Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/565

 SOCIAL CONTROL 551

mis-selections which hinder the survival of the best breeds of men may in the course of centuries weaken character and necessitate the application of a moral truss. The common perils of war or mass migration may call for stricter corporate discipline. An influential class finding an inviting point of attachment may fasten itself upon the rest and turn parasitic. It must then guard and perpetuate this parasitic relation by a more stringent discipline.

Whatever the provoking cause may be, the increase of control is attended by a long cortege of social phenomena. It is impos- sible to restrict the movements of the social molecule without effecting a number of parallel changes. The operation of putting " starch " into church and state is at once delicate and interesting.

It might be supposed that the best way to gauge a change in the volume of control is to watch the ordinary man and see what happens to him. Is he freer or less free? Does his personal interest, bent, whim, taste, or idiosyncrasy prevail more than it did or less ? But there is a better way than this.

The lessening of freedom that invariably follows an increase in control is felt, not so much by plain, inconspicuous Doe or Roe, as by the man who stands nearest to and has the most to do with those activities which are in the nature of control. In order to double the pressure on the average person it may be neces- sary to decuple the pressure upon those who as artists, speakers, preachers, teachers, peace officers and officials are in stations of authority or influence. They receive and transmit the impulses emanating from the elders, the notables, the mandarins, and other opinion-forming sections of society. They constitute the dial plate upon which we may read a magnified record of what the humbler folk are experiencing in the way of restraint or lib- erty. We have but to watch them to measure the fluctuations of social discipline.

In the religious field access of control chokes up the fountains of inspiration. The prophet is frowned upon, and the enthusiast discouraged. Dogma and ritual grow rank. The legal side of religion comes forward, while the mystic, inspirational side falls into the background. The clerical profession is less open to the