Public opinion and the mores, however, representing as they do the responses of the community to changing situations, are themselves subject to change and variation. They are based, however, upon what we have called fundamental human nature, that is, certain traits which in some form or other are reproduced in every form of society.
During the past seventy years the various tribes, races, and nationalities of mankind have been examined in detail by the students of ethnology, and a comparison of the results shows that the fundamental patterns of life and behavior are everywhere the same, whether among the ancient Greeks, the modern Italians, the Asiatic Mongols, the Australian blacks, or the African Hottentots. All have a form of family life, moral and legal regulations, a religious system, a form of government, artistic practices, and so forth. An examination of the moral code of any given group, say the African Kaffirs, will disclose many identities with that of any other given group, say the Hebrews. All groups have such "commandments" as "Honor thy father and mother," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal." Formerly it was assumed that this similarity was the result of borrowing between groups. When Bastian recorded a Hawaiian myth resembling the one of Orpheus and Eurydice, there was speculation as to how this story had been carried so far from Greece. But it is now recognized that similarities of culture are due, in the main, not to imitation, but to parallel development. The nature of man is everywhere essentially the same and tends to express itself everywhere in similar sentiments and institutions.[251]
There are factors in social control more fundamental than the mores. Herbert Spencer, in his chapter on "Ceremonial Government," has defined social control from this more fundamental point of view. In that chapter he refers to "the modified forms of action caused in men by the presence of their fellows" as a form of control "out of which other more definite controls are evolved." The spontaneous responses of one individual to the presence of another which are finally fixed, conventionalized, and transmitted as social ritual constitute that "primitive undifferentiated kind of government from which political and religious government are differentiated, and in which they continue immersed."
In putting this emphasis upon ceremonial and upon those forms of behavior which spring directly and spontaneously out of the innate and instinctive responses of the individual to a social situation, Spencer is basing government on the springs of action which are fundamental, so far, at any rate, as sociology is concerned.
2. Classification of the Materials
The selections on social control have been classified under three heads: (a) elementary forms of social control, (b) public opinion, and (c) institutions. This order of the readings indicates the development of control from its spontaneous forms in the crowd, in ceremony, prestige, and taboo; its more explicit expression in gossip, rumor, news, and public opinion; to its more formal organization in law, dogma, and in religious and political institutions. Ceremonial, public opinion, and law are characteristic forms in which social life finds expression as well as a means by which the actions of the individual are co-ordinated and collective impulses are organized so that they issue in behavior, that is, either (a) primarily expressive—play, for example—or (b) positive action.
A very much larger part of all human behavior than we ordinarily imagine is merely expressive. Art, play, religious exercises, and political activity are either wholly or almost wholly forms of expression, and have, therefore, that symbolic and ceremonial character which belongs especially to ritual and to art, but is characteristic of every activity carried on for its own sake. Only work, action which has some ulterior motive or is performed from a conscious sense of duty, falls wholly and without reservation into the second class.
a) Elementary forms of social control.—Control in the crowd, where rapport is once established and every individual is immediately responsive to every other, is the most elementary form of control.
Something like this same direct and spontaneous response of the individual in the crowd to the crowd's dominant mood or impulse may be seen in the herd and the flock, the "animal crowd."
Under the influence of the vague sense of alarm, or merely as an effect of heat and thirst, cattle become restless and begin slowly moving about in circles, "milling." This milling is a sort of collective gesture, an expression of discomfort or of fear. But the very expression of the unrest tends to intensify its expression and so increases the tension in the herd. This continues up to the point where some sudden sound, the firing of a pistol or a flash of lightning, plunges the herd into a wild stampede.