In effect, the groups to which we belong might be as separate and independent of us as the streets and buildings of a city are from the population. If the inhabitants should migrate in a body, the streets and buildings would remain. This is not true of human groups, but their reaction upon the persons who compose them is no less real and evident. We are in large part what our social set, our church, our political party, our business and professional circles are. This has always been the case from the beginning of the world, and will always be the case. To understand what society is, either in its larger or its smaller parts, and why it is so, and how far it is possible to make it different, we must invariably explain groups on the one hand, no less than individuals on the other. There is a striking illustration in Chicago at present (summer, 1905). Within a short time a certain man has made a complete change in his group-relations. He was one of the most influential trade-union leaders in the city. He has now become the executive officer of an association of employers. In the elements that are not determined by his group-relationships he is the same man that he was before. Those are precisely the elements, however, that may be canceled out of the social problem. All the elements in his personal equation that give him a distinct meaning in the life of the city are given to him by his membership in the one group or the other. Till yesterday he gave all his strength to organizing labor against capital. Now he gives all his strength to the service of capital against labor.
Whatever social problem we confront, whatever persons come into our field of view, the first questions involved will always be: To what groups do these persons belong? What are the interests of these groups? What sort of means do the groups use to promote their interests? How strong are these groups, as compared with groups that have conflicting interests? These questions go to one tap root of all social interpretation, whether in the case of historical events far in the past, or of the most practical problems of our own neighborhood.
It has long been a cardinal problem in sociology to determine just how to conceive in objective terms so very real and palpable a thing as the continuity and persistence of social groups. Looked at as a physical object society appears to be made up of mobile and independent units. The problem is to understand the nature of the bonds that bind these independent units together and how these connections are maintained and transmitted.
Conceived of in its lowest terms the unity of the social group may be compared to that of the plant communities. In these communities, the relation between the individual species which compose it seems at first wholly fortuitous and external. Co-operation and community, so far as it exists, consists merely in the fact that within a given geographical area, certain species come together merely because each happens to provide by its presence an environment in which the life of the other is easier, more secure, than if they lived in isolation. It seems to be a fact, however, that this communal life of the associated plants fulfils, as in other forms of life, a typical series of changes which correspond to growth, decay and death. The plant community comes into existence, matures, grows old, and eventually dies. In doing this, however, it provides by its own death an environment in which another form of community finds its natural habitat. Each community thus precedes and prepares the way for its successor. Under such circumstances the succession of the individual communities itself assumes the character of a life-process.
In the case of the animal and human societies we have all these conditions and forces and something more. The individuals associated in an animal community not only provide, each for the other, a physical environment in which all may live, but the members of the community are organically pre-adapted to one another in ways which are not characteristic of the members of a plant community. As a consequence, the relations between the members of the animal community assume a much more organic character. It is, in fact, a characteristic of animal society that the members of a social group are organically adapted to one another and therefore the organization of animal society is almost wholly transmitted by physical inheritance.
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, association 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 circumstances 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 assimilation is slow, often painful, not always complete.
Between the two extreme poles—the crowd and the state (nation)—between these extreme links of the chain of human association, what are the other intermediate groups, and what are their distinctive characteristics?
Gustave Le Bon thus classifies the different types of crowds (aggregations):
This classification 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, associations, 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 homogeneous crowd, while he classifies parliamentary assemblies 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 assembly.
Turning from this criticism to note without analyzing heterogeneous crowds, let us then proceed to determine the principal characteristics of the three large types of homogeneous crowds, the classes, the castes, the sects.
The heterogeneous crowd is composed of tout le monde, of people like you, like me, like the first passer-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, constitute 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 assemblies. 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 homogeneous 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 homogeneity 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 multitude 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 pass 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 identity of profession. The sect corresponds to the community of faith, the caste to the community of professional ideas. The sect is a spontaneous association; the caste is, in many ways, a forced association. 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 homogeneous 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 button 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 analogy 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 circumstances 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 assuredly 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 analogy is complete.
The class 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 class is community of interests.
Less precise in its limits, more diffuse and less compact than the caste or the sect, the class 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 attitude, and which by its attitude and precepts prepares the brutal blows of mobs.
We speak of the "conflict of the classes," 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 classes 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 classes 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 classes, 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.
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 passes 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 assembles 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 Liége, 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 Marseillaise was given, nobody 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 assuming 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. Yet impetuosity, exceeding of orders, unwillingness to retreat when the general situation demands it, are signs not of good morale but the reverse. They are signs that one's heart cannot be kept up except by the flattering stimulus of always going forward—a state of mind that may cause a commanding officer serious embarrassment, even to making impossible decisive strokes of strategy.
