Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/829

 SOCIAL ASSIMILATION 815

stage of intercourse has been reached, the desire to enjoy what others enjoy and the imitative tendency to act as others act accelerate the assimilative process, which at this period of social development attains such a degree of completeness that it may be called national. The United States approaches more nearly than any other country this stage of assimilation.

IV. THE PROCESS OF ASSIMILATION CONCLUDED.

Assimilating forces include those of the environment, both physical and social, and those implied by intermarriage. 1 The main factors in the physical environment are climate and geo- graphical features. These determine to a great extent the occu- pations, amusements, dress, and customs of peoples. The same physical environment for different races has the tendency to efface natural differences, through the identity of life, food, shelter, clothing, which it demands. If the new people yield readily to its influence and adopt the manner of life dictated by it, the physical environment has accomplished its work of prepa- ration for the social environment which it in a measure deter- mines. In the case of a conquering people settling on the land of the conquered the physical environment causes assimilation, to a certain point, of the conquerors to the conquered, and a necessary adaptation of social institutions to the new physical conditions, before the social environment of the conquerors can begin its action upon the subject race. The effect of the physi- cal environment upon the intellect and the emotions of man, a point made much of by Buckle and his followers, is so indeter- minate that it will not be here considered.

The social environment comprises all the influences brought to bear by the dominant people upon those to be assimilated. It is by no means coextensive with the physical or local environ- ment. For instance, in the United States, broadly speaking, the social environment, through a system of easy communication, is made identical, or nearly so, for everyone. The United States does not present a series of strongly marked class environments,

1 MAYO-SMITH, " Assimilation of Nationalities in the United States," I, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. IX, p. 432.