Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 37

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Isolation in Anthropogeography and Biology

A systematic treatise upon isolation as a sociological concept remains to be written. The idea of isolation as a tool of investigation has been fas.h.i.+oned with more precision in geography and in biology than in sociology.

Research in human geography has as its object the study of man in his relations to the earth. Students of civilization, like Montesquieu and Buckle, sought to explain the culture and behavior of peoples as the direct result of the physical environment. Friedrich Ratzel with his "thorough training as a naturalist, broad reading, and travel" and above all, his comprehensive knowledge of ethnology, recognized the importance of direct effects, such as cultural isolation. Jean Brunhes, by the selection of small natural units, his so-called "islands," has made intensive studies of isolated groups in the oases of the deserts of the Sub and of the Mzab, and in the high mountains of the central Andes.

Biology indicates isolation as one of the factors in the origin of the species. Anthropology derives the great races of mankind--the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Indian--from geographical separation following an a.s.sumed prehistoric dispersion. A German scholar, Dr. Georg Gerland, has prepared an atlas which plots differences in physical traits, such as skin color and hair texture, as indicating the geographical distribution of races.

2. Isolation and Social Groups

Anthropogeographical and biological investigations have proceeded upon the a.s.sumption, implicit or explicit, that the geographic environment, and the physical and mental traits of races and individuals, _determine_ individual and collective behavior. What investigations in human geography and heredity actually demonstrate is that the geographic environment and the original nature of man _condition_ the culture and conduct of groups and of persons. The explanations of isolation, so far as it affects social life, which have gained currency in the writings of anthropologists and geographers, are therefore too simple. Sociologists are able to take into account forms of isolation not considered by the students of the physical environment and of racial inheritance. Studies of folkways, mores, culture, nationality, the products of a historical or cultural process, disclose types of social contact which transcend the barriers of geographical or racial separation, and reveal social forms of isolation which prevent communication where there is close geographical contact or common racial bonds.

The literature upon isolated peoples ranges from investigations of arrest of cultural development as, for example, the natives of Australia, the Mountain Whites of the southern states, or the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island to studies of hermit nations, of caste systems as in India, or of outcast groups such as feeble-minded "tribes"

or hamlets, fraternities of criminals, and the underworld of commercialized prost.i.tution. Special research in dialects, in folklore, and in provincialism shows how spatial isolation fixes differences in speech, att.i.tudes, folkways, and mores which, in turn, enforce isolation even when geographic separation has disappeared.

The most significant contribution to the study of isolation from the sociological standpoint has undoubtedly been made by Fishberg in a work ent.i.tled _The Jews, a Study of Race and Environment_. The author points out that the isolation of the Jew has been the result of neither physical environment nor of race, but of social barriers. "Judaism has been preserved throughout the long years of Israel's dispersion by two factors: its separative ritualism, which prevented close and intimate contact with non-Jews, and the iron laws of the Christian theocracies of Europe which encouraged and enforced 'isolation.'"[116]

3. Isolation and Personality

Philosophers, mystics, and religious enthusiasts have invariably stressed privacy for meditation, retirement for ecstatic communion with G.o.d, and withdrawal from the contamination of the world. In 1784-86 Zimmermann wrote an elaborate essay in which he dilates upon "the question whether it is easier to live virtuously in society or in solitude," considering in Part I "the influence of occasional retirement upon the mind and the heart" and in Part II "the pernicious influence of a total exclusion from society upon the mind and the heart."

Actual research upon the effect of isolation upon personal development has more of future promise than of present accomplishment. The literature upon cases of feral men is practically all of the anecdotal type with observations by persons untrained in the modern scientific method. One case, however, "the savage of Aveyron" was studied intensively by Itard, the French philosopher and otologist who cherished high hopes of his mental and social development. After five years spent in a patient and varied but futile attempt at education, he confessed his bitter disappointment. "Since my pains are lost and efforts fruitless, take yourself back to your forest and primitive tastes; or if your new wants make you dependent on society, suffer the penalty of being useless, and go to Bicetre, there to die in wretchedness."

Only second in importance to the cases of feral men are the investigations which have been made of the results of solitary confinement. Morselli, in his well-known work on _Suicide_, presented statistics showing that self-destruction was many times as frequent among convicts under the system of absolute isolation as compared with that of a.s.sociation during imprisonment. Studies of Auburn prison in New York, of Mountjoy in England, and penal inst.i.tutions on the continent show the effects of solitary incarceration in the increase of cases of suicides, insanity, invalidism, and death.

Beginnings have been made in child study, psychiatry, and psychoa.n.a.lysis of the effects of different types of isolation upon personal development. Some attention has been given to the study of effects upon mentality and personality of physical defects such as deaf-mutism and blindness. Students of the so-called "morally defective child," that is the child who appears deficient in emotional and sympathetic responses, suggest as a partial explanation the absence in infancy and early childhood of intimate and sympathetic contacts with the mother. An investigation not yet made but of decisive bearing upon this point will be a comparative study of children brought up in families with those reared in inst.i.tutions.

