Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/571

 SOCIAL CONTROL 557

ethic of his status and calling tended to confirm caste, lessen mobility and discourage variation. Such societies had to throttle progress, for with change in the number, strength or relation of the orders of men in society the elaborate patterns ceased to fit and morality collapsed. It is the bringing up of people to love and imitate generalized social qualities and generalized social character that, more than any other improvement in this depart- ment of social evolution, has given control an elasticity favor- able at once both to order and to progress.

Of the concrete types elaborated strictly for the social rather than for the family group there are three which on account of the social energy that has gone to perfect and to glorify them, stand preeminent. These are the gentleman (or lady), the soldier and the priest. Each of these, instead of being a mere synthesis of abstract virtues, has been worked out into the most amazing detail by past generations and becomes so embalmed in tradition and literature as to constitute a formative influence of the first rank. The "gentleman," originally the quintessence of sociality worked out within the highest caste, has won the admiration of many, and is today in America the ideal of the aspiring millions of democracy. Low indeed must we descend in the social scale to find common the man who does not wince at being told he is "no gentleman." Religion itself hardly does more in molding lives at the present moment in our democracy than this single fascinating figure. The union of this type to the primeval type of "man" (or "woman") that for centuries supplied the chief guiding ideal for the humble workaday millions the serfs, villeins and peasants is a long forward stride in moral prog- ress.

Priest and soldier, on the other hand, are not universal types. They have been the concern of society partly because the due discharge of religious and military functions has seemed of highest moment to the common welfare, but still more because the demands of these professions go so much against the grain of the average individual. To develop the courage, obedience, endurance and loyalty of the warrior, or the gentleness, self-