Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/837

 PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 817

pretation of the social life. Let us now see how they fit into the concrete facts of the social process, and whether or not they will serve at all to interpret that process in its various phases. The case of political revolutions furnishes us a good illustration with which to begin, both because revolutions are such striking facts in the social process, and because from a sociological point of view no satisfactory theory of revolutions has yet been proposed.

The transition from one habit to another is not always an easy thing either for individuals or social groups. Where the habit has become inflexible, where peculiar conditions in the inner or outer environment prevent the normal break-up of the habit, in short, where power of adaptation has for any reason been lost, violent disturbances of the psychical life are apt to take place in the change from one habit to another. Especially is this the case when the habit to be changed is a general one which affects the whole life-process. From a psychological point of view revolutions are such disturbances in the psychical life of society, produced by the breaking down of a social habit under abnormal conditions. Where social habits have for any rea- son become inflexible — as is so often the case with institutions, bolstered up and exploited as they frequently are by class inter- est, even though they are opposed to the interest of the society as a whole — in the face of new life-conditions there is apt to be a revolution. Instead of the gradual and peaceful transfor- mation of one social habit into another which ordinarily goes on in society, in a revolution we witness the sudden and violent breakdown of social habits which have long outlived their use- fulness to the social process. The breakdown is sudden because the old habit has been sustained until accumulating opposing tendencies have overwhelmed it; it is violent just in proportion as hindrances stand in its way. Instead of the ordinary period of uncertainty and confusion which normally follows the break- down of a habit both in the individual and in society, in a revo- lution we have a period of great confusion, at times amounting even to absolute disorganization or anarchy. The confusion and disorganization are, of course, proportionate to the importance