Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/390

 376 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

XVI. Continuity of influence. The fact that this incident has repeatedly been suggested, and is implied in those aspects of association already discussed, would not justify its exclusion from separate mention in our analysis. No association is eternal. Associations vary incaculably in permanence. Every association whatsoever is a channel through which some part of the social tradition is perpetuated. Association is projection of the earlier moment into the later. Association is preservation of the past in the present and its production in the future. Association is the means by which continuity of human action is realized and guaranteed. Association is the reagent that makes successive social situations parts of each other.

There is a story that during the early summer of 1898, when there was great excitement throughout the country over a pos- sible descent of the Spanish fleet upon our Atlantic coast, a western man asked a Boston citizen what he thought about the danger of Cervera's bombarding the city. ' Bombard Boston!" was the response. "You talk as though Boston were a locality. Boston is not a place ; Boston is a state of mind. You can no more shoot it with a gun than you could shoot wis- dom, or justice, or magnanimity." Whether the tale is fact or fiction, there is profound truth underneath its humor. Boston is essentially a state of mind. Destroy the custom-house and the city hall and the state house and the art museum and the public library, and Boston will not be touched. Level Beacon Hill, and plow up the Common, and close historic Cornhill and Brattle street, yet Boston will remain. Remove the storied tower of old South Church, and tear down Fanueil Hall, and topple over Bunker Hill monument, yet Boston will be left. Increase and Cotton Mather, Governor Winthrop and Sam Adams, John Hancock, Garrison, Phillips, and Sumner, Longfel- low, Whittier, Lowell, and Emerson, are more of today's Boston than its geographic site, and its material structures, and its mayor, and its commissioner of public works, and its superintendent of schools, and its editors and its teachers and its ministers. Boston is a standard of thinking, a set of conceptions and emotions, a body of conclusions about the conduct of life. This is the fact