Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/826

 Si 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

less affect conduct. A fictive blood kinship cannot bind men into the national groups of today. So public action in the form of mob, ban, or boycott is justly regarded as a relic of bar- barism.

On the other hand, instruction as to the consequences of actions, with a view to enlisting an enlightened self-interest in support of all the conduct it is competent to sanction, will meet with universal approval in an age of public education ; and the passiveness of the average mind will make it safe to work into such moral instruction certain convenient illusions and fallacies which it is nobody's interest to denounce. Suggestion, that little understood instrument, will no doubt be found increasingly helpful in establishing moral imperatives in the young. But it will render its greatest service in shaping in youth those feelings of admiration or loathing that determine the ruling ideals of character, and in influencing those imputations of worth which enable society to impose upon the individual its own valuations of life's activities and experiences. And society will further the work by cutting with cameo-like clearness the types of character it chooses to commend, and by settling ever more firmly, in tra- dition and convention, the values it seeks to impose. But from social art we have the most to look for. I would place it next to religion in power to transform the brute into the angel. Art is one of the few moral instruments which, instead of being blunted by the vast changes in opinion, have gained edge and sweep by these very changes. So far as eye can pierce the future, there is nothing to limit or discredit it. The sympathies it fosters do not, it is true, establish norms and duties ; but they lift that plane of general sentiment out of which imperatives and obligations arise. If there is anyone in this age who does the work of the Isaiahs and Amoses of old, it is an Ibsen, a Tolstoi, a Victor Hugo, or a Thomas Hardy.

II.

It is a mistake to suppose there will be less need in the future for society to dominate the souls of its members. On the