Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/834

 820 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

which society holds together. Science, like Bishop Blougram, might " cut and cut again," but found "ever a next in size now grown as big."

But rising sociology will put to the test this childlike faith in the naked truth. When we learn the sources of the Nile flood of idealism that makes the desert to blossom with virtues, when we behold those mysterious processes that take place in the soul of a people, when the products of the social mind are split up into their elements, we shall realize, no doubt, what it is that holds men together. And when the hour of illumination comes, will the social scientist light-heartedly assail every conviction or ideal he cannot rationalize ? Will not the loyal investigator hesi- tate to send the tell-tale carmine stain into every filament that helps hold the individual in the mesh of unsuspected influences ?

The secret of order is, therefore, not to be bawled from every housetop. The fact of control is no gospel to be preached abroad with allegory and parable, with bold type and scare head- lines. The social investigator will show religion a consideration it has rarely met with in the natural scientist. He will venerate the moral system too much to uncover its nakedness. He will speak to men, not to youth. He will address himself to those who administer the moral capital of society; to teachers, clergy- men, editors, lawmakers, and judges, who wield the instruments of control ; to poets, artists, thinkers, and educators, who are the guides of the human caravan. Some may scent danger in a science keeping itself half esoteric. But surely the men of widest horizon and farthest vision who, making the joint welfare their own, wage perpetual war against predatory appetite, greedy ambition, unblushing impudence, and brutal injustice, may safely be intrusted with the secrets of control ! When control ceases to be necessary, we can tell the " recruity," the street Arab, and the Elmira "inmate" how it was done. Until then, discretion!

V.

I cannot too strongly urge the study of moral influences by the right persons and in the right spirit as a basis for a scientific