Psychiatry and psychoa.n.a.lysis in probing mental life and personality have related certain mental and social abnormalities to isolation from social contact. Studies of paranoia and of egocentric personalities have resulted in the discovery of the only or favorite child complex. The exclusion of the boy or girl in the one-child family from the give and take of democratic relations with brothers and sisters results, according to the theory advanced, in a psychopathic personality of the self-centered type. A contributing cause of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, it is said by psychoa.n.a.lysts, is the isolation during childhood from usual a.s.sociation with individuals of the same s.e.x. Research in dementia praec.o.x discloses a symptom and probably a cause of this mental malady to be the withdrawal of the individual from normal social contacts and the subst.i.tution of an imaginary for a real world of persons and events.

Dementia praec.o.x has been related by one psychoa.n.a.lyst to the "shut-in"

type of personality.

The literature on the subject of privacy in its relation to personal development is fragmentary but highly promising for future research. The study of the introspective type of personality suggests that self-a.n.a.lysis is the counterpart of the inhibition of immediate and impulsive self-expression in social relations. Materials for an understanding of the relation of retirement and privacy to the aesthetic, moral, and creative life of the person may be found in the lives of hermits, inventors, and religious leaders; in the studies of seclusion, prayer, and meditation; and in research upon taboo, prestige, and att.i.tudes of superiority and inferiority.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF ISOLATION

I. CHARACTERISTIC SENTIMENTS AND ATt.i.tUDES OF THE ISOLATED PERSON

(1) Zimmermann, Johann G. _Solitude._ Or the effects of occasional retirement on the mind, the heart, general society. Translated from the German. London, 1827.

(2) Canat, Rene. _Une forme du mal du siecle._ Du sentiment de la solitude morale chez les romantiques et les parna.s.siens. Paris, 1904.

(3) Goltz, E. von der. _Das Gebet in der aeltesten Christenheit._ Leipzig, 1901.

(4) Strong, Anna L. _A Consideration of Prayer from the Standpoint of Social Psychology._ Chicago, 1908.

(5) Hoch, A. "On Some of the Mental Mechanisms in Dementia Praec.o.x,"

_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, V (1910), 255-73. [A study of the isolated person.]

(6) Bohannon, E. W. "Only Child," _Pedagogical Seminary_, V (1897-98), 475-96.

(7) Brill, A. A. _Psycha.n.a.lysis._ Its theories and practical application. "The Only or Favorite Child in Adult Life," pp. 253-65. 2d rev. ed. Philadelphia and London, 1914.

(8) Neter, Eugen. _Das einzige Kind und seine Erziehung._ Ein ernstes Mahnwort an Eltern und Erzieher. Munchen, 1914.

(9) Whiteley, Opal S. _The Story of Opal._ Boston, 1920.

(10) Delbruck, A. _Die pathologische Luge und die psychisch abnormen Schwindler._ Stuttgart, 1891.

(11) Healy, Wm. _Pathological Lying._ Boston, 1915.

(12) Dostoevsky, F. _The House of the Dead; or, Prison Life in Siberia._ Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York, 1915.

(13) Griffiths, Arthur. _Secrets of the Prison House, or Gaol Studies and Sketches._ I, 262-80. London, 1894.

(14) Kingsley, Charles. _The Hermits._ London and New York, 1871.

(15) Baring-Gould, S. _Lives of Saints._ 16 vols. Rev. ed. Edinburgh, 1916. [See references in index to hermits.]

(16) Solenberger, Alice W. _One Thousand Homeless Men._ A study of original records. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1911.

II. TYPES OF ISOLATION AND TYPES OF SOCIAL GROUPS

(1) Fishberg, Maurice. _The Jews._ A study of race and environment.

London and New York, 1911.

(2) Gummere, Amelia M. _The Quaker._ A study in costume. Philadelphia, 1901.

(3) Webster, Hutton. _Primitive Secret Societies._ A study in early politics and religion. New York, 1908.

(4) Heckethorn, C. W. _The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries._ A comprehensive account of upwards of one hundred and sixty secret organizations--religious, political, and social--from the most remote ages down to the present time. 2 vols. New ed., rev. and enl. London, 1897.

(5) Fosbroke, Thomas D. _British Monachism, or Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England._ London, 1817.

(6) Wishart, Alfred W. _A Short History of Monks and Monasteries._ Trenton, N.J., 1900. [Chap. i, pp. 17-70, gives an account of the monk as a type of human nature.]

III. GEOGRAPHICAL ISOLATION AND CULTURAL AREAS

(1) Ratzel, Friedrich. _Politische Geographie; oder, Die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges._ 2d. ed. Munchen, 1903.

(2) Semple, Ellen. _Influences of Geographic Environment, on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropogeography._ Chap. xiii, "Island Peoples,"