Social Psychology
Chapter 23: Disequilibration
Edward Alsworth Ross
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Why an equilibrium is not reached
THERE is, as we have seen, a tendency for the contradictions implicit in the contents of the social mind to find their way to the surface. Conflicts break out, rage, and terminate by the victorious belief or practice entering the stream of tradition and passing down to later generations. Why, then, is there not finally a removal of all incongruities, a settlement of all conflicts? Why should not a culture finally reach a self-consistency such that its elements are in logical accord; such that the various interests in human life and in society receive from it due recognition and fall therefore into a kind of harmony? This, in fact, is just what tends to occur. An equilibrium is perpetually being established, but it is liable to be ruptured:
The influence of a foreign culture
(I) By fresh contacts with other cultures, effected through conquest, commerce, travel, or improved communication. Thus, after the Romans had achieved a crude and rather rustic culture, it was greatly transformed by heavy borrowings from the superior culture of Greece. After these cultures had come to terms and a rough synthesis had been effected, the mind of the classic world was thrown into confusion by the spread of Christianity, an exotic that had bloomed on the Hebrew stalk. After this great complex of factors had been wrought by theologians into an outwardly harmonious system, a leaven
(356) was introduced from Arabic civilization through contact with the Moors, which resulted in the burst of Scholasticism in the thirteenth century. Two centuries later the Revival of Learning brought on an immense flooding and fertilizing of the European intellect with the Greek culture of the Renaissance. In the nineteenth century the Western mind has received no slight impression from the treasures of Indian literature and philosophy. The yet more recent acquaintance with the Japanese culture is likely to leave lasting results in the sphere of art.
The Western culutre now well-nigh planetary
But one outcome of these successive incorporations is that the Western culture now extends to so much of the human race that it can find no other equal culture to mate with. The opportunities for the fruitful marriage of diverse thought-systems appear to be well-nigh exhausted. The little rudimentary or arrested cultures that travellers still light on in out-of-the-way comers can, of course, contribute nothing. The only fecund crossing in prospect is that of Orient with Occident, and there is little likelihood that the reaction of the East upon the West will meet the expectations formed before sociology demonstrated the eccentric and barren character of the Oriental civilization. Equipped with that incomparable instrument, the scientific method, the Western intellect will probably go on its way with little heed to what the East offers it. Apparently, the human race is on the verge of a planetary culture that must be fruitful by way of parthenogenesis, unless, peradventure, some stimulating intellectual commerce be struck up with the folk on Mars! The trend toward a vast comprehensive system in which the intellectual product of every people and every epoch finds due recognition and place is evidenced not only by
(357) the reign of the eclectic spirit, but also by the shifting of several branches of knowledge from the dogmatic to the comparative basis, viz., comparative religion, comparative jurisprudence, comparative morality, comparative politics, comparative art, and the comparative study of the family.
Shifting of the social foundations
(2) By mutations in the form or circumstances of society. Growth of population, growth of wealth, altered relations to other societies, the conjugation of societies through conquest or federation [1] react variously upon the articulated body of culture. Which tends to prevail, rural life or urban life? Is local redistribution of population going on ? Is selection altering the mental and moral traits of the population? Is population overtaking or falling behind subsistence? Are industrial activities gaining on warlike activities, or vice versa ? Is the drift towards centralization or away from it ? Is wealth concentrating or spreading? These basal demographic and economic changes leave their mark in the higher sphere. One might term it the influence of the social body upon the social mind. If, for example, the underlying forces are equalizing, we hear of democratic religion, democratic art, democratic morals and manners an sports an ress and education. If society should realize the plutocratic type, the change, no doubt, would be read plainly in legal philosophy, in moral standards, religion, art, literature, social customs, and institutions.
