Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/832

 8l8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

shadow the continuing aggregation of mankind into larger wholes testifies to the need of a brake on moral centralization. In the little tribe or city-state of antiquity the social spirit ruled unquestioned, and the open cult of the individual would have been like touching off a powder magazine. But with far-flung dominion, elaborate religions, organized priesthoods, and vast school systems designed to impose ready-made formulae, the man is liable to be held too firmly in the network. The ascend- ency of society becomes easy and hence dangerous. Law- maker, official, priest, parson, schoolmaster, master of cere- monies, or moral philosopher exact much more than they need to ask for. On behalf of God or prince, neighbor or group, one is called upon to give up the most that makes life worth the living. Accordingly, freedom becomes a passion, laissez faire a dogma, skepticism a religion, and all the rills of opposition run together into a great current of opposition, which accompanies the development of control as a check and a reminder.

Worse than the strait-jacket of the Pharisee is the warping of human nature with moral appliances. To get stern self-dis- cipline it is necessary to split up the soul into the acting self and the watching self. But this means the loss of that whole- some unconsciousness* and outlook which is the birthright of healthy beings. The conscientious man is a kind of degenerate. The heart-searching, spirit-wrestling self-examination ' that is fostered by all moralizing schemes may help multitudes to a better life, but it is not the crown and roof of the human spirit. To him who has arrived at frank, communal feeling the groan- ings and wrestlings, the Puritan conscience, the sin notion, the fussiness of the moral novice, will perhaps become, like the whip and hair-shirt, mere memories of a bad dream. And in his "eventual element of calm " he may echo the sentiment of Walt Whitman :

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-con-

tain'd,

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,