Social Psychology
Chapter 20: Union and Accumulation[1]
Edward Alsworth Ross
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As culture grows the conflicts between new and old become more acute
ALTERNATIVE to the advance of culture by conflict and substitution is advance by union and accumulation. This is, in fact, the prior process. Accumulation precedes substitution, since there can be no replacement until there has been occupancy. For instance, no struggle between new and old can occur until some progress has been made. Then the answers already given to questions block the way to better solutions, and conflict ensues. Early religious thinking issued in myths rather than dogmas, and, since there was room for all of them, they did not interfere. Early observations on natural phenomena dispelled darkness rather than disproved errors. Not until a rank growth of speculations had sprung up was it necessary to conduct a vast discussion in order to overthrow a Ptolemaic system, a sacred cosmology, or a theory of the special creation of species. "When the art of war first arose, every new weapon or drill or tactic could be added to those already in existence, whereas, in our own day it is seldom that a new engine of war or a new military regulation does not have to battle for some time with others which its introduction has rendered useless. In the beginnings of industry, in its pastoral and agricultural forms, every newly cultivated plant and every newly domesticated animal were added to the feeble resources of field
(331) and barn, of garden and stable, and did not, like to-day, replace other domestic plants and animals of almost equal worth. At that time, likewise, every new astronomical or physical observation which lit up some hitherto obscure point in the human mind took an undisputed place side by side with anterior observations which it in no way contradicted." [2]
Every fabric of culture has two sides -- one extensible, the other not
Nearly every segment of social culture has a side that admits of accumulation by the union of the new with the old, and another side that admits only of the replacement of the old by the new. When two civilizational spheres -- such as Occident and Orient -- come to penetrate each other, each can borrow much from the other without experiencing disturbance or opposition of any kind. There comes a time, however, when no further borrowing can take place without discarding something already in hand. At this point begin interference and conflict.
In language the vocabulary goes on enlarging indefinitely, while the grammar soon reaches a point where further growth can take place only by substitution.
Rigid and plastic sides of religion
" Religions also, like languages, have two aspects. They have their dictionary of narrative and legend, their starting-point, and their religious grammar of dogma and ritual. The former is composed of Biblical or mythological tales, of histories of gods and demigods, of heroes and saints, and it can develop without stop; but the latter cannot be extended in the same way. After all the main conscience- tormenting problems have been solved according to the peculiar principle of the given religion, a moment comes when no new dogma can be introduced which does not partly contradict established dogma; similarly, no new
(332) rite, inasmuch as it is an expression of dogma, can be freely introduced when all the dogmas have already been expressed in ritual. Now, after the creed and ritual of a religion have been defined, its martyrology, hagiography, and ecclesiastical history never fail to grow richer, and this even more rapidly than before. Moreover, the saints and martyrs and devotees of a mature religion not only do not contradict one another in the conventionality and orthodoxy of all their acts, thoughts, and even miracles, but mutually reflect and indorse one another. . . . If the religion is primarily narrative, it is highly variable and plastic; if it is primarily dogmatic, it is essentially unchangeable. In Graeco-Latin paganism there is almost no dogma, and since ritual has, therefore, almost no dogmatic significance, its symbolism is of the more distinctively narrative kind. It may represent, for example, an episode in the life of Ceres or Bacchus. Understood in this way there may be no end to the accumulation of different rites. If dogma amounted to almost nothing, narrative was almost everything in ancient polytheism. Therefore it had incredible facility for enrichment." Compare the plastic religion formed thus upon a body of myths with a monotheistic religion like Islam or Catholicism, in which mutually consistent and supporting dogmas and sacraments and rites are so articulated into a solid system that no change can be brought about save in the face of the greatest resistance.
Rigid and plastic sides of science
Science is extensible on the side of observations and es measurements, but not on the side of hypotheses, theories, and generalizations. "As long as science merely enumerates and describes facts, sense-given data, it is susceptible of indefinite extension. And science begins in this way
(333) by being a collection of non-related as well as non-contradictory phenomena. But as soon as it becomes dogmatic and law-making, in turn, as soon as it conceives of theories that are able to give to facts the air of mutual confirmation instead of merely mutual non-contradiction, as soon, indeed, as it unwittingly synthesizes the data of sensation under intuitive mental forms which are implicit general propositions called time, space, matter, and force, then science becomes, perhaps, the most incapable of extension of all human achievements. Scientific theories undoubtedly become more complete, but this happens through mutual substitution and through periodically fresh starts, whereas observations and experiments go on accumulating. Certain leading hypotheses that reappear from one age to another- atomism, dynamism (modern evolution), monadology, idealism (Platonic or Hegelian) - are the inflexible frames of the swelling and overflowing mass of facts. Only, among these master thoughts, these hypotheses or inventions of science, there are certain ones which receive increasing confirmation from one another and from the continual accumulation of newly discovered facts which, in consequence, no longer merely restrict themselves to not contradicting one another, but reciprocally repeat and confirm one another, as if bearing witness together to the same law or to the same collective proposition."
