Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/177

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEIV OF SOVEREIGNTY 163

are qualities which render their subjects peculiarly susceptible to coercion, such as servility, fawning, venality, covetousness, timidity, deceptiveness ; others, to which persuasion more effectively appeals, as devotion, magnanimity, heroism ; others, not easily influenced by either coercion or persuasion, as stoicism and stubbornness. Besides these there are external circumstances influencing susceptibility, such as climate, rank, wealth, or pen- ury, friends and relatives, education and forms of government.' Now, it is to be noticed that this grouping of susceptibilities does not affect the nature of the coercive and persuasive sanc- tions. The question with which we are now concerned is not one of casuistry, to discover in any given individual whether he is moved by coercion or not, but it is a question of the relative coerciveness of the different sanctions. This is the same for all individuals, no matter what the absolute amount of coerciveness exercised in any particular case. We are not inquiring whether Miss A is compelled to marry Mr. B, but whether women in general under similar circumstances are more subject to coercion than to persuasion. The latter is the social significance of coer- cion, the former is a certain individual grouping of sanctions and susceptibilities. Our grading of susceptibilities, therefore, does not affect the preceding analysis of sanctions.

There is, however, an intimate connection between the two. Coercion is not a single act, but a social system — as such it is educational. It produces in master and subject the very qualities which render the one able to exercise it and the other susceptible to it. The one becomes haughty, intolerant, commanding ; the other servile, obsequious, deceptive. The evil of coercion does not consist in unwilling service, but in the low personal character which it cultivates. The slave, born and reared as such, and with no idea of freedom, obeys his master with willingness. It is not that he is consciously coerced in any particular act, but that the system has kept him so low in manly qualities that he

' Were there space and occasion, we might draw up a table of beliefs, desires, and susceptibilities, like Bentham's " Table of the Springs of Action," but with reference to the above classification. Bentham uses the terms "exciting causes," "bias," "cir- cumstances influencing sensibilities," but I have attempted to avoid his hedonism. See Works, Vol. I, pp. 21, 22, 197 (Edinburgh, 1843).