Mr. Adams does read them, and when he writes that the newspapers take things much more seriously than they deserve, he has, as the mayor's wife remarked to the queen, said a mouthful. Since the war, especially, editors have come to believe that their highest duty is not to report but to instruct, not to print news but to save civilization, not to publish what Benjamin Harris calls "the Circumstances of Publique Affairs, both abroad and at home," but to keep the nation on the straight and narrow path. Like the kings of England, they have elected themselves Defenders of the Faith. "For five years," says Mr. Cobb of the New York World, "there has been no free play of public opinion in the world. Confronted by the inexorable necessities of war, governments conscripted public opinion. They goose-stepped it. They taught it to stand at attention and salute. It sometimes seems that, after the armistice was signed, millions of Americans must have taken a vow that they would never again do any thinking for themselves. They were willing to die for their country but not willing to think for it." That minority, which is proudly prepared to think for it, and not only prepared but cocksure that it alone knows how to think for it, has adopted the theory that the public should know what is good for it.

The work of reporters has thus become confused with the work of preachers, revivalists, prophets, and agitators. The current theory of American newspaperdom is that an abstraction like the truth and a grace-like fairness must be sacrificed whenever anyone thinks the necessities of civilization require the sacrifice. To Archbishop Whately's dictum that it matters greatly whether you put truth in the first place or the second, the candid expounder of modern journalism would reply that he put truth second to what he conceived to be the national interest. Judged simply by their product, men like Mr. Ochs or Viscount Northcliffe believe that their respective nations will perish and civilization decay unless their idea of what is patriotic is permitted to temper the curiosity of their readers.

They believe that edification is more important than veracity. They believe it profoundly, violently, relentlessly. They preen themselves upon it. To patriotism, as they define it from day to day, all other considerations must yield. That is their pride. And yet what is this but one more among myriad examples of the doctrine that the end justifies the means? A more insidiously misleading rule of conduct was, I believe, never devised among men. It was a plausible rule as long as men believed that an omniscient and benevolent Providence taught them what end to seek. But now that men are critically aware of how their purposes are special to their age, their locality, their interests, and their limited knowledge, it is blazing arrogance to sacrifice hard-won standards of credibility to some special purpose. It is nothing but the doctrine that I want what I want when I want it. Its monuments are the Inquisition and the invasion of Belgium. It is the reason given for every act of unreason, the law invoked whenever lawlessness justifies itself. At bottom it is nothing but the anarchical nature of man imperiously hacking its way through.

Just as the most poisonous form of disorder is the mob incited from high places, the most immoral act the immorality of a government, so the most destructive form of untruth is sophistry and propaganda by those whose profession it is to report the news. The news columns are common carriers. When those who control them arrogate to themselves the right to determine by their own consciences what shall be reported and for what purpose, democracy is unworkable. Public opinion is blockaded. For when a people can no longer confidently repair "to the best fountains for their information," then anyone's guess and anyone's rumor, each man's hope and each man's whim, become the basis of government. All that the sharpest critics of democracy have alleged is true if there is no steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster, must come to any people which is denied an assured access to the facts. No one can manage anything on pap. Neither can a people.

Few episodes in recent history are more poignant than that of the British prime minister, sitting at the breakfast table with that morning's paper before him, protesting that he cannot do the sensible thing in regard to Russia because a powerful newspaper proprietor has drugged the public. That incident is a photograph of the supreme danger which confronts popular government. All other dangers are contingent upon it, for the news is the chief source of the opinion by which government now proceeds. So long as there is interposed between the ordinary citizen and the facts a news organization determining by entirely private and unexamined standards, no matter how lofty, what he shall know, and hence what he shall believe, no one will be able to say that the substance of democratic government is secure. The theory of our constitution, says Mr. Justice Holmes, is that truth is the only ground upon which men's wishes safely can be carried out. In so far as those who purvey the news make of their own beliefs a higher law than truth, they are attacking the foundations of our constitutional system. There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil.

In a few generations it will seem ludicrous to historians that a people professing government by the will of the people should have made no serious effort to guarantee the news without which a governing opinion cannot exist. "Is it possible," they will ask, "that at the beginning of the twentieth century nations calling themselves democracies were content to act on what happened to drift across their doorsteps; that apart from a few sporadic exposures and outcries they made no plans to bring these common carriers under social control, that they provided no genuine training schools for the men upon whose sagacity they were dependent; above all, that their political scientists went on year after year writing and lecturing about government without producing one single, significant study of the process of public opinion?" And then they will recall the centuries in which the church enjoyed immunity from criticism, and perhaps they will insist that the news structure of secular society was not seriously examined for analogous reasons.

7. The Psychology of Propaganda[272]

Paper bullets, according to Mr. Creel, won the war. But they have forever disturbed our peace of mind. The war is long since over, all but saying so; but our consciousness of the immanence of propaganda bids fair to be permanent. It has been discovered by individuals, by associations, and by governments that a certain kind of advertising can be used to mold public opinion and control democratic majorities. As long as public opinion rules the destinies of human affairs, there will be no end to an instrument that controls it.

The tremendous forces of propaganda are now common property. They are available for the unscrupulous and the destructive as well as for the constructive and the moral. This gives us a new interest in its technique, namely, to inquire if anywhere there is an opportunity for regulative and protective interference with its indiscriminate exploitation.

Until recently the most famous historical use of the term propaganda made it synonymous with foreign missions. It was Pope Gregory XV who almost exactly three centuries ago, after many years of preparation, finally founded the great Propaganda College to care for the interests of the church in non-Catholic countries. With its centuries of experience this is probably the most efficient organization for propaganda in the world. Probably most apologetics is propaganda. No religion and no age has been entirely free from it.

One of the classical psychoanalytic case histories is that of Breuer's water glass and the puppy dog. A young lady patient was utterly unable to drink water from a glass. It was a deep embarrassment. Even under the stress of great thirst in warm weather and the earnest effort to break up a foolish phobia, the glass might be taken and raised, but it couldn't be drunk from. Psychoanalysis disclosed the following facts. Underlying this particular phobia was an intense antipathy to dogs. The young lady's roommate had been discovered giving a dog a drink from the common drinking-glass. The antipathy to the dog was simply transferred to the glass.

