Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/626

 6lO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

" To the fact that the enthusiasm for change is comparatively rare must be added the fact that it is extremely modern. It is known but to a small part of mankind, and to that part but for a short period during a history of incalculable length. It is not older than the free employment of legislation by popular governments."'

"Vast populations, some of them with a civilization considerable but peculiar, detest that which in the language of the West would be called reform. The entire Mohammedan world detests it. The multitudes of col- ored men who swarm in the great continent of Africa detest it ; and it is detested by that large part of mankind which we are accustomed to leave on one side as barbarous or savage. The millions upon millions of men who fill the Chinese empire loathe it and (what is more) despise it. The enormous mass of the Indian population hates and dreads change." °

Now, this reverence for antiquity — which prevails so widely even today — was very pronounced in the historical civilizations. Tradition, we know, availed to keep the Jewish type fixed despite the vicissitudes of Israel. Roman society founded on ancestor- worship diuA patria potestas was for many centuries intensely con- servative. Greece we think of as a model of emancipation. Yet Plato, discussing the art of establishing a commonwealth, says :

" No one can easily receive laws at their first imposition, but if we could anyhow wait until those who have been imbued with them from childhood, and have been nurtured in them, and become habituated to them, take their part in the public elections of the state ; . . . . then, I think, there would be very little danger at the end of the time of a state thus trained not being permanent."'

So far two principles have been established. One is that the social order is greatly strengthened when the laws, precepts, wisdom, ideas, and feelings which make for adaptation have entered the very warp and woof of a civilization, so that they are passed on as a matter of course from sire to son. The other is that every visible prop of order becomes able to sustain more with the lapse of time.

Now, have these principles any bearing on social control ? Apparently not. Use and wont is certainly not one more regu- lative device. It is rather a gain got for nothing, like the tough- ness of old mortar, the strength of a old ramparts, or the hardness

■ Popular Government, p. 134. ^Ibid., pp. I32> 133- ^ Laws, VII.