+163. Effect of the facility of winning wealth.+ All the changes in conditions of life in the last four hundred years have refashioned the mores and given modern society new ideas, standards, codes, philosophies, and religions. Nothing acts more directly on the mores than the facility with which great numbers of people can accumulate wealth by industry. If it is difficult to do so, classes become fixed and stable. Then there will be an old and stiff aristocracy which will tolerate no upstarts, and other classes will settle into established gradations of dependence. The old Russian boyars were an example of such an aristocracy. Certain mediaeval cities ran into this form. In it the mores of conservatism are developed,--unchangeable manners, fixed usages and ideas, unenlightenment, refusal of new ideas, subserviency of the lower classes, and sycophancy. The government is suspicious and cruel.

If it is easily possible to gain wealth, a class of upstart rich men arises who, in a few years, must be recognized by the aristocracy, because they possess financial power and are needed. Struggles and civil wars may occur, as in the Italian cities, during this change, and the old aristocracy may long hold aloof from the new. In time, the new men win their way. The history of every state in Europe proves it. Old fortunes decay and old families die out. The result is inevitable. Laws and institutions cannot prevent it. Certain mores may have been recognized as aristocratic and there may be lamentations over their decline. They are poetic, romantic, and adventurous. Therefore they call out regret for their loss from those who do not think what would come back with them if they were recalled. Ethical philosophers may see ample reason to doubt the benefit of new mores and the vulgarization of everything. Society cannot stand still, and its movement will run the course set by the forces which produce it. It must be accepted and profit must be drawn from it, as best possible.

+164. Chances of acquiring wealth in modern times; effect on modern mores; speculation involved in any change.+ The effect of the opening of new continents, the application of new inventions, and the expansion of commerce has been to make it easy for men with suitable talent to increase wealth. These changes have cheapened all luxuries, that is, have reduced them to common necessities. They have made land easily accessible to all, even the poorest, in the new countries, while lowering rent in old countries. They have raised wages and raised the standard of living and comfort. They have lessened the competition of life throughout civilized nations, and have made the struggle for existence far less severe. It is the changes in life conditions which have made slavery impossible and extended humanitarian sympathy. They have lessened social differentiation (that is, they have democratized), and they have intensified the industrial organization. In detail, and for individuals, this has often caused hardship. For the petty professional and semiprofessional classes it has been made harder to keep up the externals of a certain social position. For those classes the standard of living has risen faster than steam has cheapened luxuries. Discontent, anxiety, care for appearances, desire to impose by display, envy, and mean social ambition characterize the mores, together with energy and enterprise. Envy and discontent are amongst the very strongest traits of modern society. Very often they are only manifestations of irritated vanity. It is in the nature of things that classes of men and forms of property shall go through endless vicissitudes of advantage and disadvantage. Nobody can foresee these and speculate upon them with success. When it is proposed to "reorganize society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. "Wealth, whether in land or money, has been increased by marriages and inheritances, reduced to fragments by divisions, even in noble families [in spite of settlements and entails], dissipated by prodigals, reconstituted by men of economical habits, centupled by industrious and competent men of enterprise, scattered by the indolent, the unfortunate, and the men of bad judgment, who have risked it unwisely. Political events have affected it as well as the favor of princes, advantageous offices in the state, popular revolts, wars, confiscations, from the abolition of serfdom in the fourteenth century until the abolition, in 1790, of the dues known as feudal, although they were, for the most part, owned by members of the bourgeoisie."[369] So it will be in the future, in spite of all that men can do. If two men had the same sum of money in 1200, and one bought land while the other became a money lender, anywhere in western Europe, the former would to-day be more or less rich according to the position of his land. He might be a great millionaire. The other would have scarcely anything left.[370] Shall we then all buy land now? Let those do so who can foresee the course of values in the next seven hundred years. The popular notion is that nobles have always owned land. The truth is that men who have acquired wealth have bought land and got themselves ennobled. In France, "in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nineteen twentieths of those who were called nobles were middle-class men enriched, decorated, and possessed of land."[371] The middle class in western Europe has been formed out of the labor class within seven hundred years. The whole middle class, therefore, represents the successful rise of the serfs, but, since a labor class still remains, it is asserted that there has been no change. On the other hand, there has been a movement of nobles and middle-class grandees downward into the labor class and the proletariat. It was said, a few years ago, that a Plantagenet was a butcher in a suburb of London. It is also asserted that representatives of great mediaeval families are now to be found as small farmers, farm laborers, or tramps in modern England.[372]

