Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/623

 PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOCIETY 609

such peaceful means as public criticism, free discussion, the formation of a public opinion and the selection of individuals to carry out the line of action socially determined upon. But where these means of effecting social readjustments are lacking, or imperfectly developed, social habits may become relatively fixed and immobile. Now, a society, like an individual whose habits become inflexible, is bound to have trouble. As I tried to show several years ago,"* it is from such conditions that those vast social disturbances which we term revolutions with their bloody conflicts between classes arise. My theory of revolutions, in other words, is that they are due to certain interferences in the mechanism by which normal social readjustment is accomplished; that is, they are disturbances in the social order due to the break- down of social habits under conditions which make difficult the reconstruction of those habits, that is, of a new social order.

Such social disturbances as revolutions, with their confusion, anarchy and conflicts between classes, are distinctly pathological, but we may note that there is often a period of confusion in the transition from one social habit to another, which is normal, because it may take some time for a large mass of individuals to discover an adequate stimulus for the building-up of a new social co-ordination. We see this with reference to the family in the United States at the present time. The old authoritative semi- patriarchal family of past generations has broken down. As a form of institution it will no longer work imder modern condi- tions. As yet, however, the mass of people have not yet been able to discover a sufficient stimulus in any social ideas or ideals for the reconstruction of the family upon a new and stable basis. While a new ethical family of stable type has emerged among certain elements of our population, other elements are in a condition of confusion as regards their family life and have not developed any new and stable type of the family adapted to the new life- conditions. Moreover, we should further note that as the number of individuals increase in a group and as they become more and more differentiated, there is greater possibility of conflict of

Journal of Sociology, Vol. XI (July, 1905).
 * See article on "A Psychological Theory of Revolutions" in American