Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/580

 566 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

have been brought to get along together harmoniously. It is simpler and more elastic than many of its predecessors. It is peculiarly compatible with that higher evolution of personality society exists for. At present it has more of promise than any of its rivals. It may be the final type of social control. But it is certainly not the final form of sociology.

Self-regard, however transfigured into self-respect, self-rever- ence and sense of honor, has never been the mainstay of family altruism, nor did it underlie social disposition in the smaller and earlier groups. Two developments have combined to make morality, rather than enlightened altruism, the chief support of, our social order. The size of modern societies makes it easier to love a few abstract relations to our fellows than to love our fellows themselves. The increasing division of labor, by remov- ing the discharge of our special functions further and further from the welfare of particular persons, tends to depersonalize our services and so make them duties rather than ministrations. But the adjustment of these two circumstances should not blind us to the nature of that goodness which is above and on the other side of all social control. Social order will rest on artifice till there is joined to the natural altruism we find developing in many families, chiefly through prolonged and intimate contact a clearness of intellectual vision that sees in the upright dis- charge of the social requirements of every office and station the highest ministry to the welfare of our fellows.

EDWARD ALSWORTH Ross. STANFORD UNIVERSITY, California.