Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/97

 MOO T POINTS IN SOCIOLOG Y 85

The towns which arose in the Middle Ages to meet the needs of an expanding population became the starting-point of social and political developments quite tangential to the institutions of the time. The manor was a type of constrained association ; the town, of free association. "City air makes free." Outside the town the industrial classes were servile, and a stigma attached to labor; inside t labor was honored, and the workman felt joy and pride in his work. Outside, fighting and working were distinct professions; inside, the burgher labored or fought as occasion required. Outside was rigid hereditary caste; inside, men stood in multiple and fluid relationships. The town, in fact, con- tained the germ of a distinct social growth. How pregnant is the overflow of population into towns appears from the fact that town life develops a mentality of its own, more impressionable and plastic than that of the country. Here outworn traditions and narrow sentiments and obstinate prejudices cancel one another. Races fuse and intermarry. There appear new com- binations of hereditary factors. Variation is more common. The shutters of the intellect are taken down. The mind becomes alert and supple. Freed from the hampering net of kin and class ties, the individual appears. The town is, therefore, a hotbed, where seed-ideas quickly germinate. Its progressive population soon places itself at the head of the social procession, and sets the pace for the conservative country.

The city, less traditional than the country, values men accord- ing to some present fact their efficiency or their wealth, rather than their family. It is democratic or plutocratic in temper, while the country is the natural support of aristocracy. In the city people consume, as it were, in one another's presence, and hence their expenditure conforms more to the canon of Conspicu- ous Waste than does that of countrymen. The multiplication of merely conventional wants arouses energy, intensifies competi- tion, whets egoism, and restricts the size of the family.

The increase of social mass has various effects upon regulative institutions. A lateral extension of society, by causing distinc- tions to arise between local chiefs and the head chief, between local priests and the high priest, favors the formation of hier-