Chapter I (1)

FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF THE FOLKWAYS
AND OF THE MORES

Definition and mode of origin of the folkways.--The folkways are
a societal force.--Folkways are made unconsciously.--Impulse
and instinct; primeval stupidity; magic.--The strain of
improvement and consistency.--The aleatory element.--All
origins are lost in mystery.--Spencer on primitive custom.--
Good and bad luck; ills of life; goodness and happiness.--
Illustrations.--Immortality and compensation.--Tradition and
its restraints.--The concepts of "primitive society";
"we-groups" and "others-groups."--Sentiments in the in-group
towards out-groups.--Ethnocentrism.--Illustrations.--
Patriotism.--Chauvinism.--The struggle for existence and the
competition of life; antagonistic coöperation.--Four motives:
hunger, love, vanity, fear.--The process of making folkways.--
Suggestion and suggestibility.--Suggestion in education.--
Manias.--Suggestion in politics.--Suggestion and criticism.--
Folkways based on false inferences.--Harmful folkways.--How
"true" and "right" are found.--The folkways are right; rights;
morals.--The folkways are true.--Relations of world philosophy
to folkways.--Definition of the mores.--Taboos.--No primitive
philosophizing; myths; fables; notion of social welfare.--The
imaginative element.--The ethical policy and the success
policy.--Recapitulation.--Scope and method of the mores.--
Integration of the mores of a group or age.--Purpose of the
present work.--Why use the word "mores."--The mores are a
directive force.--Consistency in the mores.--The mores of
subgroups.--What are classes?--Classes rated by societal
value.--Class; race; group solidarity.--The masses and the
mores.--Fallacies about the classes and the masses.--Action of
the masses on ideas.--Organization of the masses.--Institutions
of civil liberty.--The common man.--The "people"; popular
impulses.--Agitation.--The ruling element in the masses.--The
mores and institutions.--Laws.--How laws and institutions
differ from mores.--Difference between mores and some cognate
things.--Goodness or badness of the mores.--More exact
definition of the mores.--Ritual.--The ritual of the mores.--
Group interests and policy.--Group interests and folkways.--
Force in the folkways.--Might and right.--Status.--
Conventionalization.--Conventions indispensable.--The "ethos"
or group character; Japan.--Chinese ethos.--Hindoo ethos.--
European ethos.

+1. Definition and mode of origin of the folkways.+ If we put together all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts. Every moment brings necessities which must be satisfied at once. Need was the first experience, and it was followed at once by a blundering effort to satisfy it. It is generally taken for granted that men inherited some guiding instincts from their beast ancestry, and it may be true, although it has never been proved. If there were such inheritances, they controlled and aided the first efforts to satisfy needs. Analogy makes it easy to assume that the ways of beasts had produced channels of habit and predisposition along which dexterities and other psychophysical activities would run easily. Experiments with newborn animals show that in the absence of any experience of the relation of means to ends, efforts to satisfy needs are clumsy and blundering. The method is that of trial and failure, which produces repeated pain, loss, and disappointments. Nevertheless, it is a method of rude experiment and selection. The earliest efforts of men were of this kind. Need was the impelling force. Pleasure and pain, on the one side and the other, were the rude constraints which defined the line on which efforts must proceed. The ability to distinguish between pleasure and pain is the only psychical power which is to be assumed. Thus ways of doing things were selected, which were expedient. They answered the purpose better than other ways, or with less toil and pain. Along the course on which efforts were compelled to go, habit, routine, and skill were developed. The struggle to maintain existence was carried on, not individually, but in groups. Each profited by the other's experience; hence there was concurrence towards that which proved to be most expedient. All at last adopted the same way for the same purpose; hence the ways turned into customs and became mass phenomena. Instincts were developed in connection with them. In this way folkways arise. The young learn them by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time, provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform, universal in the group, imperative, and invariable. As time goes on, the folkways become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative. If asked why they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive people always answer that it is because they and their ancestors always have done so. A sanction also arises from ghost fear. The ghosts of ancestors would be angry if the living should change the ancient folkways (see sec. 6).

+2. The folkways are a societal force.+ The operation by which folkways are produced consists in the frequent repetition of petty acts, often by great numbers acting in concert or, at least, acting in the same way when face to face with the same need. The immediate motive is interest. It produces habit in the individual and custom in the group. It is, therefore, in the highest degree original and primitive. By habit and custom it exerts a strain on every individual within its range; therefore it rises to a societal force to which great classes of societal phenomena are due. Its earliest stages, its course, and laws may be studied; also its influence on individuals and their reaction on it. It is our present purpose so to study it. We have to recognize it as one of the chief forces by which a society is made to be what it is. Out of the unconscious experiment which every repetition of the ways includes, there issues pleasure or pain, and then, so far as the men are capable of reflection, convictions that the ways are conducive to societal welfare. These two experiences are not the same. The most uncivilized men, both in the food quest and in war, do things which are painful, but which have been found to be expedient. Perhaps these cases teach the sense of social welfare better than those which are pleasurable and favorable to welfare. The former cases call for some intelligent reflection on experience. When this conviction as to the relation to welfare is added to the folkways they are converted into mores, and, by virtue of the philosophical and ethical element added to them, they win utility and importance and become the source of the science and the art of living.

