Folkways. William Graham Sumner

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СКАЧАТЬ signs of barbarism and inferiority. When groups are compounded by intermarriage, intercourse, conquest, immigration, or slavery, syncretism of the folkways takes place. One of the component groups takes precedence and sets the standards. The inferior groups or classes imitate the ways of the dominant group, and eradicate from their children the traditions of their own ancestors. Amongst Englishmen the correct or incorrect placing of the h is a mark of caste. It is a matter of education to put an end to the incorrect use. Contiguity, neighborhood, or even literature may suffice to bring about syncretism of the mores. One group learns that the people of another group regard some one of its ways or notions as base. This knowledge may produce shame and an effort to breed out the custom. Thus whenever two groups are brought into contact and contagion, there is, by syncretism, a selection of the folkways which is destructive to some of them. This is the process by which folkways are rendered obsolete. The notion of a gradual refinement of the mores in time, which is assumed to go on of itself, or by virtue of some inherent tendency in that direction, is entirely unfounded. Christian mores in the western empire were formed by syncretism of Jewish and pagan mores. Christian mores therefore contain war, slavery, concubinage, demonism, and base amusements, together with some abstract ascetic doctrines with which these things are inconsistent. The strain of the mores towards consistency produced elimination of some of these customs. The church embraced in its fold Latin, Teutonic, Greek, and Slavonic nations, and it produced a grand syncretism of their mores, while it favored those which were Latin. The Teutonic mores suffered elimination. Those which were Greek and Slavonic were saved by the division of the church. Those which now pass for Christian in western Europe are the result of the syncretism of two thousand years. When now western Christians come in contact with heathen, Mohammedans, Buddhists, or alien forms of Christianity, they endeavor to put an end to polygamy, slavery, infanticide, idolatry, etc., which have been extruded from western Christian mores. In Egypt at the present time the political power and economic prosperity of the English causes the Mohammedans to envy, emulate, and imitate them in all those peculiarities which are supposed to be causes of their success. Hence we hear of movements to educate children, change the status of women, and otherwise modify traditional mores. It is another case of the operation by which inferior mores are rendered obsolete.

121. The art of societal administration. It is not to be inferred that reform and correction are hopeless. Inasmuch as the mores are a phenomenon of the society and not of the state, and inasmuch as the machinery of administration belongs to the state and not to the society, the administration of the mores presents peculiar difficulties. Strictly speaking, there is no administration of the mores, or it is left to voluntary organs acting by moral suasion. The state administration fails if it tries to deal with the mores, because it goes out of its province. The voluntary organs which try to administer the mores (literature, moral teachers, schools, churches, etc.) have no set method and no persistent effort. They very often make great errors in their methods. In regard to divorce, for instance, it is idle to set up stringent rules in an ecclesiastical body, and to try to establish them by extravagant and false interpretation of the Bible, hoping in that way to lead opinion; but the observation and consideration of cases which occur affect opinion and form convictions. The statesman and social philosopher can act with such influences, sum up the forces which make them, and greatly help the result. The inference is that intelligent art can be introduced here as elsewhere, but that it is necessary to understand the mores and to be able to discern the elements in them, just as it is always necessary for good art to understand the facts of nature with which it will have to deal. It belongs to the work of publicists and statesmen to gauge the forces in the mores and to perceive their tendencies. The great men of a great epoch are those who have understood new currents in the mores. The great reformers of the sixteenth century, the great leaders of modern revolutions, were, as we can easily see, produced out of a protest or revulsion which had long been forming under and within the existing system. The leaders are such because they voice the convictions which have become established and because they propose measures which will realize interests of which the society has become conscious. A hero is not needed. Often a mediocre, commonplace man suffices to give the critical turn to thought or interest. "A Gian Angelo Medici, agreeable, diplomatic, benevolent, and pleasure-loving, sufficed to initiate a series of events which kept the occidental races in perturbation through two centuries."163 Great crises come when great new forces are at work changing fundamental conditions, while powerful institutions and traditions still hold old systems intact. The fifteenth century was such a period. It is in such crises that great men find their opportunity. The man and the age react on each other. The measures of policy which are adopted and upon which energy is expended become components in the evolution. The evolution, although it has the character of a nature process, always must issue by and through men whose passions, follies, and wills are a part of it but are also always dominated by it. The interaction defies our analysis, but it does not discourage our reason and conscience from their play on the situation, if we are content to know that their function must be humble. Stoll boldly declares that if one of us had been a judge in the times of the witch trials he would have reasoned as the witch judges did, and would have tortured like them.164 If that is so, then it behooves us by education and will, with intelligent purpose, to criticise and judge even the most established ways of our time, and to put courage and labor into resistance to the current mores where we judge them wrong. It would be a mighty achievement of the science of society if it could lead up to an art of societal administration which should be intelligent, effective, and scientific.

90 N. S. Amer. Anthrop., IV, 3.

91 Globus, LXXXVII, 130.

92 "Religion of Israel," Hastings, Dict., Supp. vol.

93 Tiele, Relig. in Alterthum, I, 295.

94 Ibid., 242.

95 Stammler, Stellung der Frauen, 3.

96 Friedberg, Recht der Eheschliessung.

97 Ztsft. f. Volkskunde, XI, 272.

98 Scherr, Deutsche Kultur-und Sittengesch., 171.

99 Stammler, Stellung der Frauen, 8.

100 Wachsmuth, Bauernkriege, in Raumer, Taschenbuch, V.

101 Charters, 449.

102 Stubbs, History, II, 453.

103 Stellung der Frauen, 3.

104 Sec. 86.

105 Hiekisch, Tungusen, 31; Sieroshevski, Yakuty, I, 415.

106 Simkhovitsch, Feldgemeinschaft in Russland, Chap. XXIX.

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