The afflux of inventions
(3) By the welling up of inventions and discoveries from gifted individuals. Since advance by borrowing is coming to an end, this welling up of happy initiatives from geniuses is the only lasting reliance for progress. What it means to us to-day can be realized by comparing our
(358) situation with that of the classic civilization. By the time of Hadrian the opportunities for fresh culture-contacts in the Graeco-Roman world were practically exhausted. No new ferments were to be found. Lacking the originative spirit, - probably because the superior family stocks were extirpated in the civil and social wars of the Greeks and Romans, - society came to a standstill. Says Seeck:[2] "From Augustus to Diocletian the equipment of the legionary remained the same. No improvement of tactics, no new means of warfare, was developed in the course of three centuries. . . . Neither in agriculture nor in technique nor in administration does a single new idea of any significance come to light after the first century. Literature and art, too, are confined to a sterile imitation which becomes ever more empty and feeble. . . . The Neo-Platonic philosophy and the development of Christian dogma are the only achievements which relieve this era from complete futility.
No prospect of the stationary state
Happily, the Occident is seething with inventions and discoveries, and there is no reason to fear the coming of the stationary state. The fecundity of our time is partly due to the fact that origination, instead of being accidental and haphazard, is becoming regular and systematic. Improvement is now a conscious aim. More and more, organized society furnishes the collections, the laboratories, the ateliers; maintains the investigators, experimenters, and explorers. The technique of origination is coming to be understood. One device is to apply in the backward fields the exact methods that have yielded rich harvests elsewhere. Another is specialization. Another is the focussing of attack on a specific question instead of
(359) groping. Much, too, is owed to that intellectual commerce and that efficient organization of science by which the find of any one is promptly communicated to all other workers, who immediately make it the basis of operations for a fresh campaign. From Rio Janeiro to Helsingfors and from Cambridge to Madras the assailants of the same problem are coming to an understanding and a concert that constitute them virtually a tract in the great brain of humanity.
The laws of invention
It is in the nature of invention to be individual and unpredictable. Nevertheless, there are certain general truths touching the appearance of even so lawless a thing as invention.[3]
The higher the degree of possibility, the sooner the invention is likely to be made.
Degrees of possibility
The inventions (or discoveries) in a particular field - and often those in different fields - are in a chain of dependence which obliges them to occur in a series. Each ushers in a train of possibles. Now, when no intervening invention needs to be made, an invention may be said to be in the first degree of possibility. When it is contingent on another yet to be made, it is in the second degree of possibility. And so on. Now, when an invention or discovery reaches the first degree of possibility, it is ripe. Thus, after Kepler announces the laws of planetary movement, the discovery of the principle of universal gravitation is in order at any moment. After Galileo has proclaimed the laws of the pendulum, its use in time-keeping needs but a single stride. The electric telegraph is due any time after Ampère's discoveries. The invention of Crookes' tubes brings the X ray into the foreground of possibility.
(360) After the discovery of the Hertzian waves, a few short steps bring wireless telegraphy upon the scene.
Degrees of difficulty
The less the difficulty of an invention, the sooner it is likely to be made.
How society can promote invention<
An invention is not an outright creation, but, in most cases, a fresh combination of known factors. Thus, the combination of the idea of the elasticity of steam with that of circular-linear motion produces the steam-engine; of this with the rail - already in use for colliery cars yields the locomotive. The combination of certain principles in optics with certain principles in acoustics gives the undulatory theory of light. Now, the difficulty of making the combination of ideas for any particular invention will depend upon the number of persons who possess these ideas, and on the frequency in this number of individuals with the intellectual capacity necessary to combine the ideas into the invention. There is no way of affecting the latter condition, for the genius is in no wise a social product; but organized society can affect the former condition. A universal system of gratuitous instruction with special aid and opportunities for those who show unusual power amounts to an actualizing of all the potential genius in a population, and is the only rational policy for insuring a continuous and copious flow of inventions. It is hardly necessary to point out that only a stimulating, equipping education can mature geniuses. A régime that prunes, dips, and trains minds levels genius with mediocrity. A schooling devised primarily to produce good character, or patriotism, or dynastic loyalty, or class sentiment, or religious orthodoxy may lessen friction in society, but it cannot bring genius to bloom. For this the prime essentials are the communicating of known truths and the imparting of method.
