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 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 365

of the workingman's individual and class-consciousness. If other social elements presume to push the workingman back into the status of constructive infancy ; if the attempt is made to place the workingman under the tutoring or governoring of other industrial classes; if it is assumed that the workingman does not know what makes for his own good, and should, there- fore, be restrained from manifesting his own feelings about what is for his good, and should be compelled to accept as a substi- tute for his own thoughts and feelings the thoughts and feelings which other classes want him to have personal persistence is ignored and vetoed, equality is denied, and order is endangered.

It is extremely difficult to discuss this incident " persist- ence," with its corollary "equality," without confusing it with the condition scheduled next in order. The two abstractions, though necessarily so intimately associated, must, however, be kept apart for purposes of clear thinking, even if the process of keeping them apart is somewhat arbitrary. The equal free- dom of every man to be himself, such as he is, must be regarded not merely as a specification of ideal order; it must be recog- nized as in some degree a postulate of all order and an incipient element of all order. The fatalism of India, the acquiescence in the decrees of caste, the calm assumption of superiority by the brahmin and the equally unruffled acceptance of inferiority by sudrah or pariah each expresses a certain legal-tender concep- tion of valuation. Castes visualize the class-consciousness of their members, and the system approximately represents the judgments of personal valuation in the people as a whole. The same psychological phenomenon appears in the United States in the popular fiction that each man is a sovereign. So long as each man believes that he is exercising his sovereignty this appraisal of individuality is compatible with the existence of a social order which actually nullifies the appraisal. Wherever men begin to believe that the social order actually deprives them of equal privilege to be themselves, at that time and place social stability and equilibrium are forthwith in danger.

Accordingly, as in the case of each condition in our sched- ule, we have in this specification a test of all past and present