Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 52

If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by the root _srip_.

An ancient word for man was the Sanskrit _marta_, the Greek _brotos_, the Latin _mortalis_. _Marta_ means "he who dies," and it is remarkable that, where everything else was changing, fading, and dying, this should have been chosen as the distinguis.h.i.+ng name for man.

There were many more names for man, as there were many names for all things in ancient languages. Any feature that struck the observing mind as peculiarly characteristic could be made to furnish a new name. In common Sanskrit dictionaries we find 5 words for hand, 11 for light, 15 for cloud, 20 for moon, 26 for snake, 33 for slaughter, 35 for fire, 37 for sun. The sun might be called the bright, the warm, the golden, the preserver, the destroyer, the wolf, the lion, the heavenly eye, the father of light and life. Hence that superabundance of synonyms in ancient dialects, and hence that struggle for life carried on among these words, which led to the destruction of the less strong, the less fertile, the less happy words, and ended in the triumph of _one_ as the recognized and proper name for every object in every language. On a very small scale this process of natural selection, or, as it would better be called, elimination, may still be watched even in modern languages, that is to say, even in languages so old and stricken in years as English and French. What it was at the first burst of dialects we can only gather from such isolated cases as when von Hammer counts 5,744 words all relating to the camel.

The fact that every word is originally a predicate--that names, though signs of individual conceptions, are all, without exception, derived from general ideas--is one of the most important discoveries in the science of language. It was known before that language is the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of man; it was known also that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes; but that these two were only different expressions of the same fact was not known till the theory of roots had been established as preferable to the theories both of onomatopoicia and of interjections.

But, though our modern philosophy did not know it, the ancient poets and framers of language must have known it. For in Greek, language is _logos_, but _logos_ means also reason, and _alogon_ was chosen as the name and the most proper name, for brute. No animal, so far as we know, thinks and speaks except man. Language and thought are inseparable.

Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.

What are the two problems left unsettled at the end of the _Science of Language_: "How do mere cries become phonetic types?" and "How can sensations be changed into concepts?" What are these two, if taken together, but the highest problem of all philosophy, viz., "What is the origin of reason?"

3. Writing as a Form of Communication[144]

The earliest stages of writing were those in which pictographic forms were used; that is, a direct picture was drawn upon the writing surface, reproducing as nearly as possible the kind of impression made upon the observer by the object itself. To be sure, the drawing used to represent the object was not an exact reproduction or full copy of the object, but it was a fairly direct image. The visual memory image was thus aroused by a direct perceptual appeal to the eye. Anyone could read a doc.u.ment written in this pictograph form, if he had ever seen the objects to which the pictures referred. There was no special relation between the pictures or visual forms at this stage of development and the sounds used in articulate language. Concrete examples of such writing are seen in early monuments, where the moon is represented by the crescent, a king by the drawing of a man wearing a crown.

The next stage of development in writing began when the pictographic forms were reduced in complexity to the simplest possible lines. The reduction of the picture to a few sketchy lines depended upon the growing ability of the reader to contribute the necessary interpretation. All that was needed in the figure was something which would suggest the full picture to the mind. Indeed, it is probably true that the full picture was not needed, even in the reader's consciousness. Memory images are usually much simplified reproductions of the perceptual facts. In writing we have a concrete expression of this tendency of memory to lose its full reproductive form and to become reduced to the point of the most meager contents for conscious thought.

The simplification of the written forms is attained very early, and is seen even in the figures which are used by savage tribes. Thus, to represent the number of an enemy's army, it is not necessary to draw full figures of the forms of the enemy; it is enough if single straight lines are drawn with some brief indication, perhaps at the beginning of the series of lines, to show that these stand each for an individual enemy. This simplification of the drawing leaves the written symbol with very much larger possibilities of entering into new relations in the mind of the reader. Instead, now, of being a specific drawing related to a specific object, it invites by its simple character a number of different interpretations. A straight line, for example, can represent not only the number of an enemy's army but it can represent also the number of sheep in a flock, or the number of tents in a village, or anything else which is capable of enumeration. The use of a straight line for these various purposes stimulates new mental developments. This is shown by the fact that the development of the idea of the number relation, as distinguished from the ma.s.s of possible relations in which an object may stand, is greatly facilitated by this general written symbol for numbers. The intimate relation between the development of ideas on the one hand and the development of language on the other is here very strikingly ill.u.s.trated. The drawing becomes more useful because it is a.s.sociated with more elaborate ideas, while the ideas develop because they find in the drawing a definite content which helps to mark and give separate character to the idea.