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A lasting equilibrium of culture neither possible nor desirable
Owing to the intrusion of alien elements from the sources A just described, an achieved equilibrium of culture cannot last. Sooner or later it is upset and, until the added elements can fall into some kind of harmony with the rest there is confusion. In Israel, after the era of prophets, a certain system of life and thought was worked out, but, after some centuries, the teachings of Jesus rocked it to its base. By the middle of the eighteenth century a consensus had been reached regarding the tests of the excellence of a literary work. But the canons set up by the Augustans were swept into limbo by the unfettered genius of the Romanticists. The compact synthesis and harmonious adjustment effected by Thomas Aquinas in the knowledge of his age satisfied for a time. But heliocentrism, prehistoric archeology, the geologic record, and evolutionism have shattered it into ruins. Under the old guild règime industry was subjected to a system of regulations designed to safeguard the public interests and the craft interest against the reckless pursuit of individual advantage. But the coming of the factory drew industry to new seats and ushered in a period of disorgan- ization and unrestrained competition.
The contradictions about us are not due to want of logic
Some interpret the incongruities and contradictions visible in our culture as proof of the indifference of the a social mind to logic. The inference is wrong. Man's love of logic is only too apparent. The attempt to correct mortal theological error by civil penalty, the Christian countenancing of the African slave trade on the ground that it brought the blacks within reach of the faith that would save their souls, the endeavor to reproduce in roomy colonies the social system of the crowded mother country, the precipitate extension of the franchise to the negro
(362) freedman in deference to the doctrine of equality, the confidence that if a literary education is good for a white race it will benefit non-industrial races, - these show how logic can triumph over humanity and common sense. The contradictions that come to light tend to be eliminated by the desire for congruity which is increasingly felt as a people develops socially. The grammar of a language, a system of theology, a legal code, a political constitution, a philosophy, or a science, though it be the joint product of many minds, exhibits, in most cases, a logical consistency that is astonishing.
They are due to putting new wine into old bottles
If, then, our time is full of contradictions, it is because our culture is not allowed to achieve an equilibrium. The steady afflux of new examples, inventions, and discoveries produces confusion. Our culture is like an edifice that, while it is being torn down piecemeal and rebuilt, unites discordant styles of architecture. Constitutional monarchy, with its figurehead king, who "reigns but does not govern, " is plainly an instance of new wine in an old bottle. If the Russian government will not set to work the ice-breaker Ermak - an epitome of exact, matter-of-fact, applied science from a Philadelphia ship-yard - until it has been solemnly blessed and sprinkled by a squad of priests, it is because in Russia meet medixval faith and modem mechanism. If the Japanese do not see the incongruity of killing their foes by machinery and attributing the result to the intervention of the spirits of their ancestors, it is because only within our lifetime has naval warfare come to be virtually an extra-hazardous branch of engineering. If we Americans are blind to the contradictions between what our schools do and what we expect of them, it is because the old idea of education as book learning sur-
(363) -vives into a time when the aims of the school system have greatly changed.
Times of disequiliabration give the individual a chance
Does the ripening of the social mind cramp individuality?