+165. Mores conform to changes in life conditions; great principles; their value and fate.+ For our purpose it suffices here to notice how the mores have followed the changes in life conditions, how they have reacted on the current faiths and philosophies, and how they have produced ethical notions to justify the mores themselves. They have produced notions of natural rights and of political philosophy to support the new institutions. There are thousands in the United States who believe that every adult male has a natural right to vote, and that the vote makes the citizen. The doctrine of natural rights has received some judicial recognition, and it has been more or less accepted and applied in the constitutions of various states which were established in the nineteenth century. The American doctrines of 1776 and the French doctrines of 1789 are carried on and used in stump oratory until they get in the way of some new popular purpose, but what produced both was the fact that some new classes had won wealth and economic power and they wanted political recognition. To get it they had to invent some new "great principles" to justify their revolt against tradition. That is the way in which all "great principles" are produced. They are always made for an exigency. Their usefulness passes with the occasion. The mores are forever adjusting efforts to circumstances. Sooner or later they need new great principles. Then they obliterate the old ones. The old jingle of words no longer wins a response. The doctrine is dead. In 1776 it seemed to every Whig in America that it was a pure axiom to say that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. They clung to this as a sacred dogma for over a hundred years, because it did not affect unfavorably any interest. It is untrue.

Governments get their powers from the historical fact of their existence. They are all ephemeral, subject to change. When a change takes place it is controlled by the ideas and interests of the time of change, when the popular element in self-government may be much greater than when the constitution was last previously established. In 1898 the popular will, in the United States, was to take possession of the Philippine Islands and to become rulers there, not ruled, as the fathers were in the colonies of 1776. The great doctrine of the source of due power was quickly trampled under foot. The same fate awaits all the rest of the "great principles." The doctrine that all men are equal is being gradually dropped, from its inherent absurdity, and we may at any time find it expedient to drop the jingle about a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was only good historically to destroy the doctrine, "Everything for the people; nothing by them."

+166. The French Revolution.+ The French Revolution was due to the fact that a great change had come about in the distribution of economic power between classes and in the class mores which correspond to economic power. All the political institutions of a modern state are conservative in the sense that they retain and sustain what is and has been, and resist interference or change. The historical picture is often such that abuses are maintained and reform seems hopeless, on account of the power of existing institutions and customs and the depth of convictions of social welfare which have become traditional. The student of the history is led to believe that any reform or revolution, as a dissolution of the inherited system of repression and retention, is worth all that it may cost. Hence some students of history become believers in "revolution" as a beneficent social force or engine. In the case of the French Revolution, the passions which were set loose destroyed the whole social order, swept away all the institutions, and even destroyed all the inherited mores. It is evident that this last is what the revolutionists finally aimed at. The _ancien regime_ came to mean the whole fabric of the old society, with its codes, standards, and ideas of right, wrong, the desirable, etc. The revolutionists also undertook to invent new mores, that is, new codes and standards, new conceptions of things socially desirable, a new religion, and new notions of civil duty and responsibility. During the Directory and the Consulate there was a gulf between the ancient and the new in which there was anarchy of the mores, even after the civil machinery was repaired and set in operation again.

Napoleon brought back institutions and forms of social order so far as seemed desirable for his own interest. The historical continuity was broken and has remained so. Of the _ancien regime_ there can be found to-day only ruins and relics. Nevertheless, the ancient mores of social faith and morality, of social well living, of religious duty and family virtue, are substantially what they were before the great explosion.

This is the last and greatest lesson of the revolution: it is impossible to abolish the mores and to replace them by new ones rationally invented. To change a monarchy into a republic is trifling. Individuals and classes can be guillotined. Institutions can be overturned. Religion can be abolished or put out of fashion. The mores are in the habits of the people, and are needed and practiced every day. The revolutionists ordered changes in the social ritual, and they brought about a disuse of "monsieur" and "madame." All their innovations in the ritual have fallen into disuse, and the old fashions have returned, in obedience to common sense. The new classes have not enjoyed their victory over the old as to courtesy, social comity, and civil good-fellowship. They have abandoned it, and have recognized the fact that the old aristocracy had well solved all matters of this kind. As wealth has increased and artisans and peasants have gained new powers of production and acquisition, they have learned to laugh at the civil philosophy and enthusiasm of the eighteenth-century philosophers, and have ordered their lives, as far as possible or convenient, on the old aristocratic models. Sansculottism is inconsistent with respect for productive labor, or with the accumulation of wealth. No one who can earn great wages or who possesses wealth will, out of zeal for philosophical doctrines, prefer to live in squalor and want. The relation of modern mores to new feelings in respect to labor and trade, and to the accumulation of wealth, are to be easily perceived from the course of modern revolutions.

+167. Ruling classes.+ +Special privileges.+ +Corruption of the mores.+ In every societal system or order there must be a ruling class or classes; in other words, a class gets control of any society and determines its political form or system. The ruling class, therefore, has the power. Will it not use the power to divert social effort to its own service and gain? It must be expected to do so, unless it is checked by institutions which call into action opposing interests and forces.

