Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/778

 762 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Once an element has run the gauntlet and emerged triumph- ant from the rivalry, it becomes fixed in custom and thus shielded from competition, until perhaps it is confronted with a different practice or belief that has won the favor of some other group. Then deadly comparisons are made, and weeding out begins again. One of the great agencies in human progress, then, has been the extension of intercourse between peoples which have been working independently at civilization, for this brings in once more the healthy process of selection and survival, and permits an all-round advance in the culture elements. Here, for one thing, is the secret of the great historic cross-fertilizations of culture — PhcEnicia with Egypt, Greece with the Orient, Israel with Hellenism, Christendom with the Moors, the Occident with India.

This struggle of rival elements of culture is by no means the same thing as the struggle between persons. When one race has overrun and trampled down another, it is always interesting to see if the spiritual contest of the two civilizations has the same issue as the physical contest of the two races. Will the upper civilization smother the lower, as in the case of the Spaniards and the Aztecs, the Germans and the Wends, the Romans and the Etruscans, the Saracens and the Roman Africans ; or will the one beneath grow up and subdue the one above, as the Romans were captivated by Greek culture, the barbarians by Roman civilization, or the Mongols by Islam ?

The reader will hardly have failed to notice that in such forms of control as public opinion, law, suggestion, personality, there is a pretty direct and immediate management of one per- son by others. But in other kinds of control something comes between controller and controlled — some ideal, religious belief, symbol, or standard that is a necessary means in the business, and that is not originated for the particular occasion. The idea as to what is "nice" or "not nice" for a woman to do, the low appraisal put on "the flesh," the labels " right " and "wrong" pasted on to every species of action, the belief that " God sees," the doctrine that men are "brothers," the ideal known as