Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/18

 4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

are institutions. The principal institutions with which we are here concerned are the state, the church, industrial property (tools, slaves, lands), business corporations, and political parties.

Institutions are not mechanical organizations imposed from without, but are definite modes according to which persons deal with one another. This will appear when we examine the three- fold aspect of each institution corresponding to a threefold relationship of the individual to society. An institution has, first, a body of accepted beliefs, which color and shape the indi- vidual's desires from infancy ; second, a group of material prod- ucts, designed to satisfy these desires ; third, an organization which sets the allignment of individuals toward one another.

The beliefs which hover about an institution are the social atmosphere, the "social mind," related thereto. They are the traditional estimates and valuations, expressed and transmitted in some form of language, which a society or a class ascribes to the institutional relationships involved. The word "belief," the German Glauben, is derived from the Gothic Iwbs, galat{bjan,"\.o hold dear, or valuable, or satisfactory." Its Anglo-Saxon kin is leof,"\ove." "Belief is the active part of our nature. It is related to will. We believe a thing when we accept it and are willing to act upon it."' The child is born and begins to grow as a plastic, homogeneous group of desires and activities urging him in all directions. He comes in contact with parents at home, policemen in the street, teachers in school and church, workers in shop and factory, and his homogeneous desires are drawn out and distinguished from each other by each several group of fellow-men. He learns the language of each institution. His innate but incoherent aptitudes and likings are thus given shape and particular expression. His mind fits into these social beliefs, and he learns to believe and act more or less spontaneously and appropriately in each institution. Social beliefs, giving shape to personal desires, are, therefore, the moving forces from which institutions get their life. In everyday language equivalent but

' W. B. P.\RKER, " The Psychology of Belief," Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LI, PP- 747-55-