There is no class which can be trusted to rule society with due justice to all, not abusing its power for its own interest. The task of constitutional government is to devise institutions which shall come into play at the critical periods to prevent the abusive control of the powers of a state by the controlling classes in it. The ruling classes in mediaeval society were warriors and ecclesiastics, and they used all their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of other classes.

Modern society is ruled by the middle class. In honor of the bourgeoisie it must be said that they have invented institutions of civil liberty which secure to all safety of person and property. They have not, therefore, made a state for themselves alone or chiefly, and their state is the only one in which no class has had to fear oppressive use of political power. The history of the nineteenth century, however, plainly showed the power of capital in the modern state. Special legislation, charters, and franchises proved to be easy legislative means of using the powers of the state for the pecuniary benefit of the few. In the first half of the century, in the United States, banks of issue were used to an extravagant pitch for private interest. The history is disgraceful, and it is a permanent degradation of popular government that power could not be found, or did not exist, in the system to subjugate this abuse and repress this corruption of state power. The protective-tariff system is simply an elaborate system by which certain interests inside of a country get control of legislation in order to tax their fellow-citizens for their own benefit. Some of the victims claim to be taken "into the steal," and if they can make enough trouble for the clique in power, they can force their own admission. That only teaches all that the great way to succeed in the pursuit of wealth is to organize a steal of some kind and get inside of it. The pension system in the United States is an abuse which has escaped from control. There is no longer any attempt to cope with it. It is the share of the "common man" in the great system of public plunder. "Graft" is only a proof of the wide extent to which this lesson to get into the steal is learned.

It only shows that the corrupt use of legislation and political power has affected the mores. Every one must have his little sphere of plunder and especial advantage. This conviction and taste becomes so current that it affects all new legislation. The legislators do not doubt that it is reasonable and right to enact laws which provide favor for special interests, or to practice legislative strikes on insurance companies, railroads, telephone companies, etc. They laugh at remonstrance as out of date and "unpractical." The administrators of life-insurance companies, savings banks, trusts, etc., proceed on the belief that men in positions of power and control will use their positions for their own advantage. They think that that is only common sense. "What else are we here for?" It is the supreme test of a system of government whether its machinery is adequate for repressing the selfish undertakings of cliques formed on special interests and saving the public from raids of plunderers. The modern democratic states fail under this test. There is not a great state in the world which was not democratized in the nineteenth century. There is not one of them which did not have great financial scandals before the century closed. Financial scandal is the curse of all the modern parliamentary states with a wide suffrage. They give liberty and security, with open chances for individual enterprise, from which results great individual satisfaction and happiness, but the political machinery offers opportunities for manipulation and corrupt abuse. They educate their citizens to seek advantages in the industrial organization by legislative devices, and to use them to the uttermost.

The effect is seen in the mores. We hear of plutocracy and tainted money, of the power of wealth, and the wickedness of corporations. The disease is less specific. It is constitutional. The critics are as subject to it as the criticised. A disease of the mores is a disease of public opinion as to standards, codes, ideas of truth and right, and of things worth working for and means of success. Such a disease affects everybody. It penetrates and spoils every institution. It spreads from generation to generation, and at last it destroys in the masses the power of ethical judgment.

+168. The standard of living.+ One of the purest of all the products of current mores is the standard of living. It belongs to a subgroup and is a product of the mores of a subgroup. It has been called a psychological or ethical product, which view plainly is due to an imperfect analysis or classification. The standard of living is the measure of decency and suitability in material comfort (diet, dress, dwelling, etc.) which is traditional and habitual in a subgroup. It is often wise and necessary to disregard the social standard of comfort, because it imposes foolish expenses and contemptible ostentation, but it is very difficult to disregard the social standard of comfort. The standard is upheld by fear of social disapproval, if one derogates from class "respectability." The disapproval or contempt of one's nearest associates is the sanction. The standards and code of respectability are in the class mores. They get inside of the mind and heart of members of the class, and betray each to the class demands.

+169.+ If, however, the standard of living which one has inherited from his class is adopted as an individual standard, and is made the object of effort and self-denial, the individual and social results are of high value. One man said, "Live like a hog and you will behave like one"; to which another replied, "Behave like a hog and you will live like one." Both were right in about equal measure. The social standard of a class acts like honor. It sustains self-respect and duty to self and family. The pain which is produced by derogation produces effort and self-denial. The social standard may well call out and concentrate all there is in a man to work for his social welfare. Evidently the standard of living never can do more than that. It never can add anything to the forces in a man's own character and attainments.

[366] Prov. xxiv. 30.

[367] _Jewish Encyc._, s.v. "Labor." The same view is found in 2 Thess. iii. 10, and Eph. iv. 28.

[368] Thomas Aquinas, _Summa_, II, 2, qu. 82, 1, 2; qu. 187, 3.

