Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/53

 SOCIAL CONTROL 39

If it is the schemer or the gallant that is their darling, he will be the hero of their epics. If they prize ease or risk or sensual gratification, they will never sing the praises of meditation and prayer.

How changed this same people in the later stages of its social development ! Gone is the genuineness and raciness of song and tale. From being sporadic the culture has become uniform ; from being local it has become national ; from being popular it has become social. Proverb and folk-lore with their frank note of cunning and self-seeking are more and more thrust out of sight. The literature and religion bear the stamp of a superior class engaged in maintaining a higher ethics than the folk cares for. The culture ceases to fit, for they have made it celebrate new pleasures and set up new goals. Popular forms of expression die out, but the literary guilds and the learned clans fail to utter what is in the heart of the people. A rift has opened. To idealize is no longer the same as to idolize. The type most praised or sung is an acquired taste. Literature honors the just man, but the multitude bows to the man of suc- cess. The saint gets the shrines, but the gladiator or bull fighter gets the crowds. The hero of duty gets the monuments and biographies, but it is the boss or money-maker that the people acclaim and want to resemble. A people that would love to be like Solomon has Isaiah's "Servant of Yahweh" set before it as its model. The Arabs at one time have Antar as their pattern, but in a few generations it is the "servant of Allah" they are called upon to imitate. The Hindus, still Vedic in temper, have set before them the ideals of the Upanishads. Under the pressure of Christian missionaries the Germans suffer their old folk ethos to be partly displaced by Semitic-Latin ideals devel- oped under wholly alien conditions. In such cases the ideals crowned are a little like constitutional monarchs : They reign, but they do not govern. 1

Now, the age of hypocrisy begins with a hardening of ideals that run counter to the common inclination. There opens a gap between social ethos and folk ethos, and, though the latter gradu- ally rises, the gap is never quite closed. In Israel the mainstay