Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/537

Rh body, but also in mind—not only in permanent and fundamental characters, but also in temporary and superficial characters. If men were exactly alike in every respect, we should find the greatest ease of association between men and men generally, as distinguished from association of beings human and beings not human. Yet upon the fundamental characters in which all men are alike there are superposed by advancing social and industrial complexity those superficial characters in which, for such characters, the members of particular groups come to be, on the one hand, more alike one another than, for the same characters, they can be alike men in general; and on the other, more unlike each other than, for the same characters, they can be alike men in general. Hence, even among human beings fundamentally alike we shall find abundant scope for movements both of association and dissociation.

First note the superior ease, even pleasure, which characterizes the relations of likes temporarily or permanently associated, and observe how, in the very facility of such relations, we are entitled to see a satisfaction of the demand that likes shall be brought together. The illustrations naturally take a wide range. Men of the same vocation, for example, find intercourse with each other, for the scope and ends of such vocations, much easier than with those engaged in other vocations. It is from likeness within industrial groups that the camaraderie of the trades and professions draws its spirit. The pleasure, again, with which artists, musicians, scientific and literary men come together manifestly has its origin in likeness of common pursuits, tastes, and aspirations. That facility of association is at its highest between men of like politics, men of like faith, men of like aims in any field of activity, has long been proverbial. Societies and clubs of every kind constitute so many classes of likes within which the elements of resistance are at a minimum, and this not because each individual is always or even often wholly like his fellow-member, but because there is a resemblance between them on some one or more sides which, being permanent, at least for the time, and valid for the ends of the association, facilitates the intercourse of all who during that time and for those ends come into contact with each other. Even when men gather for only temporary and general purposes—such as for those of social enjoyment—we often hear of religion or politics being tabooed, and this is done obviously as a means of avoiding the resistances of unlikeness—of bringing forward only those sides of human nature on which the associated individuals are for the time being alike. Intercourse is also much easier within than without the limits of class; the poor find among the poor the greatest facility of relation with their fellow-beings; so the possessors of