In fact, the better the morale, the more profound its mystery from the utilitarian angle of judgment. There is something miraculous in the power of a bald and unhesitating announcement of reverse to steel the temper of men attuned to making sacrifices and to meeting emergencies. No one can touch the deepest moral resources of an army or nation who does not know the fairly regal exaltation with which it is possible for men to face an issue—if they believe in it. There are times when men seem to have an appetite for suffering, when, to judge from their own demeanor, the best bait fortune could offer them is the chance to face death or to bear an inhuman load. This state of mind does not exist of itself; it is morale at its best, and it appears only when the occasion strikes a nerve which arouses the super-earthly vistas of human consciousness or subconsciousness. But it commonly appears at the summons of a leader who himself welcomes the challenge of the task he sets before his followers. It is the magic of King Alfred in his appeal to his chiefs to do battle with the Danes, when all that he could hold out to them was the prospect of his own vision,
Morale, for all the greater purposes of war, is a state of faith; and its logic will be the superb and elusive logic of human faith. It is for this reason that morale, while not identical with the righteousness of the cause, can never reach its height unless the aim of the war can be held intact in the undissembled moral sense of the people. This is one of the provisions in the deeper order of things for the slow predominance of the better brands of justice.
There are still officers in army and navy—not as many as formerly—who believe exclusively in the morale that works its way into every body of recruits through discipline and the sway of esprit de corps. "They know that they're here to can the Kaiser, and that's all they need to know," said one such officer to me very recently. "After a man has been here two months, the worst punishment you can give him is to tell him he can't go to France right away. The soldier is a man of action; and the less thinking he does, the better." There is an amount of practical wisdom in this; for the human mind has a large capacity for adopting beliefs that fit the trend of its habits and feelings, and this trend is powerfully molded by the unanimous direction of an army's purpose. There is an all but irresistible orthodoxy within a body committed to a war. And the current (pragmatic) psychology referred to, making the intelligence a mere instrument of the will, would seem to sanction the maxim, "First decide, and then think accordingly."
But there are two remarks to be made about this view; first, that in the actual creation of morale within an army corps much thinking is included, and nothing is accomplished without the consent of such thoughts as a man already has. Training does wonders in making morale, when nothing in the mind opposes it. Second, that the morale which is sufficient for purposes of training is not necessarily sufficient for the strains of the field.
The intrinsic weakness of "affective morale," as psychologists call it, is that it puts both sides on the same mental and moral footing: it either justifies our opponents as well as ourselves, or it makes both sides the creatures of irrational emotion.
Crowds are capable of doing reasonless things upon impulse and of adopting creeds without reflection. But an army is not a crowd; still less is a nation a crowd. A mob or crowd is an unorganized group of people governed by less than the average individual intelligence of its members. Armies and nations are groups of people so organized that they are controlled by an intelligence higher than the average. The instincts that lend, and must lend, their immense motive-power to the great purposes of war are the servants, not the masters, of that intelligence.
Interest in the study of "society as it is" has had its source in two different motives. Travelers' tales have always fascinated mankind. The ethnologists began their investigations by criticising and systematizing the novel and interesting observations of travelers in regard to customs, cultures, and behavior of people of different races and nationalities. Their later more systematic investigations were, on the whole, inspired by intellectual curiosity divorced from any overwhelming desire to change the manner of life and social organizations of the societies studied.
The second motive for the systematic observation of actual society came from persons who wanted social reforms but who were forced to realize the futility of Utopian projects. The science of sociology as conceived by Auguste Comte was to substitute fact for doctrines about society. But his attempt to interpret social evolution resulted in a philosophy of history, not a natural science of society.
Herbert Spencer appreciated the fact that the new science of sociology required an extensive body of materials as a basis for its generalizations. Through the work of assistants he set himself the monumental task of compiling historical and cultural materials not only upon primitive and barbarous peoples but also upon the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the French and the English. These data were classified and published in eight large volumes under the title Descriptive Sociology.
The study of human societies was too great to be satisfactorily compassed by the work of one man. Besides that, Spencer, like most English sociologists, was more interested in the progress of civilization than in its processes. Spencer's Sociology is still a philosophy of history rather than a science of society. The philosophy of history took for its unit of investigation and interpretation the evolution of human society as a whole. The present trend in sociology is toward the study of societies rather than society. Sociological research has been directed less to a study of the stages of evolution than to the diagnosis and control of social problems.