As soon as the drawing began to lose its significance as a direct perceptual reproduction of the object and took on new and broader meanings through the a.s.sociations which attached to it, the written form became a symbol, rather than a direct appeal to visual memory. As a symbol it stood for something which, in itself, it was not. The way was thus opened for the written symbol to enter into relation with oral speech, which is also a form of symbolism. Articulate sounds are simplified forms of experience capable through a.s.sociation with ideas of expressing meanings not directly related to the sounds themselves. When the written symbol began to be related to the sound symbol, there was at first a loose and irregular relation between them. The Egyptians seem to have established such relations to some extent. They wrote at times with pictures standing for sounds, as we now write in rebus puzzles. In such puzzles the picture of an object is intended to call up in the mind of the reader, not the special group of ideas appropriate to the object represented in the picture, but rather the sound which serves as the name of this object. When the sound is once suggested to the reader, he is supposed to attend to that and to connect with it certain other a.s.sociations appropriate to the sound. To take a modern ill.u.s.tration, we may, for example, use the picture of the eye to stand for the first personal p.r.o.noun. The relations.h.i.+p between the picture and the idea for which it is used is in this case through the sound of the name of the object depicted. That the early alphabets are of this type of rebus pictures appears in their names. The first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, for example, are named, respectively, _aleph_ which means ox, _beth_ which means house, and _gimmel_ which means camel.

The complete development of a sound alphabet from this type of rebus writing required, doubtless, much experimentation on the part of the nations which succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng the a.s.sociation. The Phoenicians have generally been credited with the invention of the forms and relations which we now use. Their contribution to civilization cannot be overestimated. It consisted, not in the presentation of new material or content to conscious experience, but rather in the bringing together by a.s.sociation of groups of contents which, in their new relation, transformed the whole process of thought and expression. They a.s.sociated visual and auditory content and gave to the visual factors a meaning through a.s.sociation which was of such unique importance as to justify us in describing the a.s.sociation as a new invention.

There are certain systems of writing which indicate that the type of relations.h.i.+p which we use is not the only possible type of relations.h.i.+p.

The Chinese, for example, have continued to use simple symbols which are related to complex sounds, not to elementary sounds, as are our own letters. In Chinese writing the various symbols, though much corrupted in form, stand each for an object. It is true that the forms of Chinese writing have long since lost their direct relations.h.i.+p to the pictures in which they originated. The present forms are simplified and symbolical. So free has the symbolism become that the form has been arbitrarily modified to make it possible for the writer to use freely the crude tools with which the Chinaman does his writing. These practical considerations could not have become operative, if the direct pictographic character of the symbols had not long since given place to a symbolical character which renders the figure important, not because of what it shows in itself, but rather because of what it suggests to the mind of the reader. The relation of the symbol to elementary sounds has, however, never been established. This lack of a.s.sociation with elementary sounds keeps the Chinese writing at a level much lower and nearer to primitive pictographic forms than is our writing.

Whether we have a highly elaborated symbolical system, such as that which appears in Chinese writing, or a form of writing which is related to sound, the chief fact regarding writing, as regarding all language, is that it depends for its value very much more upon the ideational relations into which the symbols are brought in the individual's mind than upon the impressions which they arouse.

The ideational a.s.sociations which appear in developed language could never have reached the elaborate form which they have at present if there had not been social co-operation. The tendency of the individual when left to himself is to drop back into the direct adjustments which are appropriate to his own life. He might possibly develop articulation to a certain extent for his own sake, but the chief impulse to the development of language comes through intercourse with others. As we have seen, the development of the simplest forms of communication, as in animals, is a matter of social imitation. Writing is also an outgrowth of social relations. It is extremely doubtful whether even the child of civilized parents would ever have any sufficient motive for the development of writing, if it were not for the social encouragement he receives.

4. The Extension of Communication by Human Invention[145]

No one who is asked to name the agencies that weave the great web of intellectual and material influences and counter-influences by which modern humanity is combined into the unity of society will need much reflection to give first rank to the newspaper, along with the post, railroad, and telegraph.

