63. Linguistic and Cultural Standards
It does not follow that because social usages lack a rational basis, they are therefore unworthy of being followed, or that standards of conduct need be renounced because they are relative, that is, unconsciously founded and changing. The natural inclination of men being to regard their standards of taste, behavior, and social arrangement as wholly reasonable, perfect, and fixed, there follows a first inclination to regard these standards as valueless as soon as their emotionality and variability have been recognized. But such a tendency is only a negative reaction against the previous illusion when this has disappointed by crumbling. The reaction is therefore in a sense a further result of the illusion. Once the fundamental and automatic assumption of fixity and inherent value of social patterns has been given up, and it is recognized that the motive power of behavior in man as in the other animals is affective and unconscious, there is nothing in institutions and codes to quarrel with. They are neither despicable nor glorious; no more deserving in virtue of their existence to be uprooted and demolished than to be defended as absolute and eternal. In some form or other, they are inevitable; and the particular form which they take at this time or that place is always tolerably well founded, in the sense of being adapted with fair success, or having been but recently well adapted, to the conditions of natural and social environment of the group which holds the institution, code, or standard.
That this is a sane attitude is more easily shown in the field of language than of culture, because, language being primarily a mechanism or means, whereas in culture ends or purposes tend more to obtrude, it is easier to view linguistic phenomena dispassionately. Grammars and dictionaries, for instance, are evidently the result of self-consciousness arising about speech which has previously been mainly unconscious. They may be roughly compared to social formulations like law codes or written constitutions or philosophic systems or religious dogmas, which are also representations of usages or beliefs already in existence. When grammarians stigmatize expressions like ain’t or them cows or he don’t as “wrong,” they are judging an innovation, or one of several established conflicting usages, by a standard of correctness that seems to them absolute and permanent. As a matter of actuality, the condemned form may or may not succeed in becoming established. He don’t, for example, might attain to correctness in time, although ain’t is perhaps less likely to become legitimized, and them cows to have still smaller prospect of recognition. That a form departs from the canon of to-day of course no more proves that it will be accepted in future than that it will not. What is certain is that if it wins sufficient usage, it will also win sanction, and will become part of the standard of its time.
Linguistic instances like these differ little if at all in principle, in their involved psychology, from the finding of the Supreme Court that a certain legislative enactment is unconstitutional and therefore void; or from the decision of a denomination that dancing or playing golf on Sunday is wicked; or from the widespread sentiment that breaking an unpopular law like that on liquor prohibition is morally justifiable. The chief point of divergence would seem to be that a court is a constituted body endowed with an authority which is not paralleled on the linguistic side, at any rate in Anglo-Saxon countries; although the Latin nations possess Academies whose dicta on correctness of speech enjoy a moral authority approximating the verdicts of a high court.
It is also of interest to remember that the power of nullifying legislation was not specifically granted the Supreme Court by the Constitution of the United States, but that the practice grew up gradually, quite like a speech innovation which becomes established. Certain elements in the American population look upon this power as undesirable and therefore take satisfaction in pointing out its unsanctioned origin. The majority on the other hand feel that the situation on the whole works out well, and that a Supreme Court with its present powers is better than the risk of a Court without power. Still, it remains curiously illogical that the preservation of the Constitution should take place partly through the extra-constitutional functioning of a constitutional body. In principle such a case is similar to that of grammarians who at the same time lay down a rule and exceptions to the rule, because the contradictory usages happen to be actually established.
Codes, dogmas, and grammars are thus normally reflections rather than causes. Such influence as they have is mainly in outward crystallization. They produce a superficial appearance of permanence. In the field of speech, it is easy to recognize that it is not grammarians that make languages, but languages that make grammarians. The analogous process evidently holds for culture. Lawgivers, statesmen, religious leaders, discoverers, inventors, therefore only seem to shape civilization. The deep-seated, blind, and intricate forces that shape culture, also mold the so-called creative leaders of society as essentially as they mold the mass of humanity. Progress, so far as it can objectively be considered to be such, is something that makes itself. We do not make it. Our customary conviction to the contrary is probably the result of an unconscious desire not to realize our individual impotence as regards the culture we live in. Social influence of a sort we do have as individuals. But it is a personal influence on the fortune and careers of other individual members of society, and is concerned largely with aims of personal security, relative dominance, or affection among ourselves. This obviously is a different thing from the exertion of influence on the form or content of civilization as such.