Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/821

 MOO T POINTS IN SOCIOLOG Y 79 1

relatively uniform environment, become stagnant because the individual succumbs to the mere volume of suggestion and the mass is too great to be stirred by one man. Early groups, moreover, are held together by instinct or interest. It is the advent of vast groups with a considerable culture, held together by collective customs and beliefs, that makes variation difficult. The group's instinct of self-preservation establishes a traditionalist educational system which is intended to hypnotize the individual before he has begun to think. This collective resistance to inno- vation is most marked in oppressed peoples (Jews, Poles, Armenians) with whom the inherited culture is at once a badge of ancient glories, a bond of union, and a defiance to their oppressors. Again, the patriarchal regime gives rise to ancestor- worship which, by bringing the living under the control of the dead, preserves the status quo. The inheritance of places and functions, since it puts age in possession of all the vantage points in society, tends to arrest development. An exploitation of the mass by the minority strains social order, and hence causes regulative institutions, such as government, law, religion, and ceremony to be elaborated to the highest degree. These work better as they become hallowed by age, and therefore the aggrandizement of these agencies of control reinforces the con- servative tendencies in society.

Passing now to the positive branch of social dynamics, we find two schools contending for mastery the development school and the stimulus school.

The former regards social change as a becoming. Progress and regress, ascent and descent, present smooth flowing curves like the development of an embryo. The continuity is due to the fact that change is brought about by the operation of resident forces. The causes of the transformations of society are to be sought among the recurrent experiences and activities of its members. There is no standing still, save when development is arrested by some obstacle. Each social state in the fulness of time ushers in its successor. One phase carries the germs of the next. The present is pregnant with the future. In the succession of its