The case is a commonplace in the annals of hysteria. But let us examine the mechanism. Suppose that I had wanted to keep that drinking-glass for my own personal use. A perfectly simple and effective expedient it would have been in the absence of other good motives to capitalize that antipathy by allowing her to see the dog drink out of the glass. The case would then have been a perfect case of propaganda. All propaganda is capitalized prejudice. It rests on some emotional premise which is the motive force of the process. The emotional transfer is worked by some associative process like similarity, use, or the causal relationship. The derived sympathetic antipathy represents the goal.

The great self-preservative, social, and racial instincts will always furnish the main reservoir of motive forces at the service of propaganda. They will have the widest and the most insistent appeal. Only second to these in importance are the peculiar racial tendencies and historical traditions that represent the genius of a civilization. The racial-superiority consciousness of the Germans operated as a never-ending motive for their "Aushalten" propaganda. We Americans have a notable cultural premise in our consideration for the underdog. Few things outside our consciousness of family will arouse us as surely and as universally as this modification of the protective instinct.

In addition to the group tendencies that arise from a community of experience, individual propaganda may use every phase of individual experience, individual bias and prejudice. I am told that first-class salesmen not infrequently keep family histories of their customers, producing a favorable attitude toward their merchandise by way of an apparent personal interest in the children. Apparently any group of ideas with an emotional valence may become the basis for propaganda.

There are three limitations to the processes of propaganda. The first is emotional recoil, the second is the exhaustion of available motive force, the third is the development of internal resistance or negativism.

The most familiar of the three is emotional recoil. We know only too well what will happen if we tell a boy all the things that he likes to do are "bad," while all the things that he dislikes are "good." Up to a certain point the emotional value of bad and good respectively will be transferred to the acts as we intend. But each transfer has an emotional recoil on the concepts good and bad. At the end a most surprising thing may happen. The moral values may get reversed in the boy's mind. Bad may come to represent the sum total of the satisfactory and desirable, while good may represent the sum total of the unsatisfactory and the undesirable. To the pained adult such a consequence is utterly inexplicable, only because he fails to realize that all mental products are developments. There is always a kind of reciprocity in emotional transfer. The value of the modified factor recoils to the modifying factor.

The whole mechanism of the transfer and of the recoil may best be expressed in terms of the conditioned reflex of Pavlov. The flow of saliva in a dog is a natural consequence to the sight and smell of food. If concurrently with the smelling of food the dog is pinched, the pinch ceases to be a matter for resentment. By a process of emotional transfer, on being pinched the dog may show the lively delight that belongs to the sight and smell of food. Even the salivary secretions may be started by the transfigured pinch. It was the great operating physiologist Sherrington who exclaimed after a visit to Pavlov that at last he understood the psychology of the martyrs. But it is possible so to load the smell of food with pain and damage that its positive value breaks down. Eating-values may succumb to the pain values instead of the pain to the eating-values. This is the prototype of the concept bad when it gets overloaded with the emotional value of the intrinsically desirable. The law of recoil seems to be a mental analogue of the physical law that action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions.

The second limitation to propaganda occurs when the reciprocal effects of transfer exhaust the available motive forces of a mind. Propaganda certainly weakens the forces that are appealed to too often. We are living just now in a world of weakened appeals. Many of the great human motives were exploited to the limit during the war. It is harder to raise money now than it was, harder to find motives for giving that are still effective. One of my former colleagues once surprised and shocked me by replying to some perfectly good propaganda in which I tried to tell him that certain action was in the line of duty, to the effect that he was tired of being told that something was his duty, and that he was resolved not to do another thing because it was his duty. There seems to be evidence that in some quarters, at least, patriotism, philanthropy, and civic duty have been exploited as far as the present systems will carry. It is possible to exhaust our floating capital of social-motive forces. When that occurs we face a kind of moral bankruptcy.

A final stage of resistance is reached when propaganda develops a negativistic defensive reaction. To develop such negativisms is always the aim of counterpropaganda. It calls the opposed propaganda, prejudiced, half-truth, or, as the Germans did, "Lies, All Lies." There is evidence that the moral collapse of Germany under the fire of our paper bullets came with the conviction that they had been systematically deceived by their own propagandists.

There are two great social dangers in propaganda. Great power in irresponsible hands is always a social menace. We have some legal safeguards against careless use of high-powered physical explosives. Against the greater danger of destructive propaganda there seems to be little protection without imperiling the sacred principles of free speech.

The second social danger is the tendency to overload and level down every great human incentive in the pursuit of relatively trivial ends. To become blasé is the inevitable penalty of emotional exploitation. I believe there may well be grave penalties in store for the reckless commercialized exploitation of human emotions in the cheap sentimentalism of our moving pictures. But there are even graver penalties in store for the generation that permits itself to grow morally blasé. One of our social desiderata, it seems to me, is the protection of the great springs of human action from destructive exploitation for selfish, commercial, or other trivial ends.

The slow constructive process of building moral credits by systematic education lacks the picturesqueness of propaganda. It also lacks its quick results. But just as the short cut of hypnotism proved a dangerous substitute for moral training, so I believe we shall find that not only is moral education a necessary precondition for effective propaganda, but that in the end it is a safer and incomparably more reliable social instrument.

C. INSTITUTIONS

1. Institutions and the Mores[273]

Institutions and laws are produced out of mores. An institution consists of a concept (idea, notion, doctrine, interest) and a structure. The structure is a framework, or apparatus, or perhaps only a number of functionaries set to co-operate in prescribed ways at a certain conjuncture. The structure holds the concept and furnishes instrumentalities for bringing it into the world of facts and action in a way to serve the interests of men in society. Institutions are either crescive or enacted. They are crescive when they take shape in the mores, growing by the instinctive efforts by which the mores are produced. Then the efforts, through long use, become definite and specific.

