Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/257

 SOCIAL CONTROL 243

the academicians and professors of France, the clergy of non- sacerdotal bodies like the Reformed churches, and the rabbis of the Jewish congregations. The Mandarinate ought to include the wisest and best in society ; but the false worth that attaches to purely conventional learning, and the sifting and promoting of the learned by tests that are artificial and futile, are likely to prevent it.

The Elite, or those distinguished by ideas and talent, are the natural leaders of society, inasmuch as their ascendency depends on nothing false or factitious. Usually they appear as a small knot of persons who, united by allegiance to some group of ideas, are able to persuade and infect the majority without allowing themselves, in turn, to be infected by vulgar prejudices. The Greek philosophers, the Stoics, the Fathers, the Schoolmen, the Humanists, the Reformers, the Pietists, the Encyclopedists, the Liberals, are examples of an active leaven able to leaven the whole lump.

Finally there is the Genius, who, as founder of religion, prophet, reformer, or artist, is able to build up a vast personal authority and sway the multitude at pleasure. Society can dis- pense with the guidance of the Elite and the Genius only when the way is straight and the path is clear. A people creeping gradually across a vast empty land, as we Americans have been doing this century, may safely belittle leadership and deify the spirit of self-reliance. But when population thickens, interests clash, and the difficult problems of mutual adjustment become pressing, it is foolish and dangerous not to follow the lead of superior men.

The impulses streaming out from each of the eight principal centers we have described do not, of course, meet a perfectly yielding mass. The power of the Few to take the role of social cerebrum depends entirely upon how far the Many capitulate to it. The radiation of control from the elders is limited by the reaction of the young men, that from the priests is limited by the reaction of the laity, that from the bureaucracy is limited by the reaction of the citizens, that from the elite is limited by the reaction of the vulgar. When the impulses a class emits are