not true as a rule of history that will-power is enough to win a war, even when supported by high fighting spirit, brains, and a good conscience: Belgium had all this, and yet was bound to fall before Germany had she stood alone. Her spirit worked miracles at Liege, delayed by ten days the marching program of the German armies, and thereby saved--perhaps Paris, perhaps Europe. But the day was saved because the issue raised in Serbia and in Belgium drew to their side material support until their forces could compare with the physical advantages of the enemy. Morale wins, not by itself, but by turning scales; it has a value like the power of a minority or of a mobile reserve. It adds to one side or the other the last ounce of force which is to its opponent the last straw that breaks its back.

Perhaps the simplest way of explaining the meaning of morale is to say that what "condition" is to the athlete's body, morale is to the mind.

Morale is condition; good morale is good condition of the inner man: it is the state of will in which you can get most from the machinery, deliver blows with the greatest effect, take blows with the least depression, and hold out for the longest time. It is both fighting-power and staying-power and strength to resist the mental infections which fear, discouragement, and fatigue bring with them, such as eagerness for any kind of peace if only it gives momentary relief, or the irritability that sees large the defects in one's own side until they seem more important than the need of defeating the enemy. And it is the perpetual ability to come back.

From this it follows that good morale is not the same as good spirits or enthusiasm. It is anything but the cheerful optimism of early morning, or the tendency to be jubilant at every victory. It has nothing in common with the emotionalism dwelt on by psychologists of the "crowd."

It is hardly to be discovered in the early stages of war. Its most searching test is found in the question, How does war-weariness affect you?

No one going from America to Europe in the last year could fail to notice the wide difference between the mind of nations long at war and that of a nation just entering. Over there, "crowd psychology" had spent itself. There was little flag-waving; the common purveyors of music were not everywhere playing (or allowed to play) the national airs. If in some Parisian cinema the Ma.r.s.eillaise was given, n.o.body stood or sang.

The reports of atrocities roused little visible anger or even talk--they were taken for granted. In short, the simpler emotions had been worn out, or rather had resolved themselves into clear connections between knowledge and action. The people had found the mental gait that can be held indefinitely. Even a great advance finds them on their guard against too much joy. As the news from the second victory of the Marne begins to come in, we find this despatch: "Paris refrains from exultation."

And in the trenches the same is true in even greater degree. All the bravado and illusion of war are gone, also all the nervous revulsion; and in their places a grimly reliable resource of energy held in instant, almost mechanical, readiness to do what is necessary. The hazards which it is useless to speculate about, the miseries, delays, tediums, casualties, have lost their exclamatory value and have fallen into the sullen routine of the day's work. Here it is that morale begins to show in its more vital dimensions. Here the substantial differences between man and man, and between side and side, begin to appear as they can never appear in training camp.

Fitness and readiness to act, the positive element in morale, is a matter not of good and bad alone, but of degree. Persistence, courage, energy, initiative, may vary from zero upward without limit. Perhaps the most important dividing line--one that has already shown itself at various critical points--is that between the willingness to defend and the willingness to attack, between the defensive and the aggressive mentality. It is the difference between docility and enterprise, between a faith at second hand dependent on neighbor or leader, and a faith at first hand capable of a.s.suming for itself the position of leadership.

But readiness to wait, the negative element in morale, is as important as readiness to act, and oftentimes it is a harder virtue. Patience, especially under conditions of ignorance of what may be brewing, is a torment for active and critical minds such as this people is made of.