Property, marriage, and religion are the most primary institutions. They began in folkways. They became customs. They developed into mores by the addition of some philosophy of welfare, however crude. Then they were made more definite and specific as regards the rules, the prescribed acts, and the apparatus to be employed. This produced a structure and the institution was complete. Enacted institutions are products of rational invention and intention. They belong to high civilization. Banks are institutions of credit founded on usages which can be traced back to barbarism. There came a time when, guided by rational reflection on experience, men systematized and regulated the usages which had become current, and thus created positive institutions of credit, defined by law and sanctioned by the force of the state. Pure enacted institutions which are strong and prosperous are hard to find. It is too difficult to invent and create an institution, for a purpose, out of nothing. The electoral college in the Constitution of the United States is an example. In that case the democratic mores of the people have seized upon the device and made of it something quite different from what the inventors planned. All institutions have come out of mores, although the rational element in them is sometimes so large that their origin in the mores is not to be ascertained except by a historical investigation (legislatures, courts, juries, joint-stock companies, the stock exchange). Property, marriage, and religion are still almost entirely in the mores. Amongst nature men any man might capture and hold a woman at any time, if he could. He did it by superior force which was its own supreme justification. But his act brought his group and her group into war, and produced harm to his comrades. They forbade capture, or set conditions for it. Beyond the limits, the individual might still use force, but his comrades were no longer responsible. The glory to him, if he succeeded, might be all the greater. His control over his captive was absolute. Within the prescribed conditions, "capture" became technical and institutional, and rights grew out of it. The woman had a status which was defined by custom, and was very different from the status of a real captive. Marriage was the institutional relation, in the society and under its sanction, of a woman to a man, where the woman had been obtained in the prescribed way. She was then a "wife." What her rights and duties were was defined by the mores, as they are today in all civilized society.

Acts of legislation come out of the mores. In low civilization all societal regulations are customs and taboos, the origin of which is unknown. Positive laws are impossible until the stage of verification, reflection, and criticism is reached. Until that point is reached there is only customary law, or common law. The customary law may be codified and systematized with respect to some philosophical principles, and yet remain customary. The codes of Manu and Justinian are examples. Enactment is not possible until reverence for ancestors has been so much weakened that it is no longer thought wrong to interfere with traditional customs by positive enactment. Even then there is reluctance to make enactments, and there is a stage of transition during which traditional customs are extended by interpretation to cover new cases and to prevent evils. Legislation, however, has to seek standing ground on the existing mores, and it soon becomes apparent that legislation, to be strong, must be consistent with the mores. Things which have been in the mores are put under police regulation and later under positive law. It is sometimes said that "public opinion" must ratify and approve police regulations, but this statement rests on an imperfect analysis. The regulations must conform to the mores, so that the public will not think them too lax or too strict. The mores of our urban and rural populations are not the same; consequently legislation about intoxicants which is made by one of these sections of the population does not succeed when applied to the other. The regulation of drinking-places, gambling-places, and disorderly houses has passed through the above-mentioned stages. It is always a question of expediency whether to leave a subject under the mores, or to make a police regulation for it, or to put it into the criminal law. Betting, horse racing, dangerous sports, electric cars, and vehicles are cases now of things which seem to be passing under positive enactment and out of the unformulated control of the mores. When an enactment is made there is a sacrifice of the elasticity and automatic self-adaptation of custom, but an enactment is specific and is provided with sanctions. Enactments come into use when conscious purposes are formed, and it is believed that specific devices can be framed by which to realize such purposes in the society. Then also prohibitions take the place of taboos, and punishments are planned to be deterrent rather than revengeful. The mores of different societies, or of different ages, are characterized by greater of less readiness and confidence in regard to the use of positive enactments for the realization of societal purposes.

2. Common Law and Statute Law[274]

It probably would have surprised the early Englishman if he had been told that either he or anybody else did not know the law—still more that there was ever any need for any parliament or assembly to tell him what it was. They all knew the law, and they all knew that they knew the law, and the law was a thing that they knew as naturally as they knew fishing and hunting. They had grown up into it. It never occurred to them as an outside thing.

So it has been found that where you take children, modern children, at least boys who are sons of educated parents, and put them in large masses by themselves, they will, without apparently any reading, rapidly invent a notion of law; that is, they will invent a certain set of customs which are the same thing to them as law, and which indeed are the same as law. They have tried in Johns Hopkins University experiments among children, to leave them entirely alone, without any instruction, and it is quite singular how soon customs will grow up, and it is also quite singular, and a thing that always surprises the socialist and communist, that about the earliest concept at which they will arrive is that of private property! They will soon get a notion that one child owns a stick, or toy, or seat, and the others must respect that property. This I merely use as an illustration to show how simple the notion of law was among our ancestors in England fifteen hundred years ago, and how it had grown up with them, of course, from many centuries, but in much the same way that the notion of custom or law grows up among children.

The "law" of the free Angelo-Saxon people was regarded as a thing existing by itself, like the sunlight, or at least as existing like a universally accepted custom observed by everyone. It was five hundred years before the notion crept into the minds, even of the members of the British Parliaments, that they could make a new law. What they supposed they did, and what they were understood by the people to do, was merely to declare the law, as it was then and as it had been from time immemorial; the notion always being—and the farther back you go and the more simple the people are, the more they have that notion—that their free laws and customs were something which came from the beginning of the world, which they always held, which were immutable, no more to be changed than the forces of nature; and that no Parliament, under the free Angelo-Saxon government or later under the Norman kings who tried to make them unfree, no king could ever make a law but could only declare what the law was. The Latin phrase for that distinction is jus dare, and jus dicere. In early England, in Anglo-Saxon times, the Parliament never did anything but tell what the law was; and, as I have said, not only what it was then but what it had been, as they supposed, for thousands of years before. The notion of a legislature to make new laws is an entirely modern conception of Parliament.

The notion of law as a statute, a thing passed by a legislature, a thing enacted, made new by representative assembly, is perfectly modern, and yet it has so thoroughly taken possession of our minds, and particularly of the American mind (owing to the forty-eight legislatures that we have at work, besides the national Congress, every year, and to the fact that they try to do a great deal to deserve their pay in the way of enacting laws), that statutes have assumed in our minds the main bulk of the concept of law as we formulate it to ourselves.

