Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/831

 SOCIAL CONTROL 817

Decentralized management. It is bad for the enginery of dis- cipline to lie in the hands of a small part of society, an elite, class, caste, or profession. In some cases this may be necessary in order to curb and civilize a backward many. But we have only to recall the despotism of Druids, Brahmins, Magi, Spanish priests, Scotch ministers, and New England parsons to see that the few will always push their interferences to excess. More- over, the wielding of the instruments of power gives an oppor- tunity for personal or class aggrandizement that is rarely neglected. Provided the dominant few are well organized or knit together, their class egoism is bound to assert itself. Wit- ness the riches, exemptions, and license of the mediaeval Cath- olic hierarchy. So a vast administrative system holding in order a heterogeneous people is sure to become a screen for aggrandizement. But it is when the official and ecclesiatical hierarchies work together, as under Henry VIII, Philip II, Louis XIV, or Nicholas II, that the exploitation feature becomes most noticeable.

There is always danger that the desiderata of joint life will be lost sight of in the zeal to make men over by the clever manipulation of powerful influences. Thus the Quixotic ideal of "one language, one church, one government," too ardently pursued, leads Russia into high-handed persecution of Raskol- niks and Stundists. The exuberance of fanatics and pietists must be checked and naked righteousness held up as the one thing needful. Those who command the machinery of church and state come to entertain large designs for dominating the mind with dogma and priestcraft, gag and censor ; but these ambitious designs to make men as bricks are turned out of the mold can be frustrated by the diffusion of control.

Professor Burgess has shown * how individual liberty had to be recognized and organized into the state as well as government. Now it is equally necessary that in the moral sphere liberty should get so intrenched as to offer stout resistance to all excessive control. The moral individualism that follows like a

1 In his Political Scifnce and Comparative Constitutional Law, Vol. I.