Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/49

 SOCIAL CONTROL 35

the face of popular "hardness of heart" because they drew apart from the rabble and learned to lean upon one another. The priests during the Dark Ages were able to assert their ideals of monogamy and sobriety against the rude barbarians in virtue of their freedom from lay dictation. The great work of Hildebrand that lifted the prostrate church to her feet was nothing else than the perfecting of the hierarchy. Free and spontaneous as was Buddhism in the land of its birth, it took on the form of a hierarchical church when it came to civilize Thibet. One con- sideration that centralized public instruction in France was that in backward regions like Auvergne or Corsica the teaching of the schoolmaster ought to be independent of, and superior to benighted local sentiment. In early San Francisco and Mel- bourne the power of refined people to uphold "good form" was vastly augmented the moment they found one another out and arranged themselves in that hierarchy known as "good society." The same contrast of higher and lower is seen in our Indian policy, although in this case the higher did not prevail. Says Roosevelt :

A very curious feature of our dealings with the Indians .... has been the combination of extreme and indeed foolish benevolence of purpose on the part of the government with, on the part of the settlers, a brutality of action which this benevolent purpose could in no wise check or restrain. 1

In a homogeneous people dwelling on a lofty and solid plat- form of moral tradition it is practicable to let the agents of control teachers, clergy, judges, sheriffs, and public prosecutors reflect the wishes and sentiments of the community they work in, to let place and leading go according to the suffrage of the people. But all great civilizing or leveling-up tasks must be committed to picked men organized apart and receiving their stimuli from a central independent source. Missionary boards find it wise in foreign work to make the native workers respon- sible to the missionaries and not to their native flocks. In other words, churches that are democratic at home feel obliged to introduce something like episcopacy in the foreign field. The few thousand Englishmen among the millions of India can main- tain European standards of law and justice because they are

1 The Winning of the West, Vol. IV, p. 316.