Modern sociology's chief inheritance from Comte and Spencer was a problem in logic: What is a society?
Manifestly if the relations between individuals in society are not merely formal, and if society is something more than the sum of its parts, then these relations must be defined in terms of interaction, that is to say, in terms of process. What then is the social process; what are the social processes? How are social processes to be distinguished from physical, chemical, or biological processes? What is, in general, the nature of the relations that need to be established in order to make of individuals in society, members of society? These questions are fundamental since they define the point of view of sociology and describe the sort of facts with which the science seeks to deal. Upon these questions the schools have divided and up to the present time there is no very general consensus among sociologists in regard to them. The introductory chapter to this volume is at once a review of the points of view and an attempt to find answers. In the literature to which reference is made at the close of chapter iii the logical questions involved are discussed in a more thoroughgoing way than has been possible to do in this volume.
Fortunately science does not wait to define its points of view nor solve its theoretical problems before undertaking to analyze and collect the facts. The contrary is nearer the truth. Science collects facts and answers the theoretical questions afterward. In fact, it is just its success in analyzing and collecting facts which throw light upon human problems that in the end justifies the theories of science.
The historian and the philosopher introduced the sociologist to the study of society. But it was the reformer, the social worker, and the business man who compelled him to study the community.
The study of the community is still in its beginnings. Nevertheless, there is already a rapidly growing literature on this topic. Ethnologists have presented us with vivid and detailed pictures of primitive communities as in McGee's The Seri Indians, Jenk's The Bontoc Igorot, Rivers' The Todas. Studies of the village communities of India, of Russia, and of early England have thrown new light upon the territorial factor in the organization of societies.
More recently the impact of social problems has led to the intensive study of modern communities. The monumental work of Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, is a comprehensive description of conditions of social life in terms of the community. In the United States, interest in community study is chiefly represented by the social-survey movement which received impetus from the Pittsburgh Survey of 1907. For sociological research of greater promise than the survey are the several monographs which seek to make a social analysis of the community, as Williams, An American Town, or Galpin, The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community. With due recognition of these auspicious beginnings, it must be confessed that there is no volume upon human communities comparable with several works upon plant and animal communities.
The study of societies is concerned primarily with types of social organization and with attitudes and cultural elements embodied in them. The survey of communities deals essentially with social situations and the problems connected with them.
The study of social groups was a natural outgrowth of the study of the individual. In order to understand the person it is necessary to consider the group. Attention first turned to social institutions, then to conflict groups, and finally to crowds and crowd influences.
Social institutions were naturally the first groups to be studied with some degree of detachment. The work of ethnologists stimulated an interest in social origins. Evolution, though at first a purely biological conception, provoked inquiry into the historical development of social structure. Differences in institutions in contemporary societies led to comparative study. Critics of institutions, both iconoclasts without and reformers within, forced a consideration of their more fundamental aspects.
The first written accounts of conflict groups were quite naturally of the propagandist type both by their defenders and by their opponents. Histories of nationalities, for example, originated in the patriotic motive of national glorification. With the acceptance of objective standards of historical criticism the ground was prepared for the sociological study of nationalities as conflict groups. A school of European sociologists represented by Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, and Novicow stressed conflict as the characteristic behavior of social groups. Beginnings, as indicated in the bibliography, have been made of the study of various conflict groups as gangs, labor unions, parties, and sects.
The interest in the mechanism of the control of the individual by the group has been focused upon the study of the crowd. Tarde and Le Bon in France, Sighele in Italy, and Ross in the United States were the pioneers in the description and interpretation of the behavior of mobs and crowds. The crowd phenomena of the Great War have stimulated the production of several books upon crowds and crowd influences which are, in the main, but superficial and popular elaborations of the interpretations of Tarde and Le Bon. Concrete material upon group behavior has rapidly accumulated, but little or no progress has been made in its sociological explanation.
At present there are many signs of an increasing interest in the study of group behavior. Contemporary literature is featuring realistic descriptions. Sinclair Lewis in Main Street describes concretely the routine of town life with its outward monotony and its inner zest. Newspapers and magazines are making surveys of the buying habits of their readers as a basis for advertising. The federal department of agriculture in co-operation with schools of agriculture is making intensive studies of rural communities. Social workers are conscious that a more fundamental understanding of social groups is a necessary basis for case work and community organization. Surveys of institutions and communities are now being made under many auspices and from varied points of view. All this is having a fruitful reaction upon the sociological theory.