+3. Folkways are made unconsciously.+ It is of the first importance to notice that, from the first acts by which men try to satisfy needs, each act stands by itself, and looks no further than the immediate satisfaction. From recurrent needs arise habits for the individual and customs for the group, but these results are consequences which were never conscious, and never foreseen or intended. They are not noticed until they have long existed, and it is still longer before they are appreciated. Another long time must pass, and a higher stage of mental development must be reached, before they can be used as a basis from which to deduce rules for meeting, in the future, problems whose pressure can be foreseen. The folkways, therefore, are not creations of human purpose and wit. They are like products of natural forces which men unconsciously set in operation, or they are like the instinctive ways of animals, which are developed out of experience, which reach a final form of maximum adaptation to an interest, which are handed down by tradition and admit of no exception or variation, yet change to meet new conditions, still within the same limited methods, and without rational reflection or purpose. From this it results that all the life of human beings, in all ages and stages of culture, is primarily controlled by a vast mass of folkways handed down from the earliest existence of the race, having the nature of the ways of other animals, only the topmost layers of which are subject to change and control, and have been somewhat modified by human philosophy, ethics, and religion, or by other acts of intelligent reflection. We are told of savages that "It is difficult to exhaust the customs and small ceremonial usages of a savage people. Custom regulates the whole of a man's actions,--his bathing, washing, cutting his hair, eating, drinking, and fasting. From his cradle to his grave he is the slave of ancient usage. In his life there is nothing free, nothing original, nothing spontaneous, no progress towards a higher and better life, and no attempt to improve his condition, mentally, morally, or spiritually."[1] All men act in this way with only a little wider margin of voluntary variation.

+4. Impulse and instinct. Primeval stupidity. Magic.+ "The mores (_Sitten_) rest on feelings of pleasure or pain, which either directly produce actions or call out desires which become causes of action."[2] "Impulse is not an attribute of living creatures, like instinct. The only phenomenon to which impulse applies is that men and other animals imitate what they see others, especially of their own species, do, and that they accomplish this imitation the more easily, the more their forefathers practiced the same act. The thing imitated, therefore, must already exist, and cannot be explained as an impulse." "As soon as instinct ceased to be sole ruler of living creatures, including inchoate man, the latter must have made mistakes in the struggle for existence which would soon have finished his career, but that he had instinct and the imitation of what existed to guide him. This human primeval stupidity is the ultimate ground of religion and art, for both come without any interval, out of the magic which is the immediate consequence of the struggle for existence when it goes beyond instinct." "If we want to determine the origin of dress, if we want to define social relations and achievements, e.g. the origin of marriage, war, agriculture, cattle breeding, etc., if we want to make studies in the psyche of nature peoples,--we must always pass through magic and belief in magic. One who is weak in magic, e.g. a ritually unclean man, has a 'bad body,' and reaches no success. Primitive men, on the other hand, win their success by means of their magical power and their magical preparations, and hence become 'the noble and good.' For them there is no other morality [than this success]. Even the technical dexterities have certainly not been free from the influence of belief in magic."[3]

+5. The strain of improvement and consistency.+ The folkways, being ways of satisfying needs, have succeeded more or less well, and therefore have produced more or less pleasure or pain. Their quality always consisted in their adaptation to the purpose. If they were imperfectly adapted and unsuccessful, they produced pain, which drove men on to learn better. The folkways are, therefore, (1) subject to a strain of improvement towards better adaptation of means to ends, as long as the adaptation is so imperfect that pain is produced. They are also (2) subject to a strain of consistency with each other, because they all answer their several purposes with less friction and antagonism when they coöperate and support each other. The forms of industry, the forms of the family, the notions of property, the constructions of rights, and the types of religion show the strain of consistency with each other through the whole history of civilization. The two great cultural divisions of the human race are the oriental and the occidental. Each is consistent throughout; each has its own philosophy and spirit; they are separated from top to bottom by different mores, different standpoints, different ways, and different notions of what societal arrangements are advantageous. In their contrast they keep before our minds the possible range of divergence in the solution of the great problems of human life, and in the views of earthly existence by which life policy may be controlled. If two planets were joined in one, their inhabitants could not differ more widely as to what things are best worth seeking, or what ways are most expedient for well living.

