Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/574

 560 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

models or ideals which each member has accepted for himself and seeks to communicate to the novice.

Every sect, party, church, brotherhood, order, crew, camping party, surveying corps, ball club, athletic team, labor union, fraternity, guild, lodge, or other minor grouping based not on mere likeness but on recurrent relations and interactions, will in course of time develop for its special purposes appropriate types of character, conduct or observance which exert on its members an invisible pressure subordinating them to the welfare or aims of the association. In other words, the minor groups of men resemble the great social group in needing to control their units and in the means they employ for this purpose. We have pointed out the need of a succession of generations for perfecting a social type and giving it prestige. So of minor groups it is only the stabler ones with a succession of member- ships that are able to create a distinctive atmosphere.

Below the associations each with its "genius" or "esprit" and the trades and professions each with its standard are the innumerable callings in which those engaged have never been in such close touch as to arrive at a consensus of admiration for this or that practice. Here there are no special guiding types and each must do his work as he is led by the general moral types offered by society or driven by considerations of self-interest.

The special ethical standards that associations, professions and trades impart to their members may be said in the main to constitute social types and to be among the agents of social control. They are usually worked out under the oversight and criticism of the public. If they run counter to the general social interest they excite hostility. If the profession fails to amend, its type will be stripped of prestige by being confronted with those general types that are backed up by the full authority of society, past and present, /. e., the ruling moral standards. This is not to affirm, however, that the professional ethic is always what it would be if it grew up in the full light of publicity, nor to deny that the reigning standards of a minor group may at times flout the general interest and aim covertly at the aggrand-