Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/837

 SOCIAL CONTROL 823

the key to the development of Roman Law is the rise of private property in land on the ruins of communal ownership. The dogma of a future life prevailed because so convenient in recon- ciling the exploited classes to their misery in this life. The Reformers' doctrine of "justification by faith" met the desire of thrifty burghers to evade money payments to priests by becom- ing their own intercessors with the Deity. " Equality," the "rights of man," the "dignity of labor," are merely the wind- driven foam of democracy which is at bottom the overwhelming of feudal landowners by the possessors of movable capital.

Undoubtedly the higher departments of culture reflect the economic system, and especially the relations of superiority and subordination between classes. But surely greater than the economic opposition of master and slave, lord and serf, priest and layman, proprietor and proletarian, capitalist and laborer, is that everlasting clash of interest of a man with other men which constitutes the opposition of the individual and society. More than any class conflict has this shaped the development of normative ideas. And if this is so, we have new light on the interpretation of history. To put it in a nutshell, the spiritual life of society seems determined chiefly by three forces. These are (a) the accumulations of knowledge, (6) the demands of social control, and (c) the demands of control by an exploiting class. With these it is astonishing how far one can go in accounting for the metamorphoses of faith, the phases of morals, the mutations of law, and the changes in the ideals of life held up in literature and art.

The philosophers love to regard a system of philosophy as the clear reflection of extant knowledge and to see in the his- tory of thought simply the movement of the human intellect. How naive! As if this erratic line of march did not suggest a running fight with an unseen foe! As if the positions success- ively taken up by theology or ethics did not betray the squirm- ing, kicking son of Adam trying to wriggle from under the social knee ! One who has seen how the social system con- stantly trembles from the straining egoism of its units and