Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/78

 SOCIAL CONTROL. VIII.

ART.

ART is here meant in its broadest sense. It includes poetry, rhetoric, eloquence, painting, and sculpture all those means, in short, whereby an idea wins peculiar force through its form of expression.

I.

How can art modify the feelings to the advantage of society?

(a) By arousing the passions, Early art is seen in the direct service of corporate excitement. It supplies aids and symbols by which at gatherings the individual is spurred to a_common_ emotion. All manner of festivals and feasts war, religious, Bacchic, phallic make use of the arts of representation. While there is a distinct value in anything that promotes a convergence of feeling upon a single sentiment, art serves society especially by arousing the passions of conflict. The warfare that preceded discipline was waged under great excitement. It was necessary to submerge the ordinary self-preservative instincts beneath a tide of fury. Hence the resort to drug and intoxicant, and hence also the choral song, the tribal chant, the wild dance, and the mimic warfare that preceded the rush upon the foe. Even in the later military organizations marching songs, war songs, watchwords, battle cries, inspiring bulletins, and eloquent words by chiefs serve to direct the ideas and impulses of a sol- flier to society's advantage. While within the group the social ipffice of art must lie in taming man, its service in respect to the 'enemies of the group must consist in playing upon man's pas- sions.

By kindling sympathy. The characteristic emotion art aims to arouse is, as Guyau insists, 1 social. It is the diffused

1 L'Art au point de vue sociologique.

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