+6. The aleatory interest.+ If we should try to find a specimen society in which expedient ways of satisfying needs and interests were found by trial and failure, and by long selection from experience, as broadly described in sec. 1 above, it might be impossible to find one. Such a practical and utilitarian mode of procedure, even when mixed with ghost sanction, is rationalistic. It would not be suited to the ways and temper of primitive men. There was an element in the most elementary experience which was irrational and defied all expedient methods. One might use the best known means with the greatest care, yet fail of the result. On the other hand, one might get a great result with no effort at all. One might also incur a calamity without any fault of his own. This was the aleatory element in life, the element of risk and loss, good or bad fortune. This element is never absent from the affairs of men. It has greatly influenced their life philosophy and policy. On one side, good luck may mean something for nothing, the extreme case of prosperity and felicity. On the other side, ill luck may mean failure, loss, calamity, and disappointment, in spite of the most earnest and well-planned endeavor. The minds of men always dwell more on bad luck. They accept ordinary prosperity as a matter of course. Misfortunes arrest their attention and remain in their memory.

Hence the ills of life are the mode of manifestation of the aleatory element which has most affected life policy. Primitive men ascribed all incidents to the agency of men or of ghosts and spirits. Good and ill luck were attributed to the superior powers, and were supposed to be due to their pleasure or displeasure at the conduct of men. This group of notions constitutes goblinism. It furnishes a complete world philosophy. The element of luck is always present in the struggle for existence. That is why primitive men never could carry on the struggle for existence, disregarding the aleatory element and employing a utilitarian method only. The aleatory element has always been the connecting link between the struggle for existence and religion. It was only by religious rites that the aleatory element in the struggle for existence could be controlled. The notions of ghosts, demons, another world, etc., were all fantastic. They lacked all connection with facts, and were arbitrary constructions put upon experience. They were poetic and developed by poetic construction and imaginative deduction. The nexus between them and events was not cause and effect, but magic. They therefore led to delusive deductions in regard to life and its meaning, which entered into subsequent action as guiding faiths, and imperative notions about the conditions of success. The authority of religion and that of custom coalesced into one indivisible obligation. Therefore the simple statement of experiment and expediency in the first paragraph above is not derived directly from actual cases, but is a product of analysis and inference. It must also be added that vanity and ghost fear produced needs which man was as eager to satisfy as those of hunger or the family. Folkways resulted for the former as well as for the latter (see sec. 9).

+7. All origins are lost in mystery.+ No objection can lie against this postulate about the way in which folkways began, on account of the element of inference in it. All origins are lost in mystery, and it seems vain to hope that from any origin the veil of mystery will ever be raised. We go up the stream of history to the utmost point for which we have evidence of its course. Then we are forced to reach out into the darkness upon the line of direction marked by the remotest course of the historic stream. This is the way in which we have to act in regard to the origin of capital, language, the family, the state, religion, and rights. We never can hope to see the beginning of any one of these things. Use and wont are products and results. They had antecedents. We never can find or see the first member of the series. It is only by analysis and inference that we can form any conception of the "beginning" which we are always so eager to find.

+8. Spencer on primitive custom.+ Spencer[4] says that "guidance by custom, which we everywhere find amongst rude peoples, is the sole conceivable guidance at the outset." Custom is the product of concurrent action through time. We find it existent and in control at the extreme reach of our investigations. Whence does it begin, and how does it come to be? How can it give guidance "at the outset"? All mass actions seem to begin because the mass wants to act together. The less they know what it is right and best to do, the more open they are to suggestion from an incident in nature, or from a chance act of one, or from the current doctrines of ghost fear. A concurrent drift begins which is subject to later correction. That being so, it is evident that instinctive action, under the guidance of traditional folkways, is an operation of the first importance in all societal matters. Since the custom never can be antecedent to all action, what we should desire most is to see it arise out of the first actions, but, inasmuch as that is impossible, the course of the action after it is started is our field of study. The origin of primitive customs is always lost in mystery, because when the action begins the men are never conscious of historical action, or of the historical importance of what they are doing. When they become conscious of the historical importance of their acts, the origin is already far behind.

