Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/782

 766 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

what happens to the matter thrown into the channels of inter- course. Just what is the nature of the selection and survival that takes place there ?

The clumsier ways of making pots or carts perish by refusal to imitate, the sillier beliefs about sickness or spirits by refusal to adopt. But the more sinister ideals and appraisals are elimi- nated chiefly by refusal to communicate. A man may take up with an anti-social idea, but he hesitates to pass it on. Occa- sionally a thief declares the propriety of " saving one's own bacon," but the sentiment that circulates most easily in thiefdom is the vileness of " splitting on one's pals." Whispers slip fur- tively from mouth to ear about " discretion being the better part of valor," but what the stay-at-homes shout to the warrior is: " Bring back your shield, or be brought back on it." Take Latins in small batches under tongue-loosening conditions, and you get chuckling confidences about feats of gallantry. Take the same men in larger groups, and the ideas and ideals of con- jugal fidelity enjoy as much currency as they would among Anglo-Saxons. We must not forget that a man recommends to others, not what he likes, but what he likes others to like. The opinion of buccaneers is strangely disdainful of wassail and women till snug harbor is reached. The libertine is careful not to spread an appetite that might ravage his own family. It is the predacious who have the most to say for the sacredness of the rights of property. Men, for the most part, take superior moral standards, as they take coins, not for personal use, but to pass them on to the next man.

We see, then, that some of the ideas communicated circulate readily, while others meet with difficulties in passing from man to man, and, like bad pennies, are always being rejected. In other words, there are moral ideas of short circuit and moral ideas of long circuit. The wicked ideas are not put into circula- tion so often as the good ones, and they drop out sooner. The ideas which propitiate, inspire confidence, and draw men closer, pass up and down in conversational channels till, like worn coins, the image and superscription of the utterer is effaced, and they are imputed to the public — or to human nature — passing current in its name and authority.