Statutes with us are recent, legislatures making statutes are recent everywhere; legislatures themselves are fairly recent; that is, they date only from the end of the Dark Ages, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries. Representative government itself is supposed, by most scholars, to be the one invention that is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon people.

I am quite sure that all the American people when they think of law in the sense I am now speaking of, even when they are not thinking necessarily of statute law, do mean, nevertheless, a law which is enforced by somebody with power, somebody with a big stick. They mean a law, an ordinance, an order or dictate addressed to them by a sovereign, or at least by a power of some sort, and they mean an ordinance which if they break they are going to suffer for, either in person or in property. In other words, they have a notion of law as a written command addressed by the sovereign to the subject, or at least by one of the departments of government to the citizen. Now that, I must caution you, is in the first place rather a modern notion of law, quite modern in England; it is really Roman, and was not law as it was understood by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. He did not think of law as a thing written, addressed to him by the king. Neither did he necessarily think of it as a thing which had any definite punishment attached or any code attached, any "sanction," as we call it, or thing which enforces the law; a penalty or fine or imprisonment. There are just as good "sanctions" for law outside of the sanctions that our people usually think of as there are inside of them, and often very much better; for example, the sanction of a strong custom. Take any example you like; there are many states where marriage between blacks and whites is not made unlawful but where practically it is made tremendously unlawful by the force of public opinion [mores]. Take the case of debts of honor, so called, debts of gambling; they are paid far more universally than ordinary commercial debts, even by the same people; but there is no law enforcing them—there is no sanction for the collection of gambling debts. And take any custom that grows up. We know how strong our customs in college are. Take the mere custom of a club table; no one dares or ventures to supplant the members at that table. That kind of sanction is just as good a law as a law made by statute and imposing five or ten dollars' penalty or a week's imprisonment. And judges or juries recognize those things as laws, just as much as they do statute laws; when all other laws are lacking, our courts will ask what is the "custom of the trade." These be laws, and are often better enforced than the statute law; the rules of the New York Stock Exchange are better enforced than the laws of the state legislature. Now all our early Anglo-Saxon law was law of that kind. For the law was but universal custom, and that custom had no sanction; but for breach of the custom anybody could make personal attack, or combine with his friends to make attack, on the person who committed the breach, and then, when the matter was taken up by the members of both tribes, and finally by the witenagemot as a judicial court, the question was, what the law was. That was the working of the old Anglo-Saxon law, and it was a great many centuries before the notion of law changed from that in their minds. And this "unwritten law" perdures in the minds of many of the people today.

3. Religion and Social Control[275]

As a social fact religion is, indeed, not something apart from mores or social standards; it is these as regarded as "sacred." Strictly speaking there is no such thing as an unethical religion. We judge some religions as unethical because the mores of which they approve are not our mores, that is, the standards of higher civilization. All religions are ethical, however, in the sense that without exception they support customary morality, and they do this necessarily because the values which the religious attitude of mind universalizes and makes absolute are social values. Social obligations thus early become religious obligations. In this way religion becomes the chief means of conserving customs and habits which have been found to be safe by society or which are believed to conduce to social welfare.

As the guardian of the mores, religion develops prohibitions and "taboos" of actions of which the group, or its dominant class, disapproves. It may lend itself, therefore, to maintaining a given social order longer than that order is necessary, or even after it has become a stumbling-block to social progress. For the same reason it may be exploited by a dominant class in their own interest. It is in this way that religion has often become an impediment to progress and an instrument of class oppression. This socially conservative side of religion is so well known and so much emphasized by certain writers that it scarcely needs even to be mentioned. It is the chief source of the abuses of religion, and in the modern world is probably the chief cause of the deep enmity which religion has raised up for itself in a certain class of thinkers who see nothing but its negative and conservative side.

There is no necessity, however, for the social control which religion exerts being of a non-progressive kind. The values which religion universalizes and makes absolute may as easily be values which are progressive as those which are static. In a static society which emphasizes prohibitions and the conservation of mere habit or custom, religion will also, of course, emphasize the same things; but in a progressive society religion can as easily attach its sanctions to social ideals and standards beyond the existing order as to those actually realized. Such an idealistic religion will, however, have the disadvantages of appealing mainly to the progressive and idealizing tendencies of human nature rather than to its conservative and reactionary tendencies. Necessarily, also, it will appeal more strongly to those enlightened classes in society who are leading in social progress rather than to those who are content with things as they are. This is doubtless the main reason why progressive religions are exceedingly rare in human history, taking it as a whole, and have appeared only in the later stages of cultural evolution.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons for believing that the inevitable evolution of religion has been in a humanitarian direction, and that there is an intimate connection between social idealism and the higher religions. There are two reasons for this generalization. The social life becomes more complex with each succeeding stage of upward development, and groups have therefore more need of commanding the unfailing devotion of their members if they are to maintain their unity and efficiency as groups. More and more, accordingly, religion in its evolution has come to emphasize the self-effacing devotion of the individual to the group in times of crisis. And as the complexity of social life increases, the crises increase in which the group must ask the unfailing service and devotion of its members. Thus religion in its upward evolution becomes increasingly social, until it finally comes to throw supreme emphasis upon the life of service and of self-sacrifice for the sake of the group; and as the group expands from the clan and the tribe to humanity, religion necessarily becomes less tribal and more humanitarian until the supreme object of the devotion which it inculcates must ultimately be the whole of humanity.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Social Control and Human Nature

Society, so far as it can be distinguished from the individuals that compose it, performs for those individuals the function of a mind. Like mind in the individual man, society is a control organization. Evidence of mind in the animal is the fact that it can make adjustments to new conditions. The evidence that any group of persons constitutes a society is the fact that the group is able to act with some consistency, and as a unit. It follows that the literature on social control, in the widest extension of that term, embraces most that has been written and all that is fundamental on the subject of society. In chapter ii, "Human Nature," and the later chapters on "Interaction" and its various forms, "Conflict," "Accommodation," and "Assimilation," points of view and literature which might properly be included in an adequate study of social control have already been discussed. The present chapter is concerned mainly with ceremonial, public opinion, and law, three of the specific forms in which social control has universally found expression.

