Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/627

 SOCIAL CONTROL 6ll

of long-exposed stone. To impart venerableness to an institu- tion is within the power of no man. Society cannot at will make the moss grow or the ivy run, although it can gladly avail itself of the charm they lend to the granite walls of authority. Is custom, therefore, something to be recognized and then passed by?

No, the binding power of custom is more fecund of conse- quence than that. It calls forth certain adjustments. Every regulative institution pays homage to the empire of use and wont ; at many and various points society deflects its policy in order to get the utmost service that custom is able to render it.

The segments of social life in which custom-imitation pre- vails fall naturally into two groups. In the one group, which embraces language, costume, cuisine, games, sports, greetings, folk-lore, etc., we find an unconscious and passive persistence in old ways. An improvement has to contend less with the resist- ance than with the indifference or the inertia of people. Little controversy is waged between the old and the new. The many follow the well-worn path unthinkingly ; a few deliberate and then adopt the better. With certain changes, such as the spread of reading, the rise of discussion, or the substitution of teacher for parent, the old is more rapidly displaced, and the new tri- umphs with hardly a protest.

But there is another group in which improvement arouses opposition. In politics, law, religious belief, ritual, ceremony, and moral codes the time-hallowed finds staunch defenders, and the tension between the old and the new calls forth the hostile camps of conservatives and radicals. To the superior new the old shows itself pugnacious and uncompromising. And the removal of the young from home to school changes the theater, but not the fierceness, of the strife.

Whence this pig-headed conservatism ? Shall we say that the old becomes bound up with the interest of a class, and that it is this selfish interest that fights innovation ? No, not this. In the case of change in the dogmas or rites of a church, or in the pro- cedure of a court, there need be no private interest at stake. And again there are private interests arrayed against a new