Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/577

 SOCIAL CONTROL

loss of caste. But with the widening sway of social types honor , comes to mean the salient or cardinal virtue of each concrete j type. Failure to attain this excellence is failure to realize type. Thus for woman honor is identified with chastity, for the soldier it is courage, for the business man it is the meeting of all engagements. The officer who runs away, the gentleman who tells lies, the judge who takes bribes, the pugilist who hits "below the belt," the jockey who "pulls " his mount, the school- boy who "peaches" forfeits his honor. He is taught to feel that by that act he is degraded and declasst.

The use of ideals implies a view of human nature diametric- ally opposed to that of supernaturalism. While there we have doctrines of the fall, of sin and of total depravity, here we have a buoyant confidence in the fundamental goodness of man. 1 * Regeneration not by grace but by endeavor 2 implies that human nature is not fallen or bad. People must be taught that the good or noble they admire they may attain by their own efforts. Vistas of infinite possibility must be opened. Free will must be' exalted and fate depreciated. No one is to be so bound by heredity that he may not move upward. Hope and aspiration must be offered the meanest man. The belittling and malign- ing of human nature must yield to ethical optimism. Man, it is insisted, is "a moral being" and so but achieves his true self- hood by realizing his ideals. It is this set of correlated teach- ings that underlies the method of "morality." 3

There has never been a time when a great deal of life was not regulated by ideals. But looking at the species of control to which the cardinal virtues of the age are intrusted, we can say that the Middle Ages exploited belief, that with the growth of protestantism greater reliance was placed on self-respect, and

1 " Within is a fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig." Marcus Aurelius.

3 "Wipe out thy vain fancies by often saying to thyself : 'Now it is in my power to let no badness be in this soul, nor desire, nor any perturbation at all ! ' Remember this power which thou hast from nature !" Marcus Aurelius.

'" Men talk of 'mere morality,' which is much as if one should say, ' Poor God, with nobody to help him ! ' " i