Sociology is indebted to Edward Alsworth Ross for a general term broad enough to include all the special forms in which the solidarity of the group manifests itself. It was his brilliant essay on the subject published in 1906 that popularized the term social control. The materials for such a general, summary statement had already been brought together by Sumner and published in 1906 in his Folkways. This volume, in spite of its unsystematic character, must still be regarded as the most subtle analysis and suggestive statement about human nature and social relations that has yet been written in English.

A more systematic and thoroughgoing review of the facts and literature, however, is Hobhouse's Morals in Evolution. After Hobhouse the next most important writer is Westermarck, whose work, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, published in 1906, was a pioneer in this field.

2. Elementary Forms of Social Control

Literature upon elementary forms of social control includes materials upon ceremonies, taboo, myth, prestige, and leadership. These are characterized as elementary because they have arisen spontaneously everywhere out of original nature. The conventionalized form in which we now find them has arisen in the course of their repetition and transmission from one generation to another and from one culture group to another. The fact that they have been transmitted over long periods of time and wide areas of territory is an indication that they are the natural vehicle for the expression of fundamental human impulses.

It is quite as true of leadership, as it is of myth and prestige, that it springs directly out of an emotional setting. The natural leaders are never elected and leadership is, in general, a matter that cannot be rationally controlled.

The materials upon ceremony, social ritual, and fashion are large in comparison with the attempts at a systematic study of the phenomena. Herbert Spencer's chapter on "Ceremonial Government," while it interprets social forms from the point of view of the individual rather than of the group, is still the only adequate survey of the materials in this special field.

Ethnology and folklore have accumulated an enormous amount of information in regard to primitive custom which has yet to be interpreted from the point of view of more recent studies of human nature and social life. The most important collections are Frazer's Golden Bough and his Totemism and Exogamy. Crawley's The Mystic Rose is no such monument of scholarship and learning as Frazer's Golden Bough, but it is suggestive and interesting.

Prestige and taboo represent fundamental human traits whose importance is by no means confined to the life of primitive man where, almost exclusively hitherto, they have been observed and studied.

The existing literature on leadership, while serving to emphasize the importance of the leader as a factor in social organization and social process, is based on too superficial an analysis to be of permanent scientific value. Adequate methods for the investigation of leadership have not been formulated. In general it is clear, however, that leadership must be studied in connection with the social group in which it arises and that every type of group will have a different type of leader. The prophet, the agitator, and the political boss are types of leaders in regard to whom there already are materials available for study and interpretation. A study of leadership should include, however, in addition to the more general types, like the poet, the priest, the tribal chieftain, and the leader of the gang, consideration of leadership in the more specific areas of social life, the precinct captain, the promoter, the banker, the pillar of the church, the football coach, and the society leader.

3. Public Opinion and Social Control

Public opinion, "the fourth estate" as Burke called it, has been appreciated, but not studied. The old Roman adage, Vox populi, vox dei, is a recognition of public opinion as the ultimate seat of authority. Public opinion has been elsewhere identified with the "general will." Rousseau conceived the general will to be best expressed through a plebiscite at which a question was presented without the possibilities of the divisive effects of public discussion. The natural impulses of human nature would make for more uniform and beneficial decisions than the calculated self-interest that would follow discussion and deliberation. English liberals like John Stuart Mill, of the latter half of the nineteenth century, looked upon freedom of discussion and free speech as the breath of life of a free society, and that tradition has come down to us a little shaken by recent experience, but substantially intact.

The development of advertising and of propaganda, particularly during and since the world-war, has aroused a great many misgivings, nevertheless, in regard to the traditional freedom of the press. Walter Lippmann's thoughtful little volume, Liberty and the News, has stated the whole problem in a new form and has directed attention to an entirely new field for observation and study.

De Tocqueville, in his study of the early frontier, Democracy in America, and James Bryce, in his American Commonwealth, have contributed a good deal of shrewd observation to our knowledge of the rôle of political opinion in the United States. The important attempts in English to define public opinion as a social phenomenon and study it objectively are A. V. Dicey's Law and Opinion in England in the Nineteenth Century and A. Lawrence Lowell's Public Opinion and Popular Government. Although Dicey's investigation is confined to England and to the nineteenth century, his analysis of the facts throws new light on the nature of public opinion in general. The intimate relation between the press and parliamentary government in England is revealed in an interesting historical monograph by Michael Macdonagh, The Reporters' Gallery.

4. Legal Institutions and Law

Public law came into existence in an effort of the community to deal with conflict. In achieving this result, however, courts of law invariably have sought to make their decisions first in accordance with precedent, and second in accordance with common sense. The latter insured that the law would be administered equitably; the former that interpretations of the law would be consistent. Post says:

If these motives are the materials with which the administration of justice has to deal, the legal motive which has invariably controlled the courts is something quite different. The courts in the administration of law have invariably sought, above all else, to achieve consistency. It is an ancient maxim of English law that "it is better that the law should be certain than that the law should be just."[277]

The conception implicit in the law is that the rule laid down in one case must apply in every similar case. In the effort to preserve this consistency in a constantly increasing variety of cases the courts have been driven to the formulation of principles, increasingly general and abstract, to multiply distinctions and subtleties, and to operate with legal fictions. All this effort to make the law a rationally consistent system was itself inconsistent with the conception that law, like religion, had a natural history and was involved, like language, in a process of growth and decay. It is only in recent years that comparative jurisprudence has found its way into the law schools. Although there is a vast literature upon the subject of the history of the law, Maine's Ancient Law, published in 1861, is still the classic work in this field in English.

More recently there has sprung up a school of "legal ethnology." The purpose of these studies is not to trace the historical development, of the law, but to seek in the forms in use in isolated and primitive societies materials which will reveal, in their more elementary expressions, motives and practices that are common to legal institutions of every people. In the Preface to a recent volume of Select Readings on the Origin and Development of Legal Institutions, the editors venture the statement, in justification of the materials from sociology that these volumes include, that "contrary, perhaps, to legal tradition, the law itself is only a social phenomenon and not to be understood in detachment from human uses, necessities and forces from which it arises." Justice Holmes's characterization of law as "a great anthropological document" seems to support that position.

