Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/384

 370 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

In general, companies of men are more consistently selfish than are the men themselves. To prick of conscience, to honor and shame, individuals are more sensitive than are group-units. In the clash of crowds, classes, sects, and corporate bodies, how nearly is it true that might makes right! One reason is that a divided responsibility evaporates, becomes no responsibility, when we can creep under the cloak of anonymity. Another is that most of us need the comment of our fellows in order to keep to the high road. When we are all tempted at once, there is no one to cry "Shame!" and we plunge into the mire together. Finally the group-unit engrosses the moral capital of its members. Suppose the strength of my regard for the rights of others is ten. Against an immoral hankering with an energy of eight my conscience will triumph. I will do the right. But if my group-unit evinces this same immoral desire, there is now ranged on the side of my hankering my esprit du corps, with an energy, say, of four. This time my sense of justice encounters twelve units of energy and is vanquished. As member of the group I will demand the iniquity, as representative order it, as agent execute it. For nearly everyone feels, if he does not avow: "My class, my church, my party, my country, right or wrong!" Thus the special altruism that so often prompts the individual to virtue clannishness, class loyalty, sectarianism, corporate feeling, patriotism works on the devil's side when a group is tempted to do wrong.

For these causes group-units in their behavior to one another recall the saurian monsters of the Cretaceous. No need of dwelling on the far ferocities of hordes, tribes, cities and factions. Even today the beak-and-claw struggle, renounced as between individuals, continues between companies, unions, parties, sects, and nations. Everything, therefore, that crystal- lizes men into rigid group-unities turns back the clock and puts off the hour of justice. Spencer is right. The lock-step forms of co-operation which reduce the man to a cipher are reactionary. Tolstoi is right. The iron machines administrative, military, ecclesiastical that cramp the individual reason and conscience prolong into our age the reign of brute force. The cause of