+9. Good and bad luck; ills of life; goodness and happiness.+
There are in nature numerous antagonistic forces of growth or
production and destruction. The interests of man are between the
two and may be favored or ruined by either. Correct knowledge of
both is required to get the advantages and escape the injuries.
Until the knowledge becomes adequate the effects which are
encountered appear to be accidents or cases of luck. There is no
thrift in nature. There is rather waste. Human interests require
thrift, selection, and preservation. Capital is the condition
precedent of all gain in security and power, and capital is
produced by selection and thrift. It is threatened by all which
destroys material goods. Capital is therefore the essential means
of man's power over nature, and it implies the purest concept of
the power of intelligence to select and dispose of the processes
of nature for human welfare. All the earliest efforts in this
direction were blundering failures. Men selected things to be
desired and preserved under impulses of vanity and superstition,
and misconceived utility and interest. The errors entered into
the folkways, formed a part of them, and were protected by them.
Error, accident, and luck seem to be the only sense there is in
primitive life. Knowledge alone limits their sway, and at least
changes the range and form of their dominion. Primitive folkways
are marked by improvidence, waste, and carelessness, out of which
prudence, foresight, patience, and perseverance are developed
slowly, by pain and loss, as experience is accumulated, and
knowledge increases also, as better methods seem worth while. The
consequences of error and the effects of luck were always mixed.
As we have seen, the ills of life were connected with the
displeasure of the ghosts. _Per contra_, conduct which conformed
to the will of the ghosts was goodness, and was supposed to bring
blessing and prosperity. Thus a correlation was established, in
the faith of men, between goodness and happiness, and on that
correlation an art of happiness was built. It consisted in a
faithful performance of rites of respect towards superior powers
and in the use of lucky times, places, words, etc., with
avoidance of unlucky ones. All uncivilized men demand and expect
a specific response. Inasmuch as they did not get it, and indeed
the art of happiness always failed of results, the great question
of world philosophy always has been, What is the real relation
between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few
generations that men have found courage to say that there is
none. The whole strength of the notion that they are correlated
is in the opposite experience which proves that no evil thing
brings happiness. The oldest religious literature consists of
formulas of worship and prayer by which devotion and obedience
were to produce satisfaction of the gods, and win favor and
prosperity for men.[5] The words "ill" and "evil" have never yet
thrown off the ambiguity between wickedness and calamity. The two
ideas come down to us allied or combined. It was the rites which
were the object of tradition, not the ideas which they
embodied.[6]

+10. Illustrations.+ The notions of blessing and curse are
subsequent explanations by men of great cases of prosperity or
calamity which came to their knowledge. Then the myth-building
imagination invented stories of great virtue or guilt to account
for the prosperity or calamity.[7] The Greek notion of the
Nemesis was an inference from observation of good and ill fortune
in life. Great popular interest attached to the stories of
Croesus and Polycrates. The latter, after all his glory and
prosperity, was crucified by the satrap of Lydia. Croesus had
done all that man could do, according to the current religion, to
conciliate the gods and escape ill fortune. He was very pious and
lived by the rules of religion. The story is told in different
forms. "The people could not make up their minds that a prince
who had been so liberal to the gods during his prosperity had
been abandoned by them at the moment when he had the greatest
need of their aid."[8] They said that he expiated the crime of
his ancestor Gyges, who usurped the throne; that is, they found
it necessary to adduce some guilt to account for the facts, and
they introduced the notion of hereditary responsibility. Another
story was that he determined to sacrifice all his wealth to the
gods. He built a funeral pyre of it all and mounted it himself,
but rain extinguished it. The gods were satisfied. Croesus
afterwards enjoyed the friendship of Cyros, which was good
fortune. Still others rejected the doctrines of correlation
between goodness and happiness on account of the fate of
Croesus. In ancient religion "the benefits which were expected
from the gods were of a public character, affecting the whole
community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks and
herds, and success in war. So long as the community flourished,
the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit
on divine providence, but was rather taken to prove that the
sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."[9] Jehu
and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although
Jehu was commissioned by Elisha to destroy the house of Ahab.[10]
This is like the case of OEdipus, who obeyed an oracle, but
suffered for his act as for a crime. Jehovah caused the ruin of
those who had displeased him, by putting false oracles in the
mouths of prophets.[11] Hezekiah expostulated with God because,
although he had walked before God with a perfect heart and had
done what was right in His sight, he suffered calamity.[12] In
the seventy-third Psalm, the author is perplexed by the
prosperity of the wicked, and the contrast of his own fortunes.
"Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart and washed my hands in
innocency, for all day long have I been plagued, and chastened
every morning." He says that at last the wicked were cast down.
He was brutish and ignorant not to see the solution. It is that
the wicked prosper for a time only. He will cleave unto God. The
book of Job is a discussion of the relation between goodness and
happiness. The crusaders were greatly perplexed by the victories
of the Mohammedans. It seemed to be proved untrue that God would
defend His own Name or the true and holy cause. Louis XIV, when
his armies were defeated, said that God must have forgotten all
which he had done for Him.