The family is the earliest, the most elementary, and the most permanent of social groups. It has been more completely studied, in all its various aspects, than other forms of human association. Methods of investigation of family life are typical of methods that may be employed in the description of other forms of society. For that reason more attention is given here to studies of family life than it is possible or desirable to give to other and more transient types of social groups.
The descriptions of travelers, of ethnologists and of historians made the first contributions to our knowledge of marriage, ceremonials, and family organization among primitive and historical peoples. Early students of these data devised theories of stages in the evolution of the family. An anthology might be made of the conceptions that students have formulated of the original form of the family, for example, the theory of the matriarchate by Bachofen, of group marriage growing out of earlier promiscuous relations by Morgan, of the polygynous family by Darwin, of pair marriage by Westermarck. An example of the ingenious, but discarded method of arranging all types of families observed in a series representing stages of the evolution is to be found in Morgan's Ancient Society. A survey of families among primitive peoples by Hobhouse, Ginsberg, and Wheeler makes the point that even family life is most varied upon the lower levels of culture, and that the historical development of the family with any people must be studied in relation to the physical and social environment.
The evolutionary theory of the family has, however, furnished a somewhat detached point of view for the criticism of the modern family. Social reformers have used the evolutionary theory as a formula to justify attacks upon the family as an institution and to support the most varied proposals for its reconstruction. Books like Ellen Key's Love and Marriage and Meisel-Hess, The Sexual Crisis are not scientific studies of the family but rather social political philippics directed against marriage and the family.
The interest stimulated by ethnological observation, historical study, and propagandist essays has, however, turned the attention of certain students to serious study of the family and its problems. Howard's History of Matrimonial Institutions is a scholarly and comprehensive treatise upon the evolution of the legal status of the family. Annual statistics of marriage and divorce are now compiled and published by all the important countries except the United States government. In the United States, however, three studies of marriages and divorces have been made; one in 1887-88, by the Department of Labor, covering the twenty years from 1867-86 inclusive; another in 1906-7, by the Bureau of the Census, for the twenty years 1887-1906; and the last, also by the Bureau of the Census, for the year 1916.
The changes in family life resulting from the transition from home industry to the factory system have created new social problems. Problems of woman and child labor, unemployment, and poverty are a product of the machine industry. Attempts to relieve the distress under conditions of city life resulted in the formation of charity organization societies and other philanthropic institutions, and in attempts to control the behavior of the individuals and families assisted. The increasing body of experience gained by social agencies has gradually been incorporated in the technique of the workers. Mary Richmond in Social Diagnosis has analyzed and standardized the procedure of the social case worker.
Less direct but more fundamental studies of family life have been made by other investigators. Le Play, a French social economist, who lived with the families which he observed, introduced the method of the monographic study of the economic organization of family life. Ernst Engel, from his study of the expenditure of Saxon working-class families, formulated so-called "laws" of the relation between family income and family outlay. Recent studies of family incomes and budgets by Chapin, Ogburn, and others have thrown additional light upon the relationship between wages and the standard of living. Interest in the economics of the family is manifested by an increasing number of studies in dietetics, household administration and domestic science.
Westermarck in his History of Human Marriage attempted to write a sociology of the family. Particularly interesting is his attempt to compare the animal family with that of man. The effect of this was to emphasize instinctive and biological aspects of the family rather than its institutional character. The basis for a psychology of family life was first laid in the Studies in the Psychology of Sex by Havelock Ellis. The case studies of individuals by psychoanalysts often lead into family complexes and illuminate the structure of family attitudes and wishes.
The sociological study of the family as a natural and a cultural group is only now in its beginnings. An excellent theoretical study of the family as a unity of interacting members is presented in Bosanquet, The Family. The family as defined in the mores has been described and interpreted, as for example, by Thomas in his analysis of the organization of the large peasant family group in the first two volumes of the Polish Peasant. Materials upon the family in the United States have been brought together by Calhoun in his Social History of the American Family.
While the family is listed by Cooley among primary groups, the notion is gaining ground that it is primary in a unique sense which sets it apart from all other social groups. The biological interdependence and co-operation of the members of the family, intimacies of closest and most enduring contacts have no parallel among other human groups. The interplay of the attractions, tensions, and accommodations of personalities in the intimate bonds of family life have up to the present found no concrete description or adequate analysis in sociological inquiry.
The best case studies of family life at present are in fiction, not in the case records of social agencies, nor yet in sociological literature. Arnold Bennett's trilogy, Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, and These Twain, suggests a pattern not unworthy of consideration by social workers and sociologists. The Pastor's Wife, by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden, is a delightful contrast of English and German mores in their effect upon the intimate relations of family life.
