Blackmar and Gillin: Outlines of Sociology, pages 329-348.
Dealey: Sociology, pages 67-68, 84-87, 243-257.
Ellwood: Sociology and Modern Social Problems, revised edition, pages 354-367.
CHAPTER XLVII[ToC]
SOCIAL THEORIES
377. Theories of Social Order and Efficiency.—Out of social experience and social study have emerged certain theories of social order and efficiency which have received marked attention and which to-day are supported by cogent arguments. These theories fall under the three following heads: (1) Those theories that make social order and efficiency dependent upon the control of external authority; (2) those theories that trust to the force of public opinion trained by social education; (3) those theories that regard self-control coming through the development of personality as the one essential for a better social order.
378. External Authority in History.—The first theory rests its case on the facts of history. Certain social institutions like the family, the state, and the church have thrown restraint about the individual, and when this restraint is removed he tends to run amuck. From the beginning the family was the unit of the social order, and the authority of its head was the source of wisdom. Self-control was not a substitute for paternal discipline, but was a fact only in presence of the dread of paternal discipline. The idea of absolute authority passed over into the state, and absolutism was the theory of efficiency in the ancient state, down to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. It was a theory that made slavery possible. It strengthened the position of the high priest of every religious cult, created the thought of the kingdom of God and moulded the Christian creeds, and made possible the mediæval papacy. It has been the fundamental principle of all monarchical government. It has remained a royal theory in eastern Europe and Asia until our own day, and survives in the political notion of the right of the strongest and in the business principle that capital must control the industrial system if prosperity and efficiency are to endure.