Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/178

 l64 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

knows not that he is being coerced. On the other hand, the persuasive system educates the qualities of persuasiveness — eloquence, reasoning, politeness — and the qualities of respon- siveness — devotion, love, heroism, ambition.

Returning now to the question of sanctions, it is to be noticed again that in primitive slavery or polygamy all the sanctions are blended, undifferentiated, centered in one man and annexed to commands in varying proportions. The coercive, although the most patent, is not therefore the most powerful. Wife and chil- dren prefer slavery to freedom, for freedom means death, but slavery means protection. Persuasive sanctions depend not only on the susceptibilities, but also on the circumstances of the one who responds. The fact that coercion is inadequate to sus- tain private property is also vividly shown in the appeal of the proprietors to religious sanctions. Fetiches, taboos, ancestors, penates, hearth fires, were all summoned as persuasive means of protecting owners against the owned and unpossessed. And with the growth of conquest and empire the religious sanctions became more and more pervasive, organized, and awe-inspiring. But the coercive sanctions, when thus blended, tend, as already intimated, to overshadow the others and to give character to the relationship, both from the side of the proprietor, as the means of expressing his personal character, and from the side of the servant, as suppressing his personal character. It also furnishes the basis for a new organization of society which shall take the place of kinship. Before developing this phase of the subject we may sum up our conclusions on the nature of coercion and persuasion as follows :

Coercion is a command, express or tacit, issued by a determi- nate person with power to enforce obedience on others by means of external material or bodily suffering. It differs from persua- sion in that the latter does not depend primarily on material means for inducing compliance, but mainly on direct psychic influence. It differs from the commands of public opinion, or general will, in that these are issued by indeterminate persons, and their enforcement is problematical. It differs from the so-called commands of God, or conscience, in that these are not