In fact, the newspaper forms a link in the chain of modern commercial machinery; it is one of those contrivances by which in society the exchange of intellectual and material goods is facilitated. Yet it is not an instrument of commercial intercourse in the sense of the post or the railway, both of which have to do with the transport of persons, goods, and news, but rather in the sense of the letter and circular.

These make the news capable of transport only because they are enabled by the help of writing and printing to cut it adrift, as it were, from its originator and give it corporeal independence.

However great the difference between letter, circular, and newspaper may appear today, a little reflection shows that all three are essentially similar products, originating in the necessity of communicating news and in the employment of writing in its satisfaction. The sole difference consists in the letter being addressed to individuals, the circular to several specified persons, the newspaper to many unspecified persons.

Or, in other words, while letter and circular are instruments for the private communication of news, the newspaper is an instrument for its publication.

Today we are, of course, accustomed to the regular printing of the newspaper and its periodical appearance at brief intervals. But neither of these is an essential characteristic of the newspaper as a means of news publication. On the contrary, it will become apparent directly that the primitive paper from which this mighty instrument of commercial intercourse is sprung appeared neither in printed form nor periodically, but that it closely resembled the letter from which, indeed, it can scarcely be distinguished. To be sure, repeated appearance at brief intervals is involved in the very nature of news publication. For news has value only so long as it is fresh; and to preserve for it the charm of novelty its publication must follow in the footsteps of the events.

We shall, however, soon see that the periodicity of these intervals, as far as it can be noticed in the infancy of journalism, depended upon the regular recurrence of opportunities to transport the news, and was in no way connected with the essential nature of the newspaper.

The regular collection and despatch of news presupposes a widespread interest in public affairs, or an extensive area of trade exhibiting numerous commercial connections and combinations of interest, or both at once. Such interest is not realized until people are united by some more or less extensive political organization into a certain community of life-interest. The city republics of ancient times required no newspaper; all their needs of publication could be met by the herald and by inscriptions, as occasion demanded. Only when Roman supremacy had embraced or subjected to its influence all the countries of the Mediterranean was there need of some means by which those members of the ruling cla.s.s who had gone to the provinces as officials, tax-farmers, and in other occupations, might receive the current news of the capital.

It is significant that Caesar, the creator of the military monarchy and of the administrative centralization of Rome, is regarded as the founder of the first contrivance resembling a newspaper.

Indeed, long before Caesar's consulate it had become customary for Romans in the provinces to keep one or more correspondents at the capital to send them written reports on the course of political movement and on other events of the day. Such a correspondent was generally an intelligent slave or freedman intimately acquainted with affairs at the capital, who, moreover, often made a business of reporting for several.

He was thus a species of primitive reporter, differing from those of today only in writing, not for a newspaper, but directly for readers. On recommendation of their employers, these reporters enjoyed at times admission even to the senate discussions. Antony kept such a man, whose duty it was to report to him not merely on the senate's resolutions but also on the speeches and votes of the senators. Cicero, when proconsul, received through his friend, M. Caelius, the reports of a certain Chrestus, but seems not to have been particularly well satisfied with the latter's accounts of gladiatorial sports, law-court proceedings, and the various pieces of city gossip. As in this case, such correspondence never extended beyond a rude relation of facts that required supplementing through letters from party friends of the absent person.

These friends, as we know from Cicero, supplied the real report on political feeling.

The innovation made by Caesar consisted in inst.i.tuting the publication of a brief record of the transactions and resolutions of the senate, and in his causing to be published the transactions of the a.s.semblies of the plebs, as well as other important matters of public concern.

The Germanic peoples who, after the Romans, a.s.sumed the lead in the history of Europe were neither in civilization nor in political organization fitted to maintain a similar const.i.tution of the news service; nor did they require it. All through the Middle Ages the political and social life of men was bounded by a narrow horizon; culture retired to the cloisters and for centuries affected only the people of prominence. There were no trade interests beyond the narrow walls of their own town or manor to draw men together. It is only in the later centuries of the Middle Ages that extensive social combinations once more appear. It is first the church, embracing with her hierarchy all the countries of Germanic and Latin civilization, next the burgher cla.s.s with its city confederacies and common trade interests, and, finally, as a counter-influence to these, the secular territorial powers, who succeed in gradually realizing some form of union. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we notice the first traces of an organized service for transmission of news and letters in the messengers of monasteries, the universities, and the various spiritual dignitaries; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we have advanced to a comprehensive, almost postlike, organization of local messenger bureaus for the epistolary intercourse of traders and of munic.i.p.al authorities.

