Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/254

 240 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

These distinctions, I need hardly add, are far deeper than distinctions, like aristocracy, monarchy, republic, which relate merely to the form of government. For the location of social power expresses much more truly the inner constitution of society than does the location of political power. And so the shiftings of power within the state, far from having causes of their own, are apt to follow and answer to the shiftings of power within society. Yet, since political power is palpable and lies near the surface of things, political science long ago ascertained its forms and laws ; while social power, lying hidden in the dim depths, has hardly even yet drawn the attention of social science.

When picked men flock together in a settlement or a mining camp, authority resides at first in the Crowd. The mass is the sole seat of social power, and the mass-meeting, in which one man is as good as another, expresses the will of the community. When, in the course of time, neighbors learn to know and appraise one another, men of superior character, sagacity, or disinter- estedness come to influence their fellows more than they are influenced by them. The seat of the common will, then, is no longer the Crowd, but the Public. In this organization of minds every man counts for something, but one man does not always count for as much as another.

When, on the other hand, a group is formed by the natural increase of families, the first seat of authority is the Elders. The long years during which the young are physically and spiri- tually dependent on the parent make it difficult even for grown sons to throw off the parental yoke. This prestige of the father becomes the prestige of age when ancestor-worship teaches men that the old stand nearest to the Unseen, and will themselves soon become spirits able to bless and to ban.

Like the kinship bond, the ascendency of the elders is all but universal in the childhood of societies. But one place where the graybeard is always at a disadvantage is in the fight. So when, as with lusty barbarians, fighting becomes the chief busi- ness of life, the war leaders quite outshine the council of elders. Prowess finally surpasses age in prestige, just as from the same cause the bond of comradeship becomes stronger than the tie of