In the absence of case studies of the family as a natural and cultural group the following tentative outline for sociological study is offered:
1. Location and extent in time and space.—Genealogical tree as retained in the family memory; geographical distribution and movement of members of small family group and of large family group; stability or mobility of family; its rural or urban location.
2. Family traditions and ceremonials.—Family romance; family skeleton; family ritual, as demonstration of affection, family events, etc.
3. Family economics.—Family communism; division of labor between members of the family; effect of occupation of its members.
4. Family organization and control.—Conflicts and accommodation; superordination and subordination; typical forms of control—patriarchy, matriarchy, consensus, etc.; family esprit de corps, family morale, family objectives; status in community.
5. Family behavior.—Family life from the standpoint of the four wishes (security, response, recognition, and new experience); family crises; the family and the community; familism versus individualism; family life and the development of personality.
(1) Kistiakowski, Dr. Th. Gesellschaft und Einselwesen; eine methodologische Studie. Berlin, 1899. [A review and criticism of the principal conceptions of society with reference to their value for a natural science of society.]
(2) Barth, Paul. Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie. Leipzig, 1897. [A comparison of the different schools and an attempt to interpret them as essays in the philosophy of history.]
(3) Espinas, Alfred. Des sociétés animales. Paris, 1877. [A definition of society based upon a comparative study of animal associations, communities, and societies.]
(4) Spencer, Herbert. "The Social Organism," Essays, Scientific, Political and Speculative. I, 265-307. New York, 1892. [First published in The Westminster Review for January, 1860.]
(5) Lazarus, M., and Steinthal, H. "Einleitende Gedanken zur Völkerpsychologie als Einladung zu einer Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft," Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, I (1860), 1-73. [This is the most important early attempt to interpret social phenomena from a social psychological point of view. See p. 35 for definition of Volk "the people."]
(6) Knapp, G. Friedrich. "Quételet als Theoretiker," Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, XVIII (1872), 89-124.
(7) Lazarus, M. Das Leben der Seele in Monographien über seine Erscheinungen und Gesetze. Berlin, 1876.
(8) Durkheim, Émile. "Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives," Revue de métaphysique et de morale, VI (1898), 273-302.
(9) Simmel, Georg. Über sociale Differenzierung. Sociologische und psychologische Untersuchungen. Leipzig, 1890.
[See also in Bibliography, chap. i, volumes listed under Systematic Treatises.]
(1) Clements, Frederic E. Plant Succession. An analysis of the development of vegetation. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916.
(2) Wheeler, W. M. "The Ant-Colony as an Organism," Journal of Morphology, XXII (1911), 307-25.
(3) Parmelee, Maurice. The Science of Human Behavior. Biological and Psychological Foundations. New York, 1913. [Bibliography.]
(4) Massart, J., and Vandervelde, É. Parasitism, Organic and Social. 2d ed. Translated by W. Macdonald. Revised by J. Arthur Thomson. London, 1907.
(5) Warming, Eug. Oecology of Plants. An introduction to the study of plant communities. Oxford, 1909. [Bibliography.]
(6) Adams, Charles C. Guide to the Study of Animal Ecology. New York, 1913. [Bibliography.]
(7) Waxweiler, E. "Esquisse d'une sociologie," Travaux de l'Institut de Sociologie (Solvay), Notes et mémoires, Fasc. 2. Bruxelles, 1906.
(8) Reinheimer, H. Symbiosis. A socio-physiological study of evolution. London, 1920.
(1) Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd. A study of the popular mind. London, 1897.
(2) Sighele, S. Psychologie des sectes. Paris, 1898.
(3) Tarde, G. L'opinion et la foule. Paris, 1901.
(4) Fahlbeck, Pontus. Klasserna och Samhallet. Stockholm, 1920. (Book review in American Journal of Sociology, XXVI [1920-21], 633-34.)
(5) Nesfield, John C. Brief View of the Caste System of the North-western Provinces and Oudh. Allahabad, 1885.
(1) Simmel, Georg. "Die Grossstädte und das Geistesleben," Die Grossstadt, Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Städteausstellung, von K. Bücher, F. Ratzel, G. v. Mayr, H. Waentig, G. Simmel, Th. Peterman, und D. Schäfer. Dresden, 1903.
(2) Galpin, C. J. The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community. Madison, Wis., 1915. (Agricultural experiment station of the University of Wisconsin. Research Bulletin 34.) [See also Rural Life, New York, 1918.]
(3) Aronovici, Carol. The Social Survey. Philadelphia, 1916.
