Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/399

 SOCIAL CONTROL 38$

central sources, they cannot be reached for another reason. Because they emanate from the great man, the prophet, or the spir- itual elite, their source is not determinate. They spring up, now here, now there. It is now this little knot of enthusiasts, and now that, which radiates these impulses. Vainly does the crafty, ruling class seek to control them and get them to do its work. It gains possession of the spring, but the spring forthwith dries up or turns bitter. It suborns the prophet, and his inspiration leaves him. It seduces the hero, and his followers miss the old charm in him and fall away. It wins over the singer, and lo! his voice rings cracked and false. It takes the ministers of reli- gion into its pay, and behold ! the people leave the appointed sanctuaries and hang on the burning words of some wild-eyed fanatic from the hills a Shepherd of Tekoa, for instance, or a Piers Ploughman. It is chiefly, then, upon such engines of con- trol as the supple hand can easily reach and manipulate that a ruling class must rely. Its best tools will be law, belief in the supernatural, instruction, custom, ceremony, and illusion.

These are the agents that, from the nature of the case, we should expect the ruling class to employ. But what are the facts ? The props of parasitic rule, as history has revealed them over and over again, are force, superstition, fraud, pomp, and pre- scription. At first glance there appears to be a discrepancy here, but in a moment it is clear that these are simply degenerate forms of certain familiar supports of social order. What is force but the coarse, physical compulsion of law, without law's guar- antees for the moderate and scrupulous exercise of this compul- sion ? What is superstition but a kind of belief in supernatural sanctions which in no wise springs up from the natural longing to see the iniquities of this world righted by the just decrees of the next ? Fraud is one form of illusion. Pomp is ceremony, intended to impress, not the individual entering upon new responsibili- ties, but the envious, presuming populace. Prescription is that sanctity of custom which attaches to the social edifice within which we have been reared.

These favorite instruments of the parasitic orders resemble the corresponding instruments in the service of society, and yet