[369] D'Avenel, _Hist. Econ._, 142.

[370] D'Avenel, 397.

[371] D'Avenel, 144.

[372] Hardy used this fact in _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_.

CHAPTER V

SOCIETAL SELECTION

Social selection by the mores.--Instrumentalities of suggestion.--Symbols, pictures, etc.--Apparatus of suggestion.--Watchwords, catchwords.--"Slave," "democracy."-- Epithets.--Phrases.--Pathos.--Pathos is unfavorable to truth.--Analysis and verification as tests.--Humanity.-- Selection by distinction.--Aristocracies.--Fashion.-- Conventionalization.--Uncivilized fashions.--Ideals of beauty.--Fashion in other things than dress.--Miscellaneous fashions.--All deformations by fashion are irrational.--Satires on fashion.--Fashion in faiths and ideals.--Fashion is not trivial, not subject to argument.--Remoter effects of fashion.-- Slang and expletives.--Poses, fads, and cant.--Illustrations.-- Heroes, scapegoats, and butts.--Caricature.--Relation of fads, etc., to mores.--Ideals.--Ideals of beauty.--The man-as-he-should-be.--The standard type of man.--Who does the thinking?--The gentleman.--Standards set by taboos.--Crimes.-- Criminal law.--Mass phenomena of fear and hope.--Manias, delusions.--Monstrous mass phenomena.--Gregariousness in the Middle Ages.--The mendicant orders.--Other mendicants.-- Popular mania for poverty and beggary.--Delusions.--Manias and suggestion.--Power of the crowd over the individual.-- Discipline by pain.--The mediaeval church operated societal selection.--The mediaeval church.--Sacerdotal celibacy.--The masses wanted clerical celibacy.--Abelard.--The selection of sacerdotal celibacy.--How the church operated selection.--Mores and morals; social code.--Orthodoxy; treatment of dissent; selection by torture.--Execution by burning.--Burning in North American colonies.--Solidarity in penalty for fault of one.-- Torture in the ancient states.--Torture in the Roman empire.-- Jewish and Christian universality; who persecutes whom?--The ordeal.--Irrationality of torture.--Inquisitorial procedure from Roman law.--Bishops as inquisitors.--Definition of heretic.--The Albigenses.--Persecution was popular.--Theory of persecution.--Duties laid on the civil authority.--Public opinion as to the burning of heretics.--The shares of the church and the masses.--The church uses its power for selfish aggrandizement.--The inquisition took shape slowly.--Frederick II and his code.--Formative legislation.--Dungeons.--The yellow crosses.--Confiscation.--Operation of the inquisition.-- Success of the inquisition.--Torture in civil and ecclesiastical trials.--The selection accomplished.--Torture in England.--The Spanish inquisition.--The inquisition in Venice.--The use of the inquisition for political and personal purposes.--Stages of the selection by murder.

+170. Social selection by the mores.+ The most important fact about the mores is their dominion over the individual. Arising he knows not whence or how, they meet his opening mind in earliest childhood, give him his outfit of ideas, faiths, and tastes, and lead him into prescribed mental processes. They bring to him codes of action, standards, and rules of ethics. They have a model of the man-as-he-should-be to which they mold him, in spite of himself and without his knowledge. If he submits and consents, he is taken up and may attain great social success. If he resists and dissents, he is thrown out and may be trodden under foot.

The mores are therefore an engine of social selection. Their coercion of the individual is the mode in which they operate the selection, and the details of the process deserve study. Some folkways exercise an unknown and unintelligent selection. Infanticide does this (Chapter VII).

Slavery always exerts a very powerful selection, both physical and social (Chapter VI).

+171. Instrumentalities of suggestion.+ Suggestion is exerted in the mores by a number of instrumentalities, all of which have their origin in the mores, and may only extend to all what some have thought and felt, or may (at a later stage) be used with set intention to act suggestively in extending certain mores.