+11. Immortality and compensation.+ The notion of immortality has
been interwoven with the notion of luck, of justice, and of the
relation of goodness and happiness. The case was reopened in
another world, and compensations could be assumed to take place
there. In the folk drama of the ancient Greeks luck ruled. It was
either envious of human prosperity or beneficent.[13] Grimm[14]
gives more than a thousand ancient German apothegms, dicta, and
proverbs about "luck." The Italians of the fifteenth century saw
grand problems in the correlation of goodness and happiness.
Alexander VI was the wickedest man known in history, but he had
great and unbroken prosperity in all his undertakings. The only
conceivable explanation was that he had made a pact with the
devil. Some of the American Indians believed that there was an
hour at which all wishes uttered by men were fulfilled.[15] It is
amongst half-civilized peoples that the notion of luck is given
the greatest influence in human affairs. They seek devices for
operating on luck, since luck controls all interests. Hence
words, times, names, places, gestures, and other acts or
relations are held to control luck. Inasmuch as marriage is a
relationship in which happiness is sought and not always found,
wedding ceremonies are connected with acts "for luck." Some of
these still survive amongst us as jests. The fact of the aleatory
element in human life, the human interpretations of it, and the
efforts of men to deal with it constitute a large part of the
history of culture. They have produced groups of folkways, and
have entered as an element into folkways for other purposes.

+12. Tradition and its restraints.+ It is evident that the "ways" of the older and more experienced members of a society deserve great authority in any primitive group. We find that this rational authority leads to customs of deference and to etiquette in favor of the old. The old in turn cling stubbornly to tradition and to the example of their own predecessors. Thus tradition and custom become intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. Children see their parents always yield to the same custom and obey the same persons. They see that the elders are allowed to do all the talking, and that if an outsider enters, he is saluted by those who are at home according to rank and in fixed order. All this becomes rule for children, and helps to give to all primitive customs their stereotyped formality. "The fixed ways of looking at things which are inculcated by education and tribal discipline, are the precipitate of an old cultural development, and in their continued operation they are the moral anchor of the Indian, although they are also the fetters which restrain his individual will."[16]

+13. The concept of "primitive society"; we-group and others-group.+ The conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the groups is determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence. The internal organization of each group corresponds to its size. A group of groups may have some relation to each other (kin, neighborhood, alliance, connubium and commercium) which draws them together and differentiates them from others. Thus a differentiation arises between ourselves, the we-group, or in-group, and everybody else, or the others-groups, out-groups. The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so far as agreements have modified it. If a group is exogamic, the women in it were born abroad somewhere. Other foreigners who might be found in it are adopted persons, guest friends, and slaves.

+14. Sentiments in the in-group and towards the out-group.+ The relation of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war towards others-groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest internal discord should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies also make government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent quarrels and enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are, the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without,--all grow together, common products of the same situation. These relations and sentiments constitute a social philosophy. It is sanctified by connection with religion. Men of an others-group are outsiders with whose ancestors the ancestors of the we-group waged war. The ghosts of the latter will see with pleasure their descendants keep up the fight, and will help them. Virtue consists in killing, plundering, and enslaving outsiders.

+15. Ethnocentrism+ is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination. The Tupis called the Portuguese by a derisive epithet descriptive of birds which have feathers around their feet, on account of trousers.[17] For our present purpose the most important fact is that ethnocentrism leads a people to exaggerate and intensify everything in their own folkways which is peculiar and which differentiates them from others. It therefore strengthens the folkways.

+16. Illustrations of ethnocentrism.+ The Papuans on New Guinea
are broken up into village units which are kept separate by
hostility, cannibalism, head hunting, and divergences of language
and religion. Each village is integrated by its own language,
religion, and interests. A group of villages is sometimes united
into a limited unity by connubium. A wife taken inside of this
group unit has full status; one taken outside of it has not. The
petty group units are peace groups within and are hostile to all
outsiders.[18] The Mbayas of South America believed that their
deity had bidden them live by making war on others, taking their
wives and property, and killing their men.[19]

+17.+ When Caribs were asked whence they came, they answered, "We
alone are people."[20] The meaning of the name Kiowa is "real or
principal people."[21] The Lapps call themselves "men," or "human
beings."[22] The Greenland Eskimo think that Europeans have been
sent to Greenland to learn virtue and good manners from the
Greenlanders. Their highest form of praise for a European is that
he is, or soon will be, as good as a Greenlander.[23] The
Tunguses call themselves "men."[24] As a rule it is found that
nature peoples call themselves "men." Others are something
else--perhaps not defined--but not real men. In myths the origin
of their own tribe is that of the real human race. They do not
account for the others. The Ainos derive their name from that of
the first man, whom they worship as a god. Evidently the name of
the god is derived from the tribe name.[25] When the tribal name
has another sense, it is always boastful or proud. The Ovambo
name is a corruption of the name of the tribe for themselves,
which means "the wealthy."[26] Amongst the most remarkable people
in the world for ethnocentrism are the Seri of Lower California.
They observe an attitude of suspicion and hostility to all
outsiders, and strictly forbid marriage with outsiders.[27]

