Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/574

 560 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

unmoralized knowledge and ideas of classical antiquity which we call he Italian Renaissance produced a brief but astounding burst of neo-pagan individualism which in its intellectual and artistic manifestations has charmed the world, but which in its moral results has excited only its horror. As the new learning filtered from Italy into northern lands it was partially mastered by the conservative forces in society, and became an intellectual ferment rather than a moral solvent. A similar effect has been wrought within the educated class in India by too immediate a taking over of western science and culture. If in Japan morals have suffered less from the same process, it is perhaps because for the support of character Japan relies on ideals rather than ideas.

The wholesale acquisition of exotic wants likewise disrupts the system of social control. Intercourse with abroad acquaints a people with foreign luxuries and implants new cravings. The sudden growth of the standard of consumption beyond the means of satisfying it sharpens the struggle for wealth, under- mines old personal ideals, and subverts the -social valuations of things. As tastes and appetites are more catching than the moralities that hold them in check, heavy borrowings from a foreign culture are apt to demoralize for a time the upper classes of the people. The Greek moralists deplored the rage for Asiatic luxuries which whetted the greed for gold and led Greeks to take the pay of the Persian king. Cato bewailed the sapping of Roman simplicity and virtue by insidious Greek fashions and oriental pleasures. In the sixteenth century the Italians, in the seventeenth century the Spaniards, in the eight- eenth century the French, and in the nineteenth century the English, have been reproached as the corrupters of peoples. Fruitful as is the intercourse of nations, necessary as it is for the rise of universal religions and universal moral systems, it is undeniable that wholesale importations from abroad let loose the world and the flesh and tend to social decomposition. Laxity reigns until the group-soul has mastered the materials thrust upon it and out of them has built a new fabric of regulative ideas.

New experiences may likewise unbridle the ego. In times of