Myths, legends, fables, and mythology spread notions through a group, and from generation to generation, until the notions become components of the mores, being interwoven with the folkways. Epic poems have powerfully influenced the mores. They present types of heroic actions and character which serve as models to the young. The _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ became text-books for the instruction of Greek youth. They set notions of heroism and duty, and furnished all Greeks with a common stock of narratives, ideas, and ideals, and with sentiments which everybody knew and which could be rearoused by an allusion. Everybody was expected to produce the same reaction under the allusion. Perhaps that was a conventional assumption, and the reaction in thought and feeling may have been only conventional in many cases, but the suggestion did not fail of its effect even then. Later, when the ideals of epic heroism and of the old respect for the gods were popularly rejected and derided, this renunciation of the old stock of common ideas and faiths marked a decline in the morale of the nation. It is a very important question: What is the effect of conventional humbug in the mores of a people, which is suggested to the young as solemn and sacred, and which they have to find out and reject later in life? The _Mahabharata_, the _Kalevala_, the _Edda_, the _Nibelungen Noth_, are other examples of popular epics which had great influence on the mores for centuries. Such poems present models of action and principle, but it is inevitable that a later time will not appreciate them and will turn them to ridicule, or will make of them only poses and affectations. The former is the effect most likely to be produced on the masses, the latter on the cultured classes. In the Greco-Roman world, at the beginning of the Christian era, various philosophic sects tried to restore and renew the ideals of Greek heroism, virtue, and religious faith, so far as they seemed to have permanent ethical value. The popular mores were never touched by this effort. In fact, it is impossible for us to know whether the writings of Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Pliny represent to us the real rules of life of those men, or are only a literary pose. In the Renaissance, and since then, men educated in the classics have been influenced by them in regard to their standards of noble and praiseworthy character, and of what should be cultivated in thought and conduct. Such men have had a common stock of quotations, of accepted views in life philosophy, and of current ethical opinions. This stock, however, has been common to the members of the technical guild of the learned. It has never affected the masses. Amongst Protestants the Bible has, in the last four hundred years, furnished a common stock of history and anecdote, and has also furnished phrases and current quotations familiar to all classes. It has furnished codes and standards which none dared to disavow, and the suggestion of which has been overpowering. The effect on popular mores has been very great.

+172. Symbols, pictures.+ Before the ability to read became general art was employed in the form of symbols to carry suggestion. Symbolic acts were employed in trade and contracts, in marriage and religion. For us writing has taken the place of symbols as a means of suggestion. Symbols do not appeal to us. They are not in our habits. Illustrative pictures influence us. The introduction of them into daily newspapers is an important development of the arts of suggestion. Mediaeval art in colored glass, carving, sculpture, and pictures reveals the grossness and crass simplicity of the mediaeval imagination, but also its childish originality and directness. No doubt it was on account of these latter characteristics that it had such suggestive power. It was graphic. It stimulated and inflamed the kind of imagination which produced it. It found its subjects in heaven, hell, demons, torture, and the scriptural incidents which contained any horrible, fantastic, or grotesque elements. The crucifix represented a man dying in the agony of torture, and it was the chief symbol of the religion. The suggestion in all this art produced barbaric passion and sensuality. Any one who, in childhood, had in his hands one of the old Bibles illustrated by wood cuts knows what power the cuts had to determine the concept which was formed from the text, and which has persisted through life, in spite of later instruction.

+173. Apparatus of suggestion.+ In modern times the apparatus of suggestion is in language, not in pictures, carvings, morality plays, or other visible products of art. Watchwords, catchwords, phrases, and epithets are the modern instrumentalities. There are words which are used currently as if their meaning was perfectly simple, clear, and unambiguous, which are not defined at all. "Democracy," the "People,"

"Wall Street," "Slave," "Americanism," are examples. These words have been called "symbols." They might better be called "tokens." They are like token coins. They "pass"; that is their most noteworthy characteristic. They are familiar, unquestioned, popular, and they are always current above their value. They always reveal the invincible tendency of the masses to mythologize. They are personified and a superhuman energy is attributed to them. "Democracy" is not treated as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autocracy, etc., but as a Power from some outside origin, which brings into human affairs an inspiration and energy of its own. The "People" is not the population, but a creation of mythology, to which inherent faculties and capacities are ascribed beyond what can be verified within experience. "Wall Street" takes the place which used to be assigned to the devil. What is that "Wall Street" which is currently spoken of by editors and public men as thinking, wanting, working for, certain things? There is a collective interest which is so designated which is real, but the popular notion under "Wall Street" is unanalyzed. It is a phantasm or a myth. In all these cases there is a tyranny in the term. Who dare criticise democracy or the people? Who dare put himself on the side of Wall Street? The tyranny is greatest in regard to "American" and "Americanism." Who dare say that he is not "American"? Who dare repudiate what is declared to be "Americanism"? It follows that if anything is base and bogus it is always labeled "American." If a thing is to be recommended which cannot be justified, it is put under "Americanism." Who does not shudder at the fear of being called "unpatriotic"? and to repudiate what any one chooses to call "American"

is to be unpatriotic. If there is any document of Americanism, it is the Declaration of Independence. Those who have Americanism especially in charge have repudiated the doctrine that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," because it stood in the way of what they wanted to do. They denounce those who cling to the doctrine as un-American. Then we see what Americanism and patriotism are. They are the duty laid upon us all to applaud, follow, and obey whatever a ruling clique of newspapers and politicians chooses to say or wants to do.

"England" has always been, amongst us, a kind of counter token, or token of things to be resisted and repudiated. The "symbols," or "tokens,"

always have this utility for suggestion. They carry a coercion with them and overwhelm people who are not trained to verify assertions and dissect fallacies.