+18.+ The Jews divided all mankind into themselves and Gentiles.
They were the "chosen people." The Greeks and Romans called all
outsiders "barbarians." In Euripides' tragedy of _Iphigenia in
Aulis_ Iphigenia says that it is fitting that Greeks should rule
over barbarians, but not contrariwise, because Greeks are free,
and barbarians are slaves. The Arabs regarded themselves as the
noblest nation and all others as more or less barbarous.[28] In
1896, the Chinese minister of education and his counselors edited
a manual in which this statement occurs: "How grand and glorious
is the Empire of China, the middle kingdom! She is the largest
and richest in the world. The grandest men in the world have all
come from the middle empire."[29] In all the literature of all
the states equivalent statements occur, although they are not so
naïvely expressed. In Russian books and newspapers the civilizing
mission of Russia is talked about, just as, in the books and
journals of France, Germany, and the United States, the
civilizing mission of those countries is assumed and referred to
as well understood. Each state now regards itself as the leader
of civilization, the best, the freest, and the wisest, and all
others as inferior. Within a few years our own
man-on-the-curbstone has learned to class all foreigners of the
Latin peoples as "dagos," and "dago" has become an epithet of
contempt. These are all cases of ethnocentrism.

+19. Patriotism+ is a sentiment which belongs to modern states.
It stands in antithesis to the mediæval notion of catholicity.
Patriotism is loyalty to the civic group to which one belongs by
birth or other group bond. It is a sentiment of fellowship and
coöperation in all the hopes, work, and suffering of the group.
Mediæval catholicity would have made all Christians an in-group
and would have set them in hostility to all Mohammedans and other
non-Christians. It never could be realized. When the great modern
states took form and assumed control of societal interests, group
sentiment was produced in connection with those states. Men
responded willingly to a demand for support and help from an
institution which could and did serve interests. The state drew
to itself the loyalty which had been given to men (lords), and it
became the object of that group vanity and antagonism which had
been ethnocentric. For the modern man patriotism has become one
of the first of duties and one of the noblest of sentiments. It
is what he owes to the state for what the state does for him, and
the state is, for the modern man, a cluster of civic institutions
from which he draws security and conditions of welfare. The
masses are always patriotic. For them the old ethnocentric
jealousy, vanity, truculency, and ambition are the strongest
elements in patriotism. Such sentiments are easily awakened in a
crowd. They are sure to be popular. Wider knowledge always proves
that they are not based on facts. That we are good and others are
bad is never true. By history, literature, travel, and science
men are made cosmopolitan. The selected classes of all states
become associated; they intermarry. The differentiation by states
loses importance. All states give the same security and
conditions of welfare to all. The standards of civic institutions
are the same, or tend to become such, and it is a matter of pride
in each state to offer civic status and opportunities equal to
the best. Every group of any kind whatsoever demands that each of
its members shall help defend group interests. Every group
stigmatizes any one who fails in zeal, labor, and sacrifices for
group interests. Thus the sentiment of loyalty to the group, or
the group head, which was so strong in the Middle Ages, is kept
up, as far as possible, in regard to modern states and
governments. The group force is also employed to enforce the
obligations of devotion to group interests. It follows that
judgments are precluded and criticism is silenced.

+20. Chauvinism.+ That patriotism may degenerate into a vice is
shown by the invention of a name for the vice: chauvinism. It is
a name for boastful and truculent group self-assertion. It
overrules personal judgment and character, and puts the whole
group at the mercy of the clique which is ruling at the moment.
It produces the dominance of watchwords and phrases which take
the place of reason and conscience in determining conduct. The
patriotic bias is a recognized perversion of thought and judgment
against which our education should guard us.

