Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/87

 SOCIAL CONTROL 73

image each after its kind. "Whole generations of German girls and women," says Nordau, "have formed themselves upon the model of Claurens' female figures, as now upon the Gold Elsies and Geierwallys of recent fiction." The well-dowered darling of the creative artist moving gloriously through an ideal world is as irresistible as was Amadis of Gaul to Don Quixote. Its public yield to its charm as helplessly as iron filings to the mag- net or the waters to the moon's attraction. It is a new force abroad in society. 1

Of course the fancy-begotten type may not touch the moral at all. It may be only an arc or crescent of life. The painter may charm us with a mere pose, an expression, or a way of wearing the hair. An actress may create a model as to voice, gait, or manners. Even the rounded types brain-born of genius are not, like "social types," wholly subdued to social ends. They are patterns, not only for our relations to others, but for all manner of choices whatsoever. They are addressed to the indi- vidual and embody the genius' conception of how he may live out his life. Yet it is certain that a type like St. Preux, or John Halifax, or Trilby, strongly imbued with the social spirit, will draw its imitators upward and so help a little in the problem of moralization. The artist's ideal therefore may become an ally of social control.

II.

Such aid the artist can give if he will. But will he ? Con- sider first the influences that predispose him to side with society

The group by its might and permanence has peculiar power to stir the imagination and awaken fervor. The nation itself, with its colossal life-drama, is a hero no less splendid than an Achilles or a Beowulf. Who, whether friend of England or foe

I hus the poets and novelists stand like the Jacob of the Bible before the water- ing-trough and set their ' rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree ' in which they have 'pilled white strokes' in the gutters and cause ' ring-straked, speckled, and spotted generations to be brought forth as they may choose.' " NORDAU, Paradoxes, "The Import of Fiction."