Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/671

SOCIAL CONTROL 657 physical goods that the influence of others is decisive. The more life escapes from the creature-needs, the more it obeys the movements of the social baton. Control by valuations is, therefore, a late development, being most effective in the era of a diffused economic surplus, leisure, and a high standard of living. Then only will the finger post pointing to home, social pleasure, knowledge, and contemplation be heeded.

The conspiracy of occidental philosophy, ethics, and literature to exalt peace as opposed to ambition, striving, or activity is a striking example of social valuation. It is certainly not individual valuation. The dry rot of a race which manifests itself in a shrinking from strong emotions, a distaste for strenuous effort, and a love of tranquil existence, is by no means so far advanced with us as the prevailing tone would suggest. There are, of course, overspanned wills that turn gladly to quiet, meditation, and faint emotions. The cloister compensates for the camp, and the peace of the hermit atones for the stress of affairs. But the note of quietism that sounds like a minor chord throughout the art and faith of the most striving, pushing, overcoming people of history, the English race, is not the mere expression of individual feeling. The accent is put on "tranquility" "serenity," "quiet and freedom of spirit," "inward calm," "still and quiet conscience," because the group instinctively seeks to blunt the greed, ambition, and enterprise of its members. So that the quietism running through our religion testifies, not to the weakness of desire, but to its excessive and dangerous strength. What irony in the spectacle of men banding themselves into a society for upholding the worth of detachment and spiritual serenity, while driven each by some passion, low or high—greed, love, ambition, rivalry, the spirit of enterprise, or the zeal for activity!

That the valuations we are bred to are not generally valid for the individual is shown by the way they are affected by experience. The frequent and oft-deplored deflection from the noble idealism of youth, and the growth of sordiness as the years bring wisdom, betray the fact that we are trained to high-keyed