+21. The struggle for existence and the competition of life; antagonistic coöperation.+ The struggle for existence must be carried on under life conditions and in connection with the competition of life. The life conditions consist in variable elements of the environment, the supply of materials necessary to support life, the difficulty of exploiting them, the state of the arts, and the circumstances of physiography, climate, meteorology, etc., which favor life or the contrary. The struggle for existence is a process in which an individual and nature are the parties. The individual is engaged in a process by which he wins from his environment what he needs to support his existence. In the competition of life the parties are men and other organisms. The men strive with each other, or with the flora and fauna with which they are associated. The competition of life is the rivalry, antagonism, and mutual displacement in which the individual is involved with other organisms by his efforts to carry on the struggle for existence for himself. It is, therefore, the competition of life which is the societal element, and which produces societal organization. The number present and in competition is another of the life conditions. At a time and place the life conditions are the same for a number of human beings who are present, and the problems of life policy are the same. This is another reason why the attempts to satisfy interest become mass phenomena and result in folkways. The individual and social elements are always in interplay with each other if there are a number present. If one is trying to carry on the struggle for existence with nature, the fact that others are doing the same in the same environment is an essential condition for him. Then arises an alternative. He and the others may so interfere with each other that all shall fail, or they may combine, and by coöperation raise their efforts against nature to a higher power. This latter method is industrial organization. The crisis which produces it is constantly renewed, and men are forced to raise the organization to greater complexity and more comprehensive power, without limit. Interests are the relations of action and reaction between the individual and the life conditions, through which relations the evolution of the individual is produced. That evolution, so long as it goes on prosperously, is well living, and it results in the self-realization of the individual, for we may think of each one as capable of fulfilling some career and attaining to some character and state of power by the developing of predispositions which he possesses. It would be an error, however, to suppose that all nature is a chaos of warfare and competition. Combination and coöperation are so fundamentally necessary that even very low life forms are found in symbiosis for mutual dependence and assistance. A combination can exist where each of its members would perish. Competition and combination are two forms of life association which alternate through the whole organic and superorganic domains. The neglect of this fact leads to many socialistic fallacies. Combination is of the essence of organization, and organization is the great device for increased power by a number of unequal and dissimilar units brought into association for a common purpose. McGee[30] says of the desert of Papagueria, in southwestern Arizona, that "a large part of the plants and animals of the desert dwell together in harmony and mutual helpfulness [which he shows in detail]; for their energies are directed not so much against one another as against the rigorous environmental conditions growing out of dearth of water. This communality does not involve loss of individuality, ... indeed the plants and animals are characterized by an individuality greater than that displayed in regions in which perpetuity of the species depends less closely on the persistence of individuals." Hence he speaks of the "solidarity of life" in the desert. "The saguaro is a monstrosity in fact as well as in appearance,--a product of miscegenation between plant and animal, probably depending for its form of life history, if not for its very existence, on its commensals."[31] The Seri protect pelicans from themselves by a partial taboo, which is not understood. It seems that they could not respect a breeding time, or establish a closed season, yet they have such an appetite for the birds and their eggs that they would speedily exterminate them if there were no restraint. This combination has been well called antagonistic coöperation. It consists in the combination of two persons or groups to satisfy a great common interest while minor antagonisms of interest which exist between them are suppressed. The plants and animals of the desert are rivals for what water there is, but they combine as if with an intelligent purpose to attain to a maximum of life under the conditions. There are many cases of animals who coöperate in the same way. Our farmers put crows and robins under a protective taboo because the birds destroy insects. The birds also destroy grain and fruits, but this is tolerated on account of their services. Madame Pommerol says of the inhabitants of Sahara that the people of the towns and the nomads are enemies by caste and race, but allies in interest. The nomads need refuge and shelter. The townspeople need messengers and transportation. Hence ties of contract, quarrels, fights, raids, vengeances, and reconciliations for the sake of common enterprises of plunder.[32] Antagonistic coöperation is the most productive form of combination in high civilization. It is a high action of the reason to overlook lesser antagonisms in order to work together for great interests. Political parties are constantly forced to do it. In the art of the statesman it is a constant policy. The difference between great parties and factions in any parliamentary system is of the first importance; that difference consists in the fact that parties can suppress minor differences, and combine for what they think most essential to public welfare, while factions divide and subdivide on petty differences. Inasmuch as the suppression of minor differences means a suppression of the emotional element, while the other policy encourages the narrow issues in regard to which feeling is always most intense, the former policy allows far less play to feeling and passion.

+22. Hunger, love, vanity, and fear.+ There are four great motives of human action which come into play when some number of human beings are in juxtaposition under the same life conditions. These are hunger, sex passion, vanity, and fear (of ghosts and spirits). Under each of these motives there are interests. Life consists in satisfying interests, for "life," in a society, is a career of action and effort expended on both the material and social environment. However great the errors and misconceptions may be which are included in the efforts, the purpose always is advantage and expediency. The efforts fall into parallel lines, because the conditions and the interests are the same. It is now the accepted opinion, and it may be correct, that men inherited from their beast ancestors psychophysical traits, instincts, and dexterities, or at least predispositions, which give them aid in solving the problems of food supply, sex, commerce, and vanity. The result is mass phenomena; currents of similarity, concurrence, and mutual contribution; and these produce folkways. The folkways are unconscious, spontaneous, uncoördinated. It is never known who led in devising them, although we must believe that talent exerted its leadership at all times. Folkways come into existence now all the time. There were folkways in stage coach times, which were fitted to that mode of travel. Street cars have produced ways which are suited to that mode of transportation in cities. The telephone has produced ways which have not been invented and imposed by anybody, but which are devised to satisfy conveniently the interests which are at stake in the use of that instrument.

