Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/775

Rh control beyond which society is rapidly passing. Granting that out of a hundred law-abiding only one obeys the law from fear of its penalties, it does not follow that the penal system holds a correspondingly insignificant place in the system of control. If the one rascal out of a hundred men were permitted to trespass with impunity, the force of example and the contagion of lawlessness would weaken the higher forms of control and detach man after man from the ninety-nine honest men. And the deadly infection would spread with increasing rapidity till social order lay in ruins and anarchy prevailed. However subordinate, therefore, is legal punishment at any moment in the actual coercion of the members of society, it is still the corner stone of the entire edifice of control.

The law punishes acts rather than neglects, weighs conduct rather than motives or intents, and adjudges when strict rules apply rather than when circumstances should be taken into account. Its ponderous and slow-moving machinery is, moreover, far too clumsy to be relied on for the minor discipline of society. Hence law must be supplemented by the control proceeding from the unorganized mass or public and resting on what we may call "social sanctions."

In this field the forces relied on to control men are three, viz., the opinion, sentiment and action of the public, the last being quite distinct from the first two.

Public opinion, so far as it is an instrument of discipline, is the judgment the public pronounces on an act as to whether it is righteous or wicked, noble or ignoble.

Public sentiment is the feeling of admiration or abhorrence, approval or derision, or resentment expressed by the public with regard to an act.

Public action comprises those measures, other than mere manifestations of opinion or sentiment, taken by the public in order to punish or reward conduct.

The penalties inflicted by one's fellows form a graduated