Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/529

 SOCIAL CONTROL $15

nature in quest of supports for the social. Religious thinkers have emphasized the sentiments of mystery, dependence, and reverence, the sense of sin, the emotions of conversion and regeneration, because these phenomena, when the last drop of implication is wrung from them, seem to suggest the chief con- cepts of religion. As the objective supports sacred books, tradition, the evidences rot away, new subjective supports are sought, and theology, ceasing to account for the Cosmos, becomes a way of interpreting certain facts of common experi- ence.

With this shifting of base, religion gains in value, because the social element no longer needs to be smuggled into it, as it has to be into systems of objective belief. It was a sheer tour deforce to assert that not "firstlings," but the doing of justice, is the acceptable sacrifice. But when religion gets a subjective basis, it has full warrant to be social. These emotions bursting up right through the floor of the scheming, aggressive self have a social origin and a social purport. Consequently the construc- tions made from these materials will be splendidly suited to social control. The "true" and " higher " self aimed at will be the reverent, obedient self, and the " Higher-than-We," the 44 Stream-of-Tendency-not-Ourselves," will be a law-giving, right-loving, group-protecting God.

Now, similar tactics are followed by the moral philosopher. After the partial failure of the eighteenth century appeal to reason, the moralist, turning his back on the baldly rational as well as the frankly supernatural, explores anew the personal life. Selecting such experiences as sense of oughtness, feeling of responsibility, bad conscience, repentance, and the like, he iso- lates, studies, magnifies, generalizes, and interprets them into an authoritative philosophy of life. As the phenomena he selects are allied to those dwelt upon by the religious thinker, his results are not wholly dissimilar. His ethical philosophy proves to be religious philosophy truncated. Secular and scientific as he flatters himself to be, his constructions Duty, Conscience, Categorical Imperative, Moral Law are but torsos of deity.