Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/46

 32 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

conduct will promote this welfare. They must be wise enough to perceive how the common happiness is bound up with sobriety, monogamy, or veracity, and disinterested enough to champion the standards that make for the common happiness. By reason of their ethical feeling they are superior to the other groups in the party of order. The others want order, any kind of order, while the elite stands for an order that is right, one that squares with their instincts of sympathy and fair play.

But we must not suppose that this elite includes only the handful of saints. It is possible to uphold good rules without obeying them, to love and sincerely champion an ideal with- out being able to live up to it. The cause of order may count among its friends all those who, looking abroad upon the social ant-heap, incline toward stringency. That they succeed in prac- ticing as moral agents what they support as onlookers is not absolutely necessary. Whatever be their secret behavior under temptation, the conservatism of Pharisees, or Brahmins, or elders of the synagogue, or deacons of the kirk is still a measurable social force.

"You have cast a wide net," someone will say at this point. " If so many kinds of men are among the upholders of the social ethos, why not say that society maintains the superior ethical ele- ments ?" But such a statement is far too sweeping. It is a commonplace that only an enlightened people can govern itself. Now, it is equally true that only an intelligent people can itself maintain the ethical elements that lie at the base of its social order. In the army, for instance, every detail of discipline exists for the well-being or success of the fighting body. Troops clever enough to perceive this soon develop among themselves the standards and ideals that accord with this discipline, and thus lessen the strain on their leaders. But ignorant troops do not. Hence the burden of initiative lies much more heavily on the officers of Soudanese regiments than on the officers of American volunteers. Now, what holds of army discipline is true of the greater social discipline. The shares of the many and the few in upholding standards are not the same in Madagascar as in Europe, not the same in Mexico as in Massachusetts. Whenever