Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/145

 INFLUENCE OF THE FORM OF SOCIAL CHANGE 131

is essentially a part of an overt interest. There is no other way to account for the terrible excesses of asceticism in the early Christian centuries. We look in vain in the New Testament for teaching that could be even wrenched into a justification of such practices. It was not any direct teaching of Christianity, but the general subjective attitude, that caused healthful precepts to be thus distorted.

This subjective and emotional attitude in religious matters was only a part of a larger process of this period. That it found its best expression in the religious sphere is accounted for by the nature of the religious attitude itself. The latter is the most delicate of all indices to deep-lying subjective, or emotional, tendencies. But it must be remembered that the movement is itself the fundamental thing, and that religion is simply the one element in the social organism most susceptible to such stimuli.

Several centuries before the Christian era were the beginnings of an absolutely unique upheaval for the nations of the Medi- terranean. It began in the disintegration of the primitive forms of social control, and, before new and more adequate forms could be built up, ancient civilization was engulfed in north- ern barbarism. The reconstruction that should have followed at once upon the breaking down of the old was postponed for many centuries, thus prolonging a psychological state that has no parallel in history. In the most general terms, the epoch began in a transition from tribal institutions and religion to national and international customs and religious codes. The primitive forms of tribal organization and control may be said to have continued to form the basis of the civilization of south- ern Europe long after the tribes themselves had ceased to exist except in name. The national governments were little more than the result of attempts to apply tribal institutions on a large scale without any genuine reconstruction of them. There were naturally limits beyond which such a procedure could not be carried. Whatever forces tended to weaken the hold of primi- tive custom, and especially of primitive religion, hastened the time when reconstruction could no longer be deferred. Promi- nent among these causes must have been the great increase in intercourse through war and commerce between the various