Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/779

 THE GENESIS OF ETHICAL ELEMENTS 763

"the good citizen," the symbol "Columbia" — these are exam- ples of what we may call ethical elements, to distinguish them from other classes of culture elements. Now, some of these are very old. They are detached from persons, and float free in the descending stream of culture. They are ownerless, unless we can regard them as the possession of society. In some cases we cannot trace them back to wise or good individuals. They seem rather to be the results of social reflection, products of what we might term the social mind. But, in that case, how is their genesis to be understood ?

It may be suggested that an ethical element such as a social ideal or valuation results from the compounding of many private admirations and estimates. Tom, Dick, and Harry, it may be said, cast their ideas on a subject into the common stock of ideas on that subject, circulating about in the channels of social inter- course ; and from this mingling there is precipitated after a time a typical or average opinion. Each ethical element, then, is the expression of a consensus, the result of a vast social sym- posium. In the social mind is formed a composite photograph of what Tom, Dick, and Harry have contributed to the com- mon stock; and in this image rises a social standard or estimate which can be used in the fashioning of individual character.

The weak point in such a theory of genesis is that it gives no room for moral progress. In conduct man's path has been upward; and this not so much by an improvement of his nature as by the influence of ethical factors external to him. But if he has been pulled upward by certain elements, these must have been ahead of and above him, not simply on his level. If the ideal of "man," "gentleman," or "citizen" is simply an ungolden mean between the aspirations of the topmost and those of the bottom-most people, then when it becomes a ruling force in the lives of individuals it is just as certain to drag some down- ward as to draw others upward. The ethical elements we have made so much of would then be as impotent to lift the average man as those heathen Canaanite deities of whom we read : " The attributes ascribed to them were a mere reflex of the attri- butes of their worshipers, and what character they had was