(4) McKenzie, R. D. The Neighborhood. A study of local life in Columbus, Ohio. Chicago, 1921 [in press].
(5) Park, Robert E. "The City. Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment," American Journal of Sociology, XX (1914-15), 577-612.
(6) Sims, Newell L. The Rural Community, Ancient and Modern. New York, 1920.
(1) Maine, Sir Henry. Village-Communities in the East and West. London, 1871.
(2) Baden-Powell, H. The Indian Village Community. Examined with reference to the physical, ethnographic, and historical conditions of the provinces. London, 1896.
(3) Seebohm, Frederic. The English Village Community. Examined in its relations to the manorial and tribal systems and to the common or open field system of husbandry. An essay in economic history. London, 1883.
(4) McGee, W. J. "The Seri Indians," Bureau of American Ethnology 17th Annual Report 1895-96. Washington, 1898.
(5) Rivers, W. H. R. The Todas. London and New York, 1906.
(6) Jenks, Albert. The Bontoc Igorot. Manila, 1905.
(7) Stow, John. A Survey of London. Reprinted from the text of 1603 with introduction and notes by C. L. Kingsford. Oxford, 1908.
(8) Booth, Charles. Life and Labour of the People in London, 9 vols. London and New York, 1892-97. 8 additional volumes, 1902.
(9) Kellogg, P. U., ed. The Pittsburgh Survey. Findings in 6 vols. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1909-14.
(10) Woods, Robert. The City Wilderness. A settlement study, south end of Boston. Boston, 1898. ——. Americans in Process. A settlement study, north and west ends of Boston. Boston, 1902.
(11) Kenngott, G. F. The Record of a City. A social survey of Lowell, Massachusetts. New York, 1912.
(12) Harrison, Shelby M., ed. The Springfield Survey. A study of social conditions in an American city. Findings in 3 vols. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1918.
(13) Roberts, Peter. Anthracite Coal Communities. A study of the demography, the social, educational, and moral life of the anthracite regions. New York and London, 1904.
(14) Williams, J. M. An American Town. A sociological study. New York, 1906.
(15) Wilson, Warren H. Quaker Hill. A sociological study. New York, 1907.
(16) Taylor, Graham R. Satellite Cities. A study of industrial suburbs. New York and London, 1915.
(17) Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. New York, 1920.
(18) Kobrin, Leon. A Lithuanian Village. Translated from the Yiddish by Isaac Goldberg. New York, 1920.
(1) Bachofen, J. J. Das Mutterrecht. Eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur. Stuttgart, 1861.
(2) Westermarck, E. The History of Human Marriage. London, 1891.
(3) McLennan, J. F. Primitive Marriage. An inquiry into the origin of the form of capture in marriage ceremonies. Edinburgh, 1865.
(4) Tylor, E. B. "The Matriarchal Family System," Nineteenth Century, XL (1896), 81-96.
(5) Dargun, L. von. Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht. Leipzig, 1892.
(6) Maine, Sir Henry. Dissertations on Early Law and Custom. Chap. vii. London, 1883.
(7) Letourneau, C. The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family. (Trans.) New York, 1891.
(8) Kovalevsky, M. Tableau des origines et de l'évolution de la famille et de la propriété. Stockholm, 1890.
(9) Lowie, Robert H. Primitive Society. New York, 1920.
(10) Starcke, C. N. The Primitive Family in Its Origin and Development. New York, 1889.
(11) Hobhouse, L. T., Wheeler, G. C., and Ginsberg, M. The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples. London, 1915.
(12) Parsons, Elsie Clews. The Family. An ethnographical and historical outline. New York and London, 1906.
(1) Spencer, B., and Gillen, F. J. The Native Tribes of Central Australia. Chap. iii, "Certain Ceremonies Concerned with Marriage," pp. 92-111. London and New York, 1899.
(2) Rivers, W. H. R. Kinship and Social Organization. "Studies in Economics and Political Science," No. 36. In the series of monographs by writers connected with the London School of Economics and Political Science. London, 1914.
(3) Rivers, W. H. R. "Kinship," Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Report. V, 129-47, VI, 92-125.
(4) Kovalevsky, M. "La famille matriarcale au Caucase," L'Anthropologie, IV (1893), 259-78.
(5) Thomas, N. W. Kinship Organizations and Group Marriage in Australia. Cambridge, 1906.
(6) Malinowski, Bronislaw. The Family among the Australian Aborigines. A sociological study. London, 1913.
(1) Frazer, J. G. Totemism and Exogamy. A treatise on certain early forms of superstition and society. London, 1910.
