Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/842

 828 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF, SOCIOLOGY

a group? And how far remote from such explanation do the forms appear which show inteUigent co-operation and refined sentiment ! If one use the biological figure at all, in these cases, one should restrict its application to those facts of the social life in which instinct operates with least complication from psycho- logical interference and in which there is present no inhibition due to intelligent restraint and choice. Such, for example, are the quasi-social exhibitions of the sexual instinct, and the rivalries of family and clan in which the family and racial impulses of kinship are uncontrolled.

But even in these cases of the play of brute biological forces, the influence of convention and social habit, as well as that of intelligent self-control is seldom quite lacking. When such modi- fying influences, psychological and moral, entirely fail, we judge the individual a victim of his heredity; and instead of taking the purity of his biological equipment as the criterion of social sanity, our practical judgment is the reverse. In practice we scout the biological interpretation hy taking its best exponent for a danger- ous person, we isolate him in an institution where the anti-social are confined, to keep them from doing injury to society!

2. The same remark may be made, in effect, of the attempt to interpret the social group entirely in terms of social tradition, together with its correlative mode of spontaneous and plastic co-operation. The crowd, following a leader, whether this leader be society itself or a temporary chieftain — is the typical situation for such theories : it illustrates the social group at its purest. Imi- tation and compulsory suggestion — or compulsion per se — are its key-notes. These words give the answer to the question — Qu'est qu'une societe?

Of course, we must admit that there is in actual life much solidarity of this type — imitative, suggestive, in actual result compulsory. As soon as the bonds of instinct were loosed in racial evolution, co-operation became more varied in its modes, and new forms of group life arose. Suggestion now takes the place of instinct, and social succeeds physical heredity. But here ag^in we must accept the limitations which the due recognition of the facts imposes. The reign of suggestion and contagion.