And now, for the first time, we meet with the word _Zeitung_, or newspaper. The word meant originally that which was happening at the time (_Zeit_ = "time"), a present occurrence; then information on such an event, a message, a report, news.

Venice was long regarded as the birthplace of the newspaper in the modern acceptation of the word. As the channel of trade between the East and the West, as the seat of a government that first organized the political news service and the consular system in the modern sense, the old city of lagoons formed a natural collecting center for important news items from all lands of the known world. Even early in the fifteenth century, as has been shown by the investigations of Valentinelli, the librarian of St. Mark's Library, collections of news had been made at the instance of the council of Venice regarding events that had either occurred within the republic or been reported by amba.s.sadors, consuls, and officials, by s.h.i.+ps' captains, merchants, and the like. These were sent as circular despatches to the Venetian representatives abroad to keep them posted on international affairs.

Such collections of news were called _fogli d'avvisi_.

The further development of news publication in the field that it has occupied since the more general adoption of the printing-press has been peculiar. At the outset the publisher of a periodical printed newspaper differed in no wise from the publisher of any other printed work--for instance, of a pamphlet or a book. He was but the multiplier and seller of a literary product, over whose content he had no control. The newspaper publisher marketed the regular post-news in its printed form just as another publisher offered the public a herbal or an edition of an old writer.

But this soon changed. It was readily perceived that the contents of a newspaper number did not form an ent.i.ty in the same sense as the contents of a book or pamphlet. The news items there brought together, taken from different sources, were of varying reliability. They needed to be used judicially and critically: in this a political or religious bias could find ready expression. In a still higher degree was this the case when men began to discuss contemporary political questions in the newspapers and to employ them as a medium for disseminating party opinions.

This took place first in England during the Long Parliament and the Revolution of 1640. The Netherlands and a part of the imperial free towns of Germany followed later. In France the change was not consummated before the era of the great Revolution: in most other countries it occurred in the nineteenth century. The newspaper, from being a mere vehicle for the publication of news, became an instrument for supporting and shaping public opinion and a weapon of party politics.

The effect of this upon the internal organization of the newspaper undertaking was to introduce a third department, the _editors.h.i.+p_, between news collecting and news publication. For the newspaper publisher, however, it signified that from a mere seller of news he had become a dealer in public opinion as well.

At first this meant nothing more than that the publisher was placed in a position to s.h.i.+ft a portion of the risk of his undertaking upon a party organization, a circle of interested persons, or a government. If the leanings of the paper were distasteful to the readers, they ceased to buy the paper. Their wishes thus remained, in the final a.n.a.lysis, the determining factor for the contents of the newspapers.

The gradually expanding circulation of the printed newspapers nevertheless soon led to their employment by the authorities for making public announcements. With this came, in the first quarter of the last century, the extension of private announcements, which have now attained, through the so-called advertising bureaus, some such organization as political news-collecting possesses in the correspondence bureaus.

The modern newspaper is a capitalistic enterprise, a sort of news-factory in which a great number of people (correspondents, editors, typesetters, correctors, machine-tenders, collectors of advertis.e.m.e.nts, office clerks, messengers, etc.) are employed on wage, under a single administration, at very specialized work. This paper produces wares for an unknown circle of readers, from whom it is, furthermore, frequently separated by intermediaries, such as delivery agencies and postal inst.i.tutions. The simple needs of the reader or of the circle of patrons no longer determine the quality of these wares; it is now the very complicated conditions of compet.i.tion in the publication market. In this market, however, as generally in wholesale markets, the consumers of the goods, the newspaper readers, take no direct part; the determining factors are the wholesale dealers and the speculators in news: the governments, the telegraph bureaus dependent upon their special correspondents, the political parties, artistic and scientific cliques, men on 'change, and, last but not least, the advertising agencies and large individual advertisers.

Each number of a great journal which appears today is a marvel of economic division of labor, capitalistic organization, and mechanical technique; it is an instrument of intellectual and economic intercourse, in which the potencies of all other instruments of commerce--the railway, the post, the telegraph, and the telephone--are united as in a focus.