(2) Durkheim, É. "La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," L'année sociologique. I (1896-97), 1-70.
(3) Ploss, H. Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde. Leipzig, 1902.
(4) Lasch, R. "Der Selbstmord aus erotischen Motiven bei den primitiven Völkern," Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, II (1899), 578-85.
(5) Jacobowski, L. "Das Weib in der Poesie der Hottentotten," Globus, LXX (1896), 173-76.
(6) Stoll, O. Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig, 1908.
(7) Crawley, A. E. "Sexual Taboo: A Study in the Relations of the Sexes," The Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XXIV (1894-95), 116-25; 219-35; 430-46.
(8) Simmel, G. "Zur Psychologie der Frauen," Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, XX, 6-46.
(9) Finck, Henry T. Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities. London and New York, 1887.
(10) ——. Primitive Love and Love Stories. New York, 1899.
(11) Kline, L. W. "The Migratory Impulse versus Love of Home," American Journal of Psychology, X (1898-99), 1-81.
(12) Key, Ellen. Love and Marriage. Translated from the Swedish by A. G. Chater; with a critical and biographical introduction by Havelock Ellis. New York and London, 1912.
(13) Meisel-Hess, Grete. The Sexual Crisis. A critique of our sex life. Translated from the German by E. and C. Paul. New York, 1917.
(14) Bloch, Iwan. The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relation to Modern Civilization. Translated from the 6th German ed. by M. Eden Paul. Chap. viii, "The Individualization of Love," pp. 159-76. London, 1908.
(1) Grosse, Ernst. Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirtschaft. Freiburg, 1896.
(2) Le Play, P. G. Frédéric. Les ouvriers européens. Études sur les travaux, la vie domestique, et la condition morale des populations ouvrières de l'Europe. Précédées d'un exposé de la méthode d'observation. Paris, 1855. [Comprises a series of 36 monographs on the budgets of typical families selected from the most diverse industries.]
(3) Le Play, P. G. Frédéric. L'organisation de la famille. Selon le vrai modèle signalé par l'histoire de toutes les races et de tous les temps. Paris, 1871.
(4) Engel, Ernst. Die Lebenskosten belgischer Arbeiter-Familien früher und jetzt. Ermittelt aus Familien-Haushaltrechnungen und vergleichend zusammengestellt. Dresden, 1895.
(5) Chapin, Robert C. The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1909.
(6) Talbot, Marion, and Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. The Modern Household. Rev. ed. Boston, 1919. [Bibliography at the end of each chapter.]
(7) Nesbitt, Florence. Household Management. Preface by Mary E. Richmond. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1918.
(1) Bosanquet, Helen. The Family. London and New York, 1906.
(2) Durkheim, É. "Introduction à la sociologie de la famille." Annales de la faculté des lettres de Bordeaux (1888), 257-81.
(3) ——. "La famille conjugale," Revue philosophique, XLI (1921), 1-14.
(4) Howard, G. E. A History of Matrimonial Institutions Chiefly in England and the United States. With an introductory analysis of the literature and theories of primitive marriage and the family. 3 vols. Chicago, 1904.
(5) Thwing, Charles F. and Carrie F. B. The Family. A historical and social study. Boston, 1887.
(6) Goodsell, Willystine. A History of the Family as a Social and Educational Institution. New York, 1915.
(7) Dealey, J. Q. The Family in Its Sociological Aspects. Boston, 1912.
(8) Calhoun, Arthur W. A Social History of the American Family from Colonial Times to the Present. 3 vols. Cleveland, 1917-19. [Bibliography.]
(9) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. "Primary-Group Organization," I, 87-524, II. Boston, 1918. [A study based on correspondence between members of the family in America and Poland.]
(10) Du Bois, W. E. B. The Negro American Family. Atlanta, 1908. [Bibliography.]
(11) Williams, James M. "Outline of a Theory of Social Motives," American Journal of Sociology, XV (1909-10), 741-80. [Theory of motives based upon observation of rural and urban families.]
(1) Willcox, Walter F. The Divorce Problem. A study in statistics. ("Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law," Vol. I. New York, 1891.)
(2) Lichtenberger, J. P. Divorce. A study in social causation. New York, 1909.
(3) United States Bureau of the Census. Marriage and Divorce, 1867-1906. 2 vols. Washington, 1908-09. [Results of two federal investigations.]
(4) ——. Marriage and Divorce 1916. Washington, 1919.
(5) Eubank, Earle E. A Study in Family Desertion. Department of Public Welfare. Chicago, 1916. [Bibliography.]
