Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/90

 76 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

religious beliefs or by moral ideals. Law, belief, religion, cere- mony, become institutions. This implies two things : that they repose on a consensus and will not obey the will of one man ; that they get organized and so act in a measure independently of the wills at any moment in charge of them. A system of belief, for instance, goes on with its tremendous momentum dealing out bane and blessing on behalf of the central require- ments of society in an almost automatic way. Art, on the other hand, being very little of an institution, will not bless that which it can see no good in. Born of the zeal and sympathy of indi- viduals it holds no brief for the established order. It will exalt self-sacrifice for persons. But the impersonal requirements, the exactions that protect not people but institutions, the inobvious necessities of restraint occasioned by the social division of labor these too often the artist misunderstands and so rages blindly against. Willful, moody, and erratic, this member of the genus irritabile vatnm is ever shaking off the dust of his shoes against the dc facto order, flouting authority and stirring people up against restraints. The more downright forms of control he detests, while he exalts spontaneity and has great faith in the appeal to sympathy. And so it comes about that art, while fighting in the main on the side of society, has not the steady stroke of church or state.

III.

Other guarantees for the sociality of art are found in the control society exercises over it.

This control is by hindrance and by furtherance.

We see hindrance in official censors, in the licensing of play houses, in the suppression of "The Clemenceau Case," in the exclusion of the Krcuzer Sonata from the mails, in the shutting out of "Le Debacle" from French garrisons. Besides the authorities we have librarians, hanging committees, art juries, monument boards, reputable publishers, and responsible periodi- cals conspiring to check the raid of the immoral artists upon the public. Behind these hovers a cloud of critics and every work