Law in its origin is related to religion. The first public law was that which enforced the religious taboos, and the ceremonial purifications and expiations were intended to protect the community from the divine punishment for any involuntary disrespect or neglect of the rites due the gods which were the first crimes to be punished by the community as a whole, and for the reason that failure to punish or expiate them would bring disaster upon the community as a whole.

Maine says that the earliest conceptions of law or a rule of life among the Greeks are contained in the Homeric words Themis and Themistes.

It is only in recent times, with the gradual separation of the function of the church and the state, that legal institutions have acquired a character wholly secular. Within the areas of social life that are represented on the one hand by religion and on the other by law are included all the sanctions and the processes by which society maintains its authority and imposes its will upon its individual members.[279]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. SOCIAL CONTROL AND HUMAN NATURE

(1) Maine, Henry S. Dissertations on Early Law and Custom. New York, 1886.

(2) Kocourek, Albert, and Wigmore, John H., editors. Evolution of Law. Select readings on the origin and development of legal institutions. Vol. I, "Sources of Ancient and Primitive Law." Vol. II, "Primitive and Ancient Legal Institutions." Vol. III, "Formative Influences of Legal Development." Boston, 1915.

(3) Sumner, W. G. Folkways. A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. Boston, 1906.

(4) Letourneau, Ch. L'Évolution de la morale. Paris, 1887.

(5) Westermarck, Edward. The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 2 vols. London, 1906-8.

(6) Hobhouse, L. T. Morals in Evolution. New ed. A study in comparative ethics. New York, 1915.

(7) Durkheim, Émile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. A study in religious sociology. Translated from the French by J. W. Swain. London, 1915.

(8) Novicow, J. Conscience et volonté sociales. Paris, 1897.

(9) Ross, Edward A. Social Control. A survey of the foundations of order. New York, 1906.

(10) Bernard, Luther L. The Transition to an Objective Standard of Social Control. Chicago, 1911.

II. ELEMENTARY FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

A. Leadership

(1) Woods, Frederick A. The Influence of Monarchs. Steps in a new science of history. New York, 1913.

(2) Smith, J. M. P. The Prophet and His Problems. New York, 1914.

(3) Walter, F. Die Propheten in ihrem sozialen Beruf und das Wirtschaftsleben ihrer Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sozialethik. Freiburg-in-Brisgau, 1900.

(4) Vierkandt, A. "Führende Individuen bei den Naturvölkern," Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, XI (1908), 542-53, 623-39.

(5) Dixon, Roland B. "Some Aspects of the American Shaman," The Journal of American Folk-Lore, XXI (1908), 1-12.

(6) Kohler, Josef. Philosophy of Law. (Albrecht's translation.) "Cultural Importance of Chieftainry." "Philosophy of Law Series," Vol. XII. [Reprinted in the Evolution of Law, II, 96-103.]

(7) Fustel de Coulanges. The Ancient City, Book III, chap. ix, "The Government of the City. The King," pp. 231-39. Boston, 1896.

(8) Leopold, Lewis. Prestige. A psychological study of social estimates. London, 1913.

(9) Clayton, Joseph. Leaders of the People. Studies in democratic history. London, 1910.

(10) Brent, Charles H. Leadership. New York, 1908.

(11) Rothschild, Alonzo. Lincoln: Master of Men. A study in character. Boston, 1906.

(12) Mumford, Eben. The Origins of Leadership. Chicago, 1909.

(13) Ely, Richard T. The World War and Leadership in a Democracy. New York, 1918.

(14) Terman, L. M. "A Preliminary Study of the Psychology and Pedagogy of Leadership," Pedagogical Seminary, XI (1904), 413-51.

(15) Miller, Arthur H. Leadership. A study and discussion of the qualities most to be desired in an officer. New York, 1920.

(16) Gowin, Enoch B. The Executive and His Control of Men. A study in personal efficiency. New York, 1915.

(17) Cooley, Charles H. "Genius, Fame and the Comparison of Races," Annals of the American Academy, IX (1897), 317-58.

(18) Odin, Alfred. Genèse des grands hommes, gens de lettres français modernes. Paris, 1895. [See Ward, Lester F., Applied Sociology, for a statement in English of Odin's study.]

(19) Kostyleff, N. Le Mécanisme cérébral de la pensée. Paris, 1914. [This is a study of the mechanism of the inspiration of poets and writers of romance.]

(20) Chabaneix, Paul. Physiologie cérébrale. Le subconscient chez les artistes, les savants, et les écrivains. Bordeaux, 1897-98.

B. Ceremony, Rites, and Ritual

(1) Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Sociology, Part IV, "Ceremonial Institutions." Vol. II, pp. 3-225. London, 1893.

(2) Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture. Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. Chap. xviii, "Rites and Ceremonies," pp. 362-442. New York, 1874.

(3) Frazer, J. G. Totemism and Exogamy. A treatise on certain early forms of superstition and society. 4 vols. London, 1910.

(4) Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. Resemblances between the psychic life of savages and neurotics. Authorized translation from the German by A. A. Brill. New York, 1918.

(5) James, E. O. Primitive Ritual and Belief. An anthropological essay. With an introduction by R. R. Marett. London, 1917.

(6) Brinton, Daniel G. The Religious Sentiment: Its Source and Aim. A contribution to the science and philosophy of religion. Chap. vi, "The Cult, Its Symbols and Rites," pp. 197-227. New York, 1876.

(7) Frazer, J. G. Golden Bough. A study in magic and religion. Part VI, "The Scapegoat." 3d ed. London, 1913.

(8) Nassau, R. H. Fetichism in West Africa. Forty years' observation of native customs and superstitions. New York, 1907.

(9) Hubert, H., and Mauss, M. "Essai sur la nature et la fonction de sacrifice," L'Année sociologique, II (1897-98), 29-138.

(10) Farnell, L. R. The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion. New York, 1912.

(11) ——. The Cults of the Greek States. 5 vols. Oxford, 1896-1909.

(12) ——. "Religious and Social Aspects of the Cult of Ancestors and Heroes," Hibbert Journal, VII (1909), 415-35.

(13) Harrison, Jane E. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. Cambridge, 1903.

