Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/519

 SOCIAL CONTROL 50$

such does a man make himself .... who separates himself from others or does anything unsocial." "Whatever act of thine then has no reference either immediately or remotely to a social end, this tears asunder thy life, and does not allow it to be one, and is of the nature of a mutiny." And Whitman says :

Whoever degrades another degrades me ;

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

This ground of appeal is at once very old and very new. We find it with those ancient thinkers who first observed the social division of labor and marked its consequences. We find it with 'the latest students of society, such as Comte, Carlyle, and Emer- son. Moralists have written their best pages in showing our interdependence and tracing the train of reactions by which evil recoils upon the head of the evil doer, or good returns to the righteous man. Fables and parables delight in devising social circuits by which one comes to reap that which he has sown. Sermons without number have pressed home their exhortations with the facts of solidarity. Everywhere we spur the citizen to needful patriotic or civic endeavor by assuring him he cannot escape the common lot. And as the supernatural recompense grows doubtful, the more eagerly we look for natural recom- pense. So many unsuspected sanctions for right doing have later studies brought to light that not a few enthusiasts cherish the hope that, as the old supports decay, a scientific analysis of society, with its demonstration of interaction and solidarity, may serve to uphold the moral life.

That the undeniable solidarity that is more and more fur- nishes each of us with a sufficing reason for " fulfilling the law " is an illusion. It is demonstrably untrue that we thrive only when the group thrives ; that, entangled as we are in a network of social relationships, we cannot fare well when the social body fares ill ; that labor for the corporate welfare pays the best divi- dend to self. There are, of course, cases where the interest of the selfish man is identical with that of his group. When a