+23. Process of making folkways.+ Although we may see the process of making folkways going on all the time, the analysis of the process is very difficult. It appears as if there was a "mind" in the crowd which was different from the minds of the individuals which compose it. Indeed some have adopted such a doctrine. By autosuggestion the stronger minds produce ideas which when set afloat pass by suggestion from mind to mind. Acts which are consonant with the ideas are imitated. There is a give and take between man and man. This process is one of development. New suggestions come in at point after point. They are carried out. They combine with what existed already. Every new step increases the number of points upon which other minds may seize. It seems to be by this process that great inventions are produced. Knowledge has been won and extended by it. It seems as if the crowd had a mystic power in it greater than the sum of the powers of its members. It is sufficient, however, to explain this, to notice that there is a coöperation and constant suggestion which is highly productive when it operates in a crowd, because it draws out latent power, concentrates what would otherwise be scattered, verifies and corrects what has been taken up, eliminates error, and constructs by combination. Hence the gain from the collective operation is fully accounted for, and the theories of _Völkerpsychologie_ are to be rejected as superfluous. Out of the process which has been described have come the folkways during the whole history of civilization.

The phenomena of suggestion and suggestibility demand some attention because the members of a group are continually affecting each other by them, and great mass phenomena very often are to be explained by them.

+24. Suggestion; suggestibility.+ What has been called the psychology of crowds consists of certain phenomena of suggestion. A number of persons assembled together, especially if they are enthused by the same sentiment or stimulated by the same interest, transmit impulses to each other with the result that all the impulses are increased in a very high ratio. In other words, it is an undisputed fact that all mental states and emotions are greatly increased in force by transmission from man to man, especially if they are attended by a sense of the concurrence and coöperation of a great number who have a common sentiment or interest. "The element of psychic coercion to which our thought process is subject is the characteristic of the operations which we call suggestive."[33] What we have done or heard occupies our minds so that we cannot turn from it to something else. The consensus of a number promises triumph for the impulse, whatever it is. _Ça ira._ There is a thrill of enthusiasm in the sense of moving with a great number. There is no deliberation or reason. Therefore a crowd may do things which are either better or worse than what individuals in it would do. Cases of lynching show how a crowd can do things which it is extremely improbable that the individuals would do or consent to, if they were taken separately. The crowd has no greater guarantee of wisdom and virtue than an individual would have. In fact, the participants in a crowd almost always throw away all the powers of wise judgment which have been acquired by education, and submit to the control of enthusiasm, passion, animal impulse, or brute appetite. A crowd always has a common stock of elementary faiths, prejudices, loves and hates, and pet notions. The common stock is acted on by the same stimuli, in all the persons, at the same time. The response, as an aggregate, is a great storm of feeling, and a great impulse to the will. Hence the great influence of omens and of all popular superstitions on a crowd. Omens are a case of "egoistic reference."[34] An army desists from a battle on account of an eclipse. A man starting out on the food quest returns home because a lizard crosses his path. In each case an incident in nature is interpreted as a warning or direction to the army or the man. Thus momentous results for men and nations may be produced without cause. The power of watchwords consists in the cluster of suggestions which has become fastened upon them. In the Middle Ages the word "heretic" won a frightful suggestion of base wickedness. In the seventeenth century the same suggestions were connected with the words "witch" and "traitor." "Nature" acquired great suggestion of purity and correctness in the eighteenth century, which it has not yet lost. "Progress" now bears amongst us a very undue weight of suggestion. Suggestibility is the quality of liability to suggestive influence.[35] "Suggestibility is the natural faculty of the brain to admit any ideas whatsoever, without motive, to assimilate them, and eventually to transform them rapidly into movements, sensations, and inhibitions."[36] It differs greatly in degree, and is present in different grades in different crowds. Crowds of different nationalities would differ both in degree of suggestibility and in the kinds of suggestive stimuli to which they would respond. Imitation is due to suggestibility. Even suicide is rendered epidemic by suggestion and imitation.[37] In a crisis, like a shipwreck, when no one knows what to do, one, by acting, may lead them all through imitative suggestibility. People who are very suggestible can be led into states of mind which preclude criticism or reflection. Any one who acquires skill in the primary processes of association, analogy, reiteration, and continuity, can play tricks on others by stimulating these processes and then giving them selected data to work upon. A directive idea may be suggested by a series of ideas which lead the recipient of them to expect that the series will be continued. Then he will not perceive if the series is broken. In the Renaissance period no degree of illumination sufficed to resist the delusion of astrology, because it was supported by a passionate fantasy and a vehement desire to know the future, and because it was confirmed by antiquity, the authority of whose opinions was overwhelmingly suggested by all the faiths and prejudices of the time.[38]