Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/780

 764 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

nothing else than a personification of the character of the nation that acknowledged their lordship."'

But the fact is, the genesis of ethical elements, as well as the genesis of customs and beliefs, is a process of selection and sur- vival. Just as the development of Zuni or Lydian pottery is due to a competition which makes the handiest and handsomest form of pot the prevailing type, and to the renewal of this healthy competition whenever an inventive potter or a foreign art supplies a new pattern, so the improvement in the ethical strand of a civilization is due to the survival and ascendency of those ele- ments which are best adapted to an orderly social life.

Let us now follow closely the selections and rejections whereby the ideal or judgment of conduct that emerges and reigns in a body of associates comes to be so different from the actual ideals or judgments of the persons themselves. In the first place it must be recognized that human intercourse is far from being a complete mutual expose, inasmuch as converse is a social act implying a willingness to tolerate and a wish to please. Without adopting the mot \.\\dX "language is given us to conceal thought," we can yet safely say that only a part of the contents of one's mind is communicated to others. How much is with- held for fear of disagreeable consequences ! How much is kept back lest it stir up trouble and widen the space between people ! How often an exploring party has kept on longer than anyone wished because each dreaded to speak out ! How often a body of reluctant men have carried through a mad enterprise because each feared his protest would meet with jeers ! In their bap- tism of fire, recruits conceal a "blue funk" under an assumed nonchalance ; and this serves as a reassuring badge of the cour- age that the company as a whole exhibits and finally inspires in its members. The suddenness of recoil one witnesses in the retreat of a garrison, the abandonment of a strike, or the col- lapse of a boom is due to the fact that in a body of men the inner tension may become very great before someone speaks the word everyone is thinking, and so breaks the spell. Locked in a kind of charm we run farther and farther out on the dizzy

■ W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 66.