D. IMITATION

1. Definition of Imitation[146]

The term "imitation" is used in ordinary language to designate any repet.i.tion of any act or thought which has been noted by an observer.

Thus one imitates the facial expression of another, or his mode of speech. The term has been brought into prominence in scientific discussions through the work of Gabriel Tarde, who in his _Les lois de l'imitation_ points out that imitation is a fundamental fact underlying all social development. The customs of society are imitated from generation to generation. The fas.h.i.+ons of the day are imitated by large groups of people without any consciousness of the social solidarity which is derived from this common mode of behavior. There is developed through these various forms of imitation a body of experiences which is common to all of the members of a given social group. In complex society the various imitations which tend to set themselves up are frequently found to be in conflict; thus the tendency toward elaborate fas.h.i.+ons in dress is constantly limited by the counter-tendency toward simpler fas.h.i.+ons. The conflict of tendencies leads to individual variations from the example offered at any given time, and, as a result, there are new examples to be followed. Complex social examples are thus products of conflict.

This general doctrine of Tarde has been elaborated by a number of recent writers. Royce calls attention to the fundamental importance of imitation as a means of social inheritance. The same doctrine is taken up by Baldwin in his _Mental Development in the Child and Race_, and in _Social and Ethical Interpretations_. With these later writers, imitation takes on a significance which is somewhat technical and broader than the significance which it has either with Tarde or in the ordinary use of the term. Baldwin uses the term to cover that case in which an individual repeats an act because he has himself gone through the act. In such a case one imitates himself and sets up what Baldwin terms a circular reaction. The principle of imitation is thus introduced into individual psychology as well as into general social psychology, and the relation between the individual's acts and his own imagery is brought under the same general principle as the individual's responses to his social environment. The term "imitation" in this broader sense is closely related to the processes of sympathy.

The term "social heredity" has very frequently been used in connection with all of the processes here under discussion. Society tends to perpetuate itself in the new individual in a fas.h.i.+on a.n.a.logous to that in which the physical characteristics of the earlier generation tend to perpetuate themselves in the physical characteristics of the new generation. Since modes of behavior, such as acts of courtesy, cannot be transmitted through physical structure, they would tend to lapse if they were not maintained through imitation from generation to generation.

Thus imitation gives uniformity to social practices and consequently is to be treated as a form of supplementary inheritance extending beyond physical inheritance and making effective the established forms of social practice.

2. Attention, Interest, and Imitation[147]

Imitation is a process of very great importance for the development of mental life in both men and animals. In its more complex forms it presupposes trains of ideas; but in its essential features it is present and operative at the perceptual level. It is largely through imitation that the results of the experience of one generation are transmitted to the next, so as to form the basis for further development. Where trains of ideas play a relatively unimportant part, as in the case of animals, imitation may be said to be the sole form of social tradition. In the case of human beings, the thought of past generations is embodied in language, inst.i.tutions, machinery, and the like. This distinctively human tradition presupposes trains of ideas in past generations, which so mold the environment of a new generation that in apprehending and adapting itself to this environment it must re-think the old trains of thought. Tradition of this kind is not found in animal life, because the animal mind does not proceed by way of trains of ideas. None the less, the more intelligent animals depend largely on tradition. This tradition consists essentially in imitation by the young of the actions of their parents, or of other members of the community in which they are born.

The same directly imitative process, though it is very far from forming the whole of social tradition in human beings, forms a very important part of it.

a) _The imitative impulse._--We must distinguish between ability to imitate and impulse to imitate. We may be already fully able to perform an action, and the sight of it as performed by another may merely prompt us to reproduce it. But the sight of an act performed by another may also have an educational influence; it may not only stimulate us to do what we are already able to do without its aid; it may also enable us to do what we could not do without having an example to follow. When the cough of one man sets another coughing, it is evident that imitation here consists only in the impulse to follow suit. The second man does not learn how to cough from the example of the first. He is simply prompted to do on this particular occasion what he is otherwise quite capable of doing. But if I am learning billiards and someone shows me by his own example how to make a particular stroke, the case is different.

It is not his example which in the first instance prompts me to the action. He merely shows the way to do what I already desire to do.

We have then first to discuss the nature of the imitative impulse--the impulse to perform an action which arises from the perception of it as performed by another.