(6) Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., and Abbott, Edith. The Delinquent Child and the Home. A study of the delinquent wards of the Juvenile Court of Chicago. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1912.
(7) Colcord, Joanna. Broken Homes. A study of family desertion and its social treatment. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1919.
(8) Kammerer, Percy G. The Unmarried Mother. A study of five hundred cases. Boston, 1918.
(9) Ellis, Havelock. The Task of Social Hygiene. Boston, 1912.
(10) Myerson, Abraham. "Psychiatric Family Studies," American Journal of Insanity, LXXIV (April, 1918), 497-555.
(11) Morrow, Prince A. Social Diseases and Marriage. Social prophylaxis. New York, 1904.
(12) Periodicals on Social Hygiene:
Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, Bd. 1, April, 1914-, Bonn [1915-].
Social Hygiene, Vol. I, December, 1914-, New York [1915-].
Die Neuere Generation, Bd. I, 1908-Berlin [1908-]. Preceded by Mutterschutz, Vols. I-III.
1. Society and the Individual: The Cardinal Problem of Sociology.
2. Historic Conceptions of Society: Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, etc.
3. Plant Communities.
4. Animal Societies: The Ant Colony, the Bee Hive.
5. Animal Communities, or Studies in Animal Ecology.
6. Human Communities, Human Ecology, and Economics.
7. The Natural Areas of the City.
8. Studies in Group Consciousness: National, Sectional, State, Civic.
9. Co-operation versus Consensus.
10. Taming as a Form of Social Control.
11. Domestication among Plants, Animals, and Man.
12. Group Unity and the Different Forms of Consensus: Esprit de corps, Morale, Collective Representations.
13. The Social Nature of Concepts.
14. Conduct and Behavior.
1. What, in your opinion, are the essential elements in Espinas' definition of society?
2. In what sense does society differ from association?
3. According to Espinas' definition, which of the following social relations would constitute society: robber and robbed; beggar and almsgiver; charity organization and recipients of relief; master and slave; employer and employee?
4. What illustrations of symbiosis in human society occur to you?
5. Are changes resulting from human symbiosis changes (a) of structure, or (b) of function?
6. What are the likenesses and the differences between social symbiosis in human and in ant society?
7. What is the difference between taming and domestication?
8. What is the relation of domestication to society?
9. Is man a tamed or a domesticated animal?
10. What are the likenesses between a plant and a human community? What are the differences?
11. What is the fundamental difference between a plant community and an ant society?
12. What are the differences between human and animal societies?
13. Does the ant have customs? ceremonies?
14. Do you think that there is anything akin to public sentiment in ant society?
15. What is the relation of education to social heredity?
16. In what way do you differentiate between the characteristic behavior of machines and human beings?
17. "Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication." Interpret.
18. How does Dewey's definition of society differ from that of Espinas? Which do you prefer? Why?
19. Is consensus synonymous with co-operation?
20. Under what conditions would Dewey characterize the following social relations as society: master and slave; employer and employee; parent and child; teacher and student?
21. In what sense does the communication of an experience to another person change the experience itself?
22. In what sense are concepts social in contrast with sensations which are individual? Would it be possible to have concepts outside of group life?
23. How does Park distinguish between behavior and conduct?
24. In what ways is human society in its origin and continuity based on conduct?
25. To what extent does "the animal nature of man" (Hobhouse) provide a basis for the social organization of life?
26. What, according to Hobhouse, are the differentia of human morality from animal behavior?
27. What do you understand by a collective representation?
28. How do you distinguish between the terms society, social community, and group? Can you name a society that could not be considered as a community? Can you name a community that is not a society?
29. In what, fundamentally, does the unity of the group consist?
30. What groups are omitted in Le Bon's classification of social groups? Make a list of all the groups, formal and informal, of which you are a member. Arrange these groups under the classification given in the General Introduction (p. 50). Compare this classification with that made by Le Bon.
31. How do you distinguish between esprit de corps, morale, and collective representation as forms of consensus?
32. Classify under esprit de corps, morale, or collective representation the following aspects of group behavior: rooting at a football game; army discipline; the flag; college spirit; the so-called "war psychosis"; the fourteen points of President Wilson; "the English never know when they are beaten"; slogans; "Paris refrains from exultation"; crowd enthusiasm; the Golden Rule; "where there's a will there's a way"; Grant's determination, "I'll fight it out this way if it takes all summer"; ideals.
33. "The human mind has a large capacity for adopting beliefs that fit the trends of its habits and feelings." Give concrete illustrations outside of army life.
34. What is the importance of the study of the family as a social group?