Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/831

 SOCIAL ASSIMILATION 8l/

The assimilating agents of the aristocratic type of society are religion, custom, and ceremonial, while the chief influences making for assimilation in the democratic type are community of interest, brought about by free education, free suffrage, and free commercial intercourse ; public opinion created through the school, the club, the political meeting, the theater, the news- paper ; reigning standards and ideals ; and basic ideas, the chief among which are equal opportunity, natural rights, dignity of human nature, etc. Contrasting the assimilating agents of the two types, and summing up in a word the difference between them, we might say the all-important power in the aristocratic type is religion, while in the democratic type it is education.

Even a slight response on the part of the passive elements starts assimilation, and the inevitable result of continued contact is intermarriage, which does much to accelerate the process. Intermarriage affects the second generation. A population having the blood of both elements in its veins is more readily influenced by the dominant element than before the mixture of race occurred.

The psychic forces causing the response of the passive ele- ment to the environment are: (i) power of appreciation not apathy; (2) ambition desire to imitate; and (3) power to imitate. It is evident that there must be some appreciation of the new life with which the passive element has come into con- tact, or it will have no effect. Because the Italian immigrants who have been thronging to our shores within the last few years are utterly incapable of appreciating the superior conditions of American life, they are little influenced by their new surround- ings. In the aristocratic type the brutishness of the classes chained to toil and the absence of liberty to imitate retard assimilation. In the democratic type the unrestricted play allowed such powerful human instincts as ambition and imita- tion is responsible for much of the success of the assimilating process.

From the foregoing it is easily seen that the proximate cause of assimilation, both spontaneous and purposive, is imita- tion. In a general way, it has long been conceded that imitation