Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/825

 SOCIAL CONTROL 8ll

his church connections, his clothes, and his expletives, is just beginning to regulate his treatment of his children, his drinking habits, and his expenditure on elections. The running of a scientific frontier between the individual and society is the joint task of two contrasted types of thought. The eighteenth-century philosophy, ardent for the individual, sought to draw about each man the largest possible inviolable circle. On all laws, restraints, moral requirements, and duties needlessly invading this circle, it has kept up a steady fire of criticism and remonstrance. Nineteenth-century thought, on the other hand, convinced that if there be no God, King, State, Moral Order, or Scheme of Things to serve as fountain head of obligations, there is at least a Social Interest, has been diligent to show all hidden and unsuspected ways in which the interest of many is harmed by this or that exercise of power. Consequently it has become sponsor for a multitude of new commandments and duties. These two tendencies have not resulted in deadlock, as some imagine, but in a thorough overhauling and testing of every detail of restraint which will result, let us hope, in giving us the most welfare for the least abridgment of liberty.

Changes in knowledge, in degree of civilization, and in the character of social requirements cause a method of control to wax or wane from age to age. We might compare the social order to a viaduct across some wooded ravine in the Sierras which rests part of its weight on timbers that decay with the lapse of time, and part on living tree trunks which constantly gain in strength. Or we might liken it to a bridge resting on piers built, some of stone which crumbles in time, and some of stone which hardens with long exposure to the air. No doubt etiquette and ceremony have done their best work. The seer of visions and dreamer of dreams has had his day. The hero will never again be the pivot of order. The reign of custom with its vague terrors is about over. The assizes of Osiris, Rhadaman- thus, God, or Allah, with their books of record, inquisitions, and judgments, will hardly dominate the imagination in the days to come. The reputed dispensations of Providence will less and