Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/349

 SOCIAL CONTROL 335

him to show him that a proposed course of conduct, if gener- ally followed, will hurt or ruin the community. In respect to those who are ready to obey the Kantian injunction to do only that which everybody might safely be allowed to do, the battle is as good as won. All that is needed is to set before them the laws of all social life. It is easy to demonstrate that fraud breeds fraud and violence breeds violence. Nor is it hard to prove that fairness begets fairness, and that generosity is infec- tious. The supreme triumph of enlightenment awaits the social philosopher who inspires the conviction that a regime of self- aggrandizement leads to enmity, strife, wounds and disappoint- ment, while the fruits of mutualism are peace, health and life.

III.

Less than other types of control does enlightenment leave historic traces. Early literature, mainly springing from and ministering to leisured upper classes, chose to embalm the pride- ful morality of masters rather than the prudential morality of peasants. History records the reflections of the elite upon the conduct of life, but neglects the forces that held in their humble social orbits the yeoman and the artisan. Yet it is safe to sur- mise that in all free communities where man was not terrorized by priest and task-master, there was a kind of exudation of proverb and aphorism, gnome and parable, legend and moral tale tending to bring about a canny adjustment of men to the requirements of life in common. That underground growth we call folklore was full of salty maxims and pithy counsels which gradually gave moral shape to multitudes of obscure, unhori- zoned'lives. Here and there this hidden trunk sent up a shoot in Hesiod or Solomon or Poor Richard. Hut lor the most part it yielded place to the epics and sagas, the Vedas and Avestas that constituted the literature for warriors and priests.

The beginning of the prudential era of morality is connected with the weakening of the hold of law and custom. These, at first invested with a sanctity that wins them unquestioning obe- dience, loses in prestige wherever, as in old Greece, the contacts