+174. Watchwords, catchwords.+ A watchword sums up one policy, doctrine, view, or phase of a subject. It may be legitimate and useful, but a watchword easily changes its meaning and takes up foreign connotations or fallacious suggestions. Critical analysis is required to detect and exclude the fallacy. Catchwords are acutely adapted to stimulate desires. In the presidential campaign of 1900 we saw a catchword deliberately invented,--"the full dinner pail." Such an invention turns suggestion into an art. Socialism, as a subject of popular agitation, consists almost altogether of watchwords, catchwords, and phrases of suggestion: "the boon of nature," "the banquet of life,"

"the disinherited," "the submerged tenth," "the mine to the miner,"

"restore the land to the landless." Trades unionism consists almost entirely, on its philosophical side, of suggestive watchwords and phrases. It is said that "labor" creates all value. This is not true, but the fallacy is complete when labor is taken in the sense of "laborers," collectively and technically so called,--an abuse of language which is now current. To say that wage-earners create all value is to assert a proposition from which numerous and weighty consequences follow as to rights and interests. "The interest of one is the interest of all" is a principle which is as good for a band of robbers as for a union of any other kind. "Making work" by not producing is the greatest industrial fallacy possible.

+175. Slave, democracy.+ Since "democratic" is now a word to conjure with, we hear of democracy in industry, banking, education, science, etc., where the word is destitute of meaning or is fallacious. It is used to prejudice the discussion. Since the abolition of slavery the word "slave" has become a token. In current discussions we hear of "rent slaves," "wages slavery," "debt slavery," "marriage slavery," etc. These words bear witness to great confusion and error in the popular notions of what freedom is and can be. For negroes emancipation contained a great disillusion. They had to learn what being "free" did not mean.

Debt slavery is the oldest kind of slavery except war captivity. A man in debt is not free. A man who has made a contract is not free. A man who has contracted duties and obligations as husband and father, or has been born into them as citizen, son, brother, etc., is not free. Can we imagine ourselves "free" from the conditions of human life? Does it do any good to stigmatize the case as "wages slavery," when what it means is that a man is under a necessity to earn his living? It would be a grand reform in the mores if the masses should learn to turn away in contempt from all this rhetoric.

+176. Epithets.+ Works of fiction have furnished the language with epithets for types of individuals (sec. 622). Don Quixote, Faust, Punch, Reinecke Fuchs, Br'er Rabbit, Falstaff, Bottom, and many from Dickens (Pickwick, Pecksniff, Podsnap, Turveydrop, Uriah Heep) are examples. The words are like coins. They condense ideas and produce classes. They economize language. They also produce summary criticisms and definition of types by societal selection. All the reading classes get the use of common epithets, and the usage passes to other classes in time. The coercion of an epithet of contempt or disapproval is something which it requires great moral courage to endure.

+177. Phrases.+ The educated classes are victims of the phrase. Phrases are rhetorical flourishes adapted to the pet notions of the time. They are artifices of suggestion. They are the same old tricks of the medicine man adapted to an age of literature and common schools. Instead of a rattle or a drum the operator talks about "destiny" and "duty," or molds into easy phrases the sentiments which are popular. It is only a difference of method. Solemnity, unction, and rhetorical skill are needed. Often the phrases embody only visionary generalities.

"Citizenship," "publicity," "public policy," "restraint of trade," "he who holds the sea will hold the land," "trade follows the flag," "the dollar of the fathers," "the key of the Pacific," "peace with honor,"

are some of the recent coinages or recoinages. Phrases have great power when they are antithetical or alliterative. Some opponents of the silver proposition were quite perplexed by the saying: "The white man with the yellow metal is beaten by the yellow man with the white metal." In 1844 the alliterative watchword "Fifty-four forty or fight" nearly provoked a war. If it had been "Forty-nine thirty or fight," that would not have had nearly so great effect. The "Cape to Cairo" railroad is another case of alliteration. Humanitarianism has permeated our mores and has been a fountain of phrases. Forty years ago the phrase "enthusiasm of humanity"

was invented. It inspired a school of sentimental philosophizing about social relations, which has been carried on by phrase making: "the dignity of labor," "the nobility of humanity," "a man is not a ware,"

"an existence worthy of humanity," "a living wage." "Humanity" in modern languages is generally used in two senses: (_a_) the human race, (_b_) the sympathetic sentiment between man and man. This ambiguity enters into all the phrases which are humanitarian.

