Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/351

 SOCIAL CONTROL 337

ished and the fog closed in. Speculation became handmaid to ethics and a Stoicism of Semitic origin contended with Epicurus for the souls of the higher classes. But in respect to the com- mon people chilled by philosophic ethics and dead to the high- pitched Stoic appeal, the problem of control stayed unsolved until the importation of oriental mysteries and religions per- mitted the recovery of living gods.

Rational thought on life and conduct stayed in eclipse till after the Renaissance. Then criticism of objective authority set in, till by the middle of the eighteenth century an individual ism had been worked out, not unlike that of Athens at the end of the fifth century before Christ. The foundations of the higher forms of social control were broken up. Morality became con- scious and sophisticated. Man became once more "the measure of all things," and in the crucible of Helvetius' analysis saw dis- appear the last idealistic restraints on his will. It was in line with this dissolution of control that "enlightenment " became the watchword of moral agencies. Religion ceasing to bear on the feelings, reduced to a scheme of morality, enforced by super- natural rewards and punishments, and enabling a man " to make the most of both worlds." ' Ethics became utilitarian, and staked everything an enlightened self-interest. The ideal man was he who regulated his life according to the dictates of reason. Not selfishness, but stupidity, was declared to be the common enemy, and virtue in parody of Socrates was identified with common sense.

Rationalism failed for several reasons. It clipped the wings

,iys Professor \V. H. Hudson, of the English clergyman of the Hanovarian reigns, "We have the moderate and sober divine, reading from his carefully written manuscript a homily full of good sense and fair judgment, unfanciful, precise, and lucid, the aim of which is to establish by solid aix-mm-nt the essential reasonableness of Christianity, or to enforce the prudence of right living and the principles of enlight- ened self-interest. He studiously avoids all extravagance of thought and phrase ; dwells rather upon the nobility than upon the debasement of human nature ; touches lightly, if at all, upon the questions of the sacrificial death, salvation through faith and eternal damnation ; and labors to impress upon !>;> hearers the important fact that the founders of his religion were not enthusiastic dreamers, or mystics. but emphatically men of sense and gentlenn