Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/578

564 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY that with the decay of supernaturalism this motive has become the chief guarantor of social order. As the rationalism of the skeptical eighteenth century undermined the beliefs on which order reposed, a new type of control was sought. This at first supplied ineffectually by sentimentalism, utilitarian morals, juiceless homilies on "the fitness of things" and the inculcation of abstract virtues, was finally wrought out by the new idealism portraying with eloquent words the splendid possibilities of human nature. Kant, Fichte, Carlyle, Mazzini, Ruskin, Cousin, Channing, Martineau, George Eliot, Emerson and Thoreau have so forcefully uttered the master ideas of the new appeal to the individual that the Time-Spirit is thoroughly imbued with them. Thanks to the spell of these great teachers the stupendous moral evolution involved in carrying the masses over from supernaturalism has already in great measure been accomplished in protestant countries, not only with few and relatively unimportant perturbations in the field of conduct, but along with increasing demands of society on the individual. In southern Europe, where the mediating influence of protestant ideas was wanting and where self-respect had not served so long an apprenticeship in the household of religion, the transition has been more disastrous.

The guidance of men by ideals is just the reverse of guidance by authority. When we bind from without, free inquiry, criticism, and unhampered choice are discouraged. We undermine the confidence of the individual in himself and surround the source of intimation with the prestige of antiquity, universality and numbers. But when we bind from within, he must be entertained with the illusion of self-direction even at the very moment he martyrizes himself for an ideal that society has sedulously impressed upon him. His very sacrifice must seem self- assertion, his abnegation as a rounding out of his personality. This type of control, therefore, builds on granite men and granite men are produced by it. It is small wonder Cromwell wanted not "broken down serving men," but "men of spirit" to pit against the cavaliers. He who is master of the secret of impart-