+178. Pathos.+ Suggestion is powerfully aided by _pathos_, in the original Greek sense of the word. Pathos is the glamour of sentiment which grows up around the pet notion of an age and people, and which protects it from criticism. The Greeks, in the fourth century before Christ, cherished pathos in regard to tyrannicide. Tyrants were bosses, produced by democracy in towns, but hated by democrats. Tyrannicides were surrounded with a halo of heroism and popular admiration.[373]

Something of the same sentiment was revived in the sixteenth century, when it appeared that a tyrant was any ruler whose politics one did not like. It cost several rulers their lives. Pathos was a large element in the notions of woman and knighthood (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), of the church (thirteenth century), of the Holy Sepulcher (eleventh and twelfth centuries). In the thirteenth century there was a large element of pathos in the glorification of poverty. A great deal of pathos has been expended on the history and institutions of Greece and Rome in modern times. Classical studies still depend largely on it for their prestige. There is a pathos of democracy in the United States. In all English-speaking countries marriage is an object of pathos. The pathos is cultivated by poetry and novels. Humanitarianism is nourished by pathos and it stimulates pathos. The "poor" and the "laborers" are objects of pathos, on account of which these terms, in literature, refer to a conventional and unreal concept. Consequently there is no honest discussion of any topic which concerns the poor or laborers. Some people make opposition to alcohol an object of pathos.

+179. Pathos is unfavorable to truth.+ Whenever pathos is in play the subject is privileged. It is regarded with a kind of affection, and is protected from severe examination. It is made holy or sacred. The thing is cherished with such a preestablished preference and faith that it is thought wrong to verify it. Pathos, therefore, is unfavorable to truth.

It has always been an element in religion. It is an element now in patriotism, and in regard to the history of one's own country. The coercion of pathos on the individual comes in popular disapproval of truth-telling about the matter in question. The toleration for forgery and fraud in the Christian church until modern times, which to modern people seems so shocking and inexplicable, was chiefly due to pathos about religion and the church. If a forgery would help the church or religion, any one who opposed it would seem to be an enemy of religion and the church and willing to violate the pathos which surrounded them.

+180. The value of analysis and verification as tests.+ In all the cases of the use of catchwords, watchwords, and phrases, the stereotyped forms of language seem to convey thought, especially ascertained truth, and they do it in a way to preclude verification. It is absolutely essential to correct thinking and successful discussion to reject stereotyped forms, and to insist on analysis and verification. Evidently all forms of suggestion tend to create an atmosphere of delusion. Pathos increases the atmosphere of delusion. It introduces elements which corrupt the judgment. In effect, it continues the old notion that there are edifying falsehoods and useful deceits. The masses always infuse a large emotional element into all their likes and dislikes, approval and disapproval. Hence, in time, they surround what they accept with pathos which it is hard to break through.

+181. Humanity.+ The standard of humanity or of decent behavior, especially towards the weak or those persons who may be at one's mercy, or animals, is entirely in the mores of the group and time. To the Gauchos of Uruguay "inhumanity and love of bloodshed become second nature." Their customs of treating beasts habituate them to bloodshed.

"They are callous to the sight of blood and suffering and come to positively enjoy it." They have no affection for their horses and dogs.

They murder for plunder.[374] It is very rarely that we meet with such a description as that of any people. Polynesians were bloodthirsty and cruel, perhaps because they had no chase of wild animals in which to expend their energies.[375] North American Indians could invent frightful tortures, but they were not bloodthirsty. They were not humane. Suffering did not revolt them. Schomburgk[376] tells a story of an Indian who became enraged at his wife because she groaned with toothache. He cut down her hammock and caused her to fall so that she suffered a dislocation of the arm. A European witness went to the chief with a report and remonstrance, but the chief was astonished that any one should take any notice of such an incident. The Assyrians cut in stone representations of flaying, impaling, etc., and of a king with his own royal hands putting out the eyes of prisoners. The Egyptians represented kings slaying men (national enemies) in masses. The Romans enjoyed bloodshed and the sight of suffering.[377] The Middle Ages reveled in cruelty to men and beasts. It is in the Middle Ages that we could find the nearest parallels to the Gauchos above. None of these people felt that repulsive revolt of the whole nature at inhumanity which characterizes modern cultivated people. The horrors have all receded out of our experience, and almost out of our knowledge. The line of familiarity is set far off. Therefore a little thing in the way of inhumanity is strange and exerts its full repulsive effect. Things happen, however, which show us that human nature is not changed, and that the brute in it may awake again at any time. It is all a question of time, custom, and occasion, and the individual is coerced to adopt the mores as to these matters which are then and there current.