(14) De-Marchi, A. Il Culto privato di Roma antica. Milano, 1896.

(15) Oldenberg, H. Die Religion des Veda. Part III, "Der Cultus," pp. 302-523. Berlin, 1894.

C. Taboo

(1) Thomas, N. W. Article on "Taboo" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, XXVI, 337-41.

(2) Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough. A study in magic and religion. Part II, "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul." London, 1911.

(3) Kohler, Josef. Philosophy of Law. "Taboo as a Primitive Substitute for Law." "Philosophy of Law Series," Vol. XII. Boston, 1914. [Reprinted in Evolution of Law, II, 120-21.]

(4) Crawley, A. E. "Sexual Taboo," Journal of Anthropological Institute, XXIV (London, 1894), 116-25, 219-35, 430-45.

(5) Gray, W. "Some Notes on the Tannese," Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, VII (1894), 232-37.

(6) Waitz, Theodor, und Gerland, Georg. Anthropologie der Naturvölker, VI, 343-63. 6 vols. Leipzig, 1862-77.

(7) Tuchmann, J. "La Fascination," Mélusine, II (1884-85), 169-175, 193-98, 241-50, 350-57, 368-76, 385-87, 409-17, 457-64, 517-24; III (1886-87), 49-56, 105-9, 319-25, 412-14, 506-8.

(8) Durkheim, É. "La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," L'Année sociologique, I (1896-97), 38-70.

(9) Crawley, A. E. "Taboos of Commensality," Folk-Lore, VI (1895), 130-44.

(10) Hubert, H., and Mauss, M. "Le Mana," L'Année sociologique, VII (1902-3), 108-22.

(11) Codrington, R. H. The Melanesians. Studies in their anthropology and folklore. "Mana," pp. 51-58, 90, 103, 115, 118-24, 191, 200, 307-8. Oxford, 1891.

D. Myths

(1) Sorel, Georges. Reflections on Violence. Chap. iv, "The Proletarian Strike," pp. 126-67. Translated from the French by T. E. Hulme. New York, 1912.

(2) Smith, W. Robertson. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. "Ritual, Myth and Dogma," pp. 16-24. New ed. London, 1907.

(3) Harrison, Jane E. Themis. A study of the social origins of Greek religion. Cambridge, 1912.

(4) Clodd, Edward. The Birth and Growth of Myth. Humboldt Library of Popular Science Literature. New York, 1888.

(5) Gennep, A. van. La Formation des légendes. Paris, 1910.

(6) Langenhove, Fernand van. The Growth of a Legend. A study based upon the German accounts of francs-tireurs and "atrocities" in Belgium. With a preface by J. Mark Baldwin. New York, 1916.

(7) Case, S. J. The Millennial Hope. Chicago, 1918.

(8) Abraham, Karl. Dreams and Myths. Translated from the German by W. A. White. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series," No. 15. Washington, 1913.

(9) Pfister, Oskar. The Psychoanalytic Method. Translated from the German by C. R. Payne. Pp. 410-15. New York, 1917.

(10) Jung, C. G. Psychology of the Unconscious. A study of the transformations and symbolisms of the libido. A contribution to the history of the evolution of thought. Authorized translation from the German by Beatrice M. Hinkle. New York, 1916.

(11) Brinton, Daniel G. The Religious Sentiment: Its Source and Aim. A contribution to the science and philosophy of religion. Chap. v, "The Myth and the Mythical Cycles," pp. 153-96. New York, 1876.

(12) Rivers, W. H. R. "The Sociological Significance of Myth," Folk-Lore, XXIII (1912), 306-31.

(13) Rank, Otto. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. A psychological interpretation of mythology. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series," No. 18. Translated from the German by Drs. F. Robbins and Smith E. Jelliffe. Washington, 1914.

(14) Freud, Sigmund. "Der Dichter und das Phantasieren," Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. 2d ed. Wien, 1909.

III. PUBLIC OPINION AND SOCIAL CONTROL

A. Materials for the Study of Public Opinion

(1) Lowell, A. Lawrence. Public Opinion and Popular Government. New York, 1913.

(2) Tarde, Gabriel. L'Opinion et la foule. Paris, 1901.

(3) Le Bon, Gustave. Les Opinions et les croyances; genèse-évolution. Paris, 1911. [Discusses the formation of public opinion, trends, etc.]

(4) Bauer, Wilhelm. Die öffentliche Meinung und ihre geschichtlichen Grundlagen. Tübingen, 1914.

(5) Dicey, A. V. Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century. 2d ed. London, 1914.

(6) Shepard, W. J. "Public Opinion," American Journal of Sociology, XV (1909), 32-60.

(7) Tocqueville, Alexius de. The Republic of the United States of America. Book IV. "Influence of Democratic Opinion on Political Society," pp. 306-55. 2 vols. in one. New York, 1858.

(8) Bryce, James. The American Commonwealth, Vol. II, Part IV, "Public Opinion," pp. 239-64. Chicago, 1891.

(9) ——. Modern Democracies. 2 vols. New York, 1921.

(10) Lecky, W. E. H. Democracy and Liberty. New York, 1899.

(11) Godkin, Edwin L. Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy. Boston, 1898.

(12) Sageret, J. "L'opinion," Revue philosophique, LXXXVI (1918), 19-38.

(13) Bluntschli, Johann K. Article on "Public Opinion," Lalor's Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy and of the Political History of the United States. Vol. III, pp. 479-80.

(14) Lewis, George C. An Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion. London, 1849.

(15) Jephson, Henry. The Platform. Its rise and progress. 2 vols. London, 1892.

(16) Junius. (Pseud.) The Letters of Junius. Woodfall's ed., revised by John Wade. 2 vols. London, 1902.

(17) Woodbury, Margaret. Public Opinion in Philadelphia, 1789-1801. "Smith College Studies in History." Vol. V. Northampton, Mass., 1920.

(18) Heaton, John L. The Story of a Page. Thirty years of public service and public discussion in the editorial columns of The New York World. New York, 1913.

(19) Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers. New York, 1906.

(20) Harrison, Shelby M. Community Action through Surveys. A paper describing the main features of the social survey. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1916.

