Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/847

 SOCIAL CONTROL 831

not the estrangement that grows up between the different local groups in a society that is nowadays to be provided against, but rather a certain attitude of the individual toward the impersonal arrangements and institutions by which he is surrounded.

CEREMONY.

I.

To many the nature of ceremonial control will seem too well set forth by Mr. Spencer to be in need of any restatement. In truth, however, his "ceremonial government" is not a means of government, but a kind of government. With him obeisances and respects are the pale shadow of social, political, or religious subordination. They are not means of winning ascendency, but the sign and symptom of ascendency already won. However indebted is sociology to Mr. Spencer for tracing the derivation of ceremonies from natural acts of propitiation, it is now neces- sary to supplement his study of forms by a study of motives and effects. If it can be shown that a ceremony is not only a social practice but also a social institution, and that it is not simply a control, but that it is a means of control whereby society can impress the feelings of individuals advantageously to itself, the reopening of this subject will be justified.

II.

Two views may be taken of the forms observed in inter- course. From one standpoint the essence of ceremony is propitiation. The force impelling people to these tiresome and precise actions is fear. The practice is adopted by the inferior either as the instinctive expression of submission or because such signs of subordination will please and mollify the superior. These formalities, then, observed from purely private motives, mark the militant state of society with its numerous personal and class ascendencies. When the leveling influences of the industrial state cause the government of one man by another to disappear, they become rarer. Ceremony, therefore,