Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/44

 30 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

with baser metal, the pure gold can always be recovered in the Scriptures. It is, then, by imbedding them in recorded art, literature, or religion that ethical gains may be held and moral progress insured. Without fixation in a book or caste the teach- ing of the moral prophet is soon debased and lost. But a gain fixed in the transmitted culture may enter after a time into the folk ethos and thus form the platform from which fresh gains may be made.

The dead, then, armed with the lever of tradition, are the first contingent to support the ethical elements. The second contingent is composed of parents. By the overlap of their lives the parent has great power in forming the character of the child. If now the parent passes on just his private ethos, that is to say, the views and feelings that really govern his actions, there is no gain from this ascendency. But if he instills the superior social standards and ideals he becomes thereby their prop and bulwark. Now, what is the actual policy of parents ? Observation will show, I think, that the influence of the parent is, on the whole, uplifting. When a higher ethics is abroad, the father frequently favors it more in shaping his son's character than in shaping his own. He wants the boy to be a little more sober, chaste, honest, and truthful than himself. Often the sum of his exhortation is : " Do as I say, and not as I do." It would be too cynical to say that the sire knowingly lays upon his sons a burden he will not himself take up. But it is certain that he forgets to allow in them for that passion and self-will which is the secret and the excuse of his own shortcomings. At the de"but of each of the historical peoples the fathers are content, just as they are among nature folk, to be faithfully copied in conduct by their sons. But later, when a social ethos stretches above them from horizon to horizon, an inner conflict breeds discontent ; and this discontent is more potent in modeling the character of their children than in remodeling their own char- acter. The influence of parents, therefore, is one of the forces that prevent social ideals and standards from sagging to the vulgar level.