Rigid and plastic sides of law
Law is extensible on the side of rulings, decisions, and statutes which carry it into special fields or apply it to new classes of cases; but not in the reasoned system of principles which makes up a jurisprudence. A doctrine like that of ultra vires, or caveat emptor, or contributory negligence, or fellow-servant, cannot be amended in the least without letting loose a hurricane of protest.
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The State
Industry
Art
Compare also the extensibility of administrative bureaus and functions with the resistance to change offered by organic law and fundamental political ideas. Again, the instruments and products of industry can be accumulated, but the scale of wants is modified chiefly by substitution. Consider, for instance, by what hard battles have libraries and universities come to challenge the attention of society, rather than cathedrals like those of the Middle Ages. Think of the struggle that was necessary to create the want that has called into being the splendid gymnasiums and athletic fields in our colleges! Likewise, works of art multiply, but the ideals that inspire these works cannot be altered without precipitating a conflict of new with old.
The nonaccumulable elements are the superior and controlling
Nevertheless, it is the non-accumulable social products that are the more essential. They are governing beliefs, concepts, needs, aspirations, which are to the accumulable products what form is to matter. The genius of a language is in its grammar, not its vocabulary; the core of religion is in its dogmas or ideals, not its myths and observances; the kernel of science is its laws and theories, not its observations. Law means a system of principles, not a mass of rulings or statutes. The art of an epoch means a group of harmonious reigning ideals, not the accumulation of poems and paintings. Says Tarde : "Is it true that the sides of social thought and conduct that cannot be indefinitely extended (grammars, dogmas and theories, principles of justice, political policy and strategy, morals and aesthetics are less worth cultivating than the side that can be indefinitely extended (vocabularies, mythologies, and descriptive sciences, customs, collections of laws, industries, systems of civil and military administration) ?
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"On the contrary, the side open to substitution, that which after a certain point cannot be extended, is always the more essential side. Grammar is the whole of language. Theory is the whole of science, and dogma of religion. Principles constitute justice ; strategy, war. Government is but a political idea. Morality is the sum of industry, for industry amounts to neither more nor less than its end. The ideal is surely the all of art. What are words good for but for building sentences, or facts but for making theories? What are laws good for but to unfold or consecrate higher principles of justice? For what use are the arms, the tactics, and the different divisions of an army but to form part of the strategical plan of the general in command? Of what use are the multiple services, functions, and administrative departments of a state but to aid in the constitutional schemes of the statesman who represents the victorious political party? . . .
Advance on the plastic side much easier than on the rigid side
"Only it is much easier to move forward in the direction of possible acquisitions and endowments than in that of necessary substitutions and sacrifices. It is much easier to pile up neologism upon neologism than to master one's own tongue and, thereby, gradually improve its grammar; to bring together scientific observations and experiments than to supply science with theories of a more general and demonstrated order; to multiply miracles and pious practices than to substitute rational for outworn religious dogmas; to manufacture laws by the dozen than to conceive of a new principle of justice fitted to conciliate all interests."
For this reason, it is usually only the pressure of great masses of new acquisitions that precipitate at last those conflicts in the upper ranges of thought that bring about
More and more, comflicts are precipitated by the pressure of accumulated materials
(336) great changes in the tenor of a civilization. Multitudes of astronomical observations finally make the geocentric theory untenable and the heliocentric theory alone tenable. The minute study of sources regarding an epoch in church history undermines at last the illegitimate ecclesiasticalpretensions based on the forged Donation of Constantine, or the spurious Isidorean Decretals. The piling up of innumerable points about the text of the Pentateuch impeaches eventually their Mosaic authorship and discloses the actual history of Israel. An immense number of observations on the order and upbuilding of the earth's strata in the end enables geology to free minds from the spell of Usher's chronology. The ceaseless accumulation of observations and statistics regarding the increase of the unfit will at last break down the dogma of " personal liberty " in its application to the propagation of their kind by epileptics and feeble-minded
SUMMARY
As culture grows and becomes articulated the new is more and more liable to interfere with the established.
Nevertheless every fabric of culture is plastic in some respects and rigid in other respects.
Religion is plastic so far as it remains myth but resistant so far as it has become dogma.
Science can be readily extended on the side of data, but not on the side of law, generalization, and theory.
It is easy to discriminate or extend the application of legal principles; but it is hard to introduce a new legal principle.
Growth is easier on the plastic than on the resistant side of a culture fabric; but in every case the latter is the superior and controlling side.
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EXERCISES
1. Why is it that only the higher religions resist free inquiry?
2. What should be the chief basis of religious fellowship agreement in belief or agreement in ideal? Why?
3. Differentiate the plastic and the rigid sides of botany, of psychology, of economics.
4. Is it better to assail a false dogma or to undermine it by marshalling and interpreting the adverse facts?
5. Show different ways of proceeding against such dogmas as "Art for art's sake" .. .. Measures, not men," " The home is woman's sphere."
