Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/853

 SOCIAL CONTROL 837

ized by ceremony. Thus divorce is less formal than marriage, withdrawal from association or church than initiation or confir- mation, expatriation than naturalization, mustering out of serv- ice than enlistment, the adjournment of court than its opening. By the gateway of ceremony is the entrance to duties, not the exit from them. Is it not, therefore, clear that rite marks not all changes in status, but chiefly those which involve fresh obliga- tions?

Why should this be unless ceremony promotes a performance of these obligations is, in other words, a means of control? Note that it is symbolic. The picturesque, dramatic, or sensa- tional would serve to impress an event upon the memory. But the ceremony that modifies the feelings is full of meaning. It calls up that which would be overlooked, reminds of that which would be forgotten, and so reveals the full significance of what is being done. Thus in marriage the carrying away of the bride, the pretended payment for her, the "giving" her away, her whipping by the groom, etc., are ways of signifying that the girl's allegiance to her family has ceased. The confarreatio, the drinking together of sake, the joining of hand, the exchange of bracelets, the tying together of garments symbolize the intimacy of the new relation. The service of ceremony, therefore, con- ' sists in so stimulating the imagination by appropriate gestures, actions, and words as to call up the conception of something vaster in power, life, or numbers than the here and now God, society, the dead or the unborn.

Again, ceremony is solemn; this, not in order to be remem- \ bered, but in order to leave a moral impress. A coronation or a 11 knighting is a miniature drama intended to produce an effect upon the feelings of the principals or spectators. Anything in the way of abridgment or disturbance or interruption or caprice would break the spell and destroy the value of the whole. Hence ceremonies must be guarded from distracting sights or sounds, the parts must be arranged beforehand, the details must be precise, and the minutiae must be so archaic as to be "taboo" to the inroads of a critical rationalism.