(21) Millioud, Maurice. "La propagation des idées," Revue philosophique, LXIX (1910), 580-600; LXX (1910), 168-91.

(22) Scott, Walter D. The Theory of Advertising. Boston, 1903.

B. The Newspaper as an Organ of Public Opinion

(1) Dana, Charles A. The Art of Newspaper Making. New York, 1895.

(2) Irwin, Will. "The American Newspaper," Colliers, XLVI and XLVII (1911). [A series of fifteen articles beginning in the issue of January 21 and ending in the issue of July 29, 1911.]

(3) Park, Robert E. The Immigrant Press and Its Control. [In Press.] New York, 1921.

(4) Stead, W. T. "Government by Journalism," Contemporary Review, XLIX (1886), 653-74.

(5) Blowitz, Henri G. S. A. O. de. Memoirs of M. de Blowitz. New York, 1903.

(6) Cook, Edward. Delane of the Times. New York, 1916.

(7) Trent, William P. Daniel Defoe: How to Know Him. Indianapolis, 1916.

(8) Oberholtzer, E. P. Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Staat und der Zeitungspresse im Deutschen Reich. Nebst einigen Umrissen für die Wissenschaft der Journalistik. Berlin, 1895.

(9) Yarros, Victor S. "The Press and Public Opinion," American Journal of Sociology, V (1899-1900), 372-82.

(10) Macdonagh, Michael. The Reporters' Gallery. London, 1913.

(11) Lippmann, Walter. Liberty and the News. New York, 1920.

(12) O'Brien, Frank M. The Story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918. With an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell, editor of The Sun. New York, 1918.

(13) Hudson, Frederic. Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872. New York, 1873.

(14) Bourne, H. R. Fox. English Newspapers. London, 1887.

(15) Andrews, Alexander. The History of British Journalism. 2 vols. London, 1859.

(16) Lee, James Melvin. A History of American Journalism. Boston, 1917.

IV. LAW AND SOCIAL CONTROL

A. The Sociological Conception of Law

(1) Post, Albert H. "Ethnological Jurisprudence." Translated from the German by Thomas J. McCormack. Open Court, XI (1897), 641-53, 718-32. [Reprinted in Evolution of Law, II, 10-36.]

(2) Vaccaro, M. A. Les Bases sociologiques. Du droit et de l'état. Translated by J. Gaure. Paris, 1898.

(3) Duguit, Léon. Law in the Modern State. With introduction by Harold Laski. Translated from the French by Frida and Harold Laski. New York, 1919. [The inherent nature of law is to be found in the social needs of man.]

(4) Picard, Edmond. Le Droit pur. Secs. 140-54. Paris, 1908. [Translated by John H. Wigmore, under the title "Factors of Legal Evolution," in Evolution of Law, III, 163-81.]

(5) Laski, Harold J. Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty. New Haven, 1917.

(6) ——. Authority in the Modern State. New Haven, 1919.

(7) ——. The Problem of Administrative Areas. An essay in reconstruction. Northampton, Mass., 1918.

B. Ancient and Primitive Law

(1) Maine, Henry S. Ancient Law. 14th ed. London, 1891.

(2) Fustel de Coulanges. The Ancient City. A study on the religion, laws, and institutions of Greece and Rome. Boston, 1894.

(3) Kocourek, Albert, and Wigmore, J. H., editors. Sources of Ancient and Primitive Law. "Evolution of Law Series." Vol. I. Boston, 1915.

(4) Steinmetz, S. R. Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen Völkern in Afrika und Oceanien. Berlin, 1903.

(5) Sarbah, John M. Fanti Customary Law. A brief introduction to the principles of the native laws and customs of the Fanti and Akan districts of the Gold Coast with a report of some cases thereon decided in the law courts. London, 1904. [Reprinted in Evolution of Law, I, 326-82.]

(6) McGee, W. J. "The Seri Indians," Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1895-96. Part I, pp. 269-95. [Reprinted in Evolution of Law, I, 257-78.]

(7) Dugmore, H. H. Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs. Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906. [Reprinted in Evolution of Law, I 292-325.]

(8) Spencer, Baldwin, and Gillen, F. J. The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. London, 1904. [Reprinted in Evolution of Law, I, 213-326.]

(9) Seebohm, Frederic. Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law. Being an essay supplemental to (1) "The English Village Community," (2) "The Tribal System in Wales." London, 1903.

C. The History and Growth of Law

(1) Wigmore, John H. "Problems of the Law's Evolution," Virginia Law Review, IV (1917), 247-72. [Reprinted, in part, in Evolution of Law, III, 153-58.]

(2) Robertson, John M. The Evolution of States. An introduction to English politics. New York, 1913.

(3) Jhering, Rudolph von. The Struggle for Law. Translated from the German by John J. Lalor. 1st ed. Chicago, 1879. [Chap. i, reprinted in Evolution of Law, III, 440-47.]

(4) Nardi-Greco, Carlo. Sociologia giuridica. Chap. viii, pp. 310-24. Torino, 1907. [Translated by John H. Wigmore under the title "Causes for the Variation of Jural Phenomena in General," in Evolution of Law, III, 182-97.]

(5) Bryce, James. Studies in History and Jurisprudence. Oxford, 1901.

(6) ——. "Influence of National Character and Historical Environment on the American Law." Annual address to the Bar Association, 1907. Reports of American Bar Association, XXXI (1907), 444-59. [Abridged and reprinted in Evolution of Law, III, 369-77.]

(7) Pollock, Frederick, and Maitland, Frederic W. The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. 2d ed. Cambridge, 1899.

(8) Jenks, Edward. Law and Politics in the Middle Ages. With a synoptic table of sources. London, 1913.

(9) Holdsworth, W. S. A History of English Law. 3 vols. London, 1903-9.

(10) The Modern Legal Philosophy Series. Edited by a committee of the Association of American Law Schools. 13 vols. Boston, 1911-.

(11) Continental Legal History Series. Published under the auspices of the Association of American Law Schools. 11 vols. Boston, 1912-.

(12) Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History. Compiled and edited by a committee of the Association of American Law Schools. 3 vols. Boston, 1907-9.