+182. Selection by distinction.+ One of the leading modes by which the group exercises selection of its adopted type on the individual is by distinction. Distinction is selection. It appeals to vanity. It acts in two ways and has two opposite effects. One likes to be separated from the crowd by what is admired, and dislikes to be distinguished for what is not admired. Cases occur in which the noteworthy person is not sure whether he ought to be proud or ashamed of that for which he is distinguished. When a society gives titles, decorations, and rewards for acts, it stimulates what it rewards and causes new cases of it. The operation of selection is direct and rational. The cases in which the application of distinction is irrational show most clearly its selective effect. School-teachers are familiar with the fact that children will imitate a peculiarity of one which marks him out from all the rest, even if it is a deformity or defect. Why then wonder that barbarian mothers try to deform their babies towards an adopted type of bodily perfection which is not rationally preferable? A lady of my acquaintance showed me one of her dolls which had wire attachments on its legs in imitation of those worn by children for orthopedic effect. She explained that when she was a child, another child who had soft bones or weak ankles, and who wore irons for them, was brought into her group of playmates. They all admired and envied her, and all wished that they had weak bones so that they could wear irons. This lady made wire attachments for her doll that it might reach the highest standard.

+183. Aristocracies.+ All aristocracies are groups of those who are distinguished, at the time, for the possession of those things which are admired or approved, and which give superiority in the struggle for existence or in social power. In the higher civilization, until modern times, the possession of land was the only social power which would raise a man above sordid cares and enable him to plan his life as he chose. By talent an income could be won which would give the same advantage, but not with the same security of permanence and independence. The fields for talent were war, civil administration, and religion, the last including all mental activity. Men of talent had to win their place by craft and charlatanism (sorcery, astrology, therapeutics). Their position never was independent, except in church establishments. They had to win recognition from warriors and landowners, and they became comrades and allies of the latter. Merchants and bankers were the aristocracy at Carthage, Venice, Florence, and Genoa, and in the Hansa. Talented military men were aristocrats under Napoleon, courtiers were such under Louis XIV, and ecclesiastics at Rome. Since the fourteenth century capital has become a new and the greatest and indispensable social power. Those who, at any time, have the then most important social power in their hands are courted and flattered, envied and served, by the rest. They make an aristocracy. The aristocrats are the distinguished ones, and their existence and recognition give direction to social ambition. Of course this acts selectively to call out what is most advantageous and most valued in the society.

+184.+ There are a number of mass phenomena which are on a lower grade than the mores, lacking the elements of truth and right with respect to welfare, which illustrate still further and more obviously the coercion of all mass movements over the individual. These are fashion, poses, fads, and affectations.

+185. Fashion.+ Fashion in dress has covered both absurdities and indecencies with the aegis of custom. From the beginning of the fourteenth century laws appear against indecent dress. What nobles invented, generally in order to give especial zest to the costume of a special occasion, that burghers and later peasants imitated and made common.[378] In the fifteenth century the man's hose fitted the legs and hips tightly. The latchet was of a different color, and was decorated and stuffed as if to exaggerate still further the indecent obtrusiveness of it.[379] Schultz[380] says that the pictures which we have do not show the full indecency of the dress against which the clergy and moralists of the fifteenth century uttered denunciations, but only those forms which were considered decent, that is, those which were within the limits which custom at the time had established. At the same time women began to uncover the neck and bosom. The extent to which this may be carried is always controlled by fashion and the mores. Puritans and Quakers attempted to restrict it entirely, and to so construct the dress, by a neckerchief or attachment to the bodice, that the shape of the bust should be entirely concealed. The mores rejected this rule as excessive. In spite of all the eloquence of the moral preachers, that form of dress which shows neck and bosom has become established, only that it is specialized for full dress and covered by conventionalization.

+186. Conventionalization.+ Conventionalization also comes into play to cover the dress of the ballet or burlesque opera and the bathing dress.

Conventionalization always includes strict specification and limits of time, place, and occasion, beyond which the same dress would become vicious. Amongst Moslems and Orientals this conventionalization as to dress has never been introduced. We are familiar with the fact that when a fashion has been introduced and has become common our eye is formed to it, and no one looks "right" or stylish who does not conform to it. We also know that after the fashion has changed things in the discarded fashion look dowdy and rustic. No one can resist these impressions, try as he may. This fact, in the experience of everybody, gives us an example of the power of current custom over the individual. While a fashion reigns its tendency is to greater and greater extravagance in order to produce the desired and admired effect. Then the toleration for any questionable element in the fashion is extended and the extension is unnoticed. If a woman of 1860, in the dress of her time, were to meet a woman of 1906, in the dress of her time, each would be amazed at the indecency of the dress of the other. No dress ever was more, or more justly, denounced for ugliness, inconvenience, and indecency than the crinoline, but all the women from 1855 to 1865, including some of the sweetest who ever lived, wore it. No inference whatever as to their taste or character would be justified. There never is any rational judgment in the fashion of dress. No criticism can reach it. In a few cases we know what actress or princess started a certain fashion, but in the great majority of cases we do not know whence it came or who was responsible for it. We all have to obey it. We hardly ever have any chance to answer back. Its all-sufficient sanction is that "everybody wears it," or wears it _so_. Evidently this is only a special application to dress of a general usage--conventionalization.