The integration of culture
Nevertheless, a transition epoch is a halcyon time for individuality. For with the growth of the social mind in content it is a question what will be the fate of personal individuality. Will there be more room for spontaneity and choice, or is the individual doomed to shrivel as the transmitted culture becomes huger and more integrated? As that cockle-shell, the individual soul, leaving the tranquil pool of tribal life, passes first into the sheltered lake of some city community, then into the perilous sea of national life, and at last emerges upon the immense ocean of humanity's life, does it enjoy an ever widening freedom of movement, or does it, too frail to navigate the vaster expanses, become more and more the sport of .irresistible currents? On the one hand, it may be urged that, as one rises clear of bodily wants and promptings, one's self-determination contracts, one's life is more and more moulded by conceptual rather than impulsive factors; that is to say, by ideas, ideals, beliefs, world views, and the like. The growing preponderance of such factors subjects a man more to his social environment, for these are just the things that are easiest taken on by imitation or stamped in by education. You say the stock of possessions to choose from grows with each generation. True, but nevertheless the incompatible ideas and ideals become fewer, because one of the incompatibles exterminates the other. Consider, moreover, how the diversity in the cultural elements offered one becomes less, owing to the march of adaptation. Spelling becomes definite; idiomatic flexible speech falls under the tyranny of grammar and of style. The dictionary expands, but the number of
(364) synonyms declines as meanings become more shaded and precise. A religious ferment emancipates souls, but out of it dogmas soon crystallize and close in on the mind. In time unrelated dogmas are compared and sifted, and the complementary ones are erected into an imposing theology, like that of St. Thomas or Calvin, which from foundation to turret stone offers the believer no option. So from the discussions of jurists emerge general principles which transform a mass of incongruous, even contradictory, customs and statutes into a system of jurisprudence from which inharmonious elements have been expelled, and which utterly dominates the ordinary intellect. Likewise, un-unified generalizations about the external world, each trailing off into the unknown with many inviting paths of suggestion, are integrated and the gaps filled in until there exists a body of articulated propositions called a science; and the generalizations of the various sciences find a still higher synthesis in systems of philosophy.
The diversification of culture
On the other hand, there is certainly a progressive diversification and enrichment of culture which offers one a greater number of options and permits him to indulge, his individual fancy. The great variety of sects seems harbinger of the day when there will be as many creeds as there are believers. Science, of course, being a verified transcript of reality, can be but one; but, just as a widening circle of light enlarges the ring of darkness, a growth of the known gives fresh opportunities to speculate about the unknown. The widening scope for the play of individuality is seen in the coexistence in our Occidental culture of a greater number of types of music, styles of painting or architecture, forms of literature, theories of life and conduct. Since these appeal to the needs of diverse
temperaments, it is unlikely that the spirit of unification will bring about the triumph of one over the rest, or their coadaptation into one form. The Protestant will not absorb the Catholic, nor the Methodist the Presbyterian. Italian and German opera, classic painting and impressionistic, lyric and dramatic poetry, realistic fiction and romance, Stoicism and Epicureanism, the 4 " woman " ideal and the " lady " ideal, will persist side by side, because they meet the needs of different people. just as a developed society partly compensates for the cramping of specialism by offering the individual a greater variety of vocations to select from, so a developed culture affords multifarious opportunities from which each can choose what is congenial to his nature.
SUMMARY
The elements in a culture ever tend toward but rarely reach an equilibrium.
Their reciprocal adjustments are continually disturbed by borrowings or inventions or the influence of social changes.
Our Western culture has become so comprehensive that there are no alien bodies of culture likely to have a marked effect upon its development.
Its future course is likely to be determined by the character of the inventions and discoveries that will be made.
The numerous incongruities and absurdities in our culture do not prove the social mind illogical. They result from the hasty incorporation of new unassimilated elements.
In a time of disequilibration individuality has freer play than in a settled time.
The equilibration of culture means the confinement of the mind in some directions, its emancipation in other directions.
EXERCISES
I. Cite instances of the fruitful application in one field of investigation of methods that have succeeded in other fields.
2. Take a science like chemistry or physiology and describe the system of meetings, bulletins, monthlies, quarterlies, and annuals by which the find of any one anywhere is soon made known to all workers everywhere.
3. Why is little in the way of gift or stimulus to be expected from the Oriental cultures?
4. What requirements have been imposed upon our school system that book learning cannot absolve?
5. Account for the incongruity between the prevalent military notion of city government and its actual character as civic housekeeping. [See Addams, " Newer Ideals of Peace," chs. ii, iv, vii.]
6. Explain why the public resents peccadilloes as crimes and treats crimes as peccadilloes. [See Ross, " Sin and Society," chs. i and ii.)
7. Is there reason for thinking that the progress of Western culture narrows one's options in believing and judging, but multiplies one's options in doing and enjoying?
