The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution
Chapter 12: The Cognitive Aspect of Socialization
Ernest W. Burgess
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By the cognitive aspect in socialization is meant not only the creation and modification of group and personal opinion, but also the use and improvement of social and individual technique, a function of the mental interaction of the members of the group. The fund of knowledge of the group, its proverbs, its creed, and its theory; the technical equipment of the group, its tools, its weapons, its medical remedies, and its types of skill ; its approved ways of doing things, its standards, and its ideals are all social developments in the knowledge phase of life. Before entering into an analysis of the function of intellectual development in the socialization of the person, we shall consider the rôle that socialization in the noetic phase has played in human experience and how far this evolution in the intellectual side of life multiplies the social spirit, or facilitates and rationalizes its expression.
The cognitive aspect of consciousness in its growth, not only (a) is closely dependent upon socialization, but (b) has played a rôle of increasing importance in promoting the socializing process. The development of the art of language, so obviously at once effect and cause of social interrelations, made possible[1] abstraction and the evolution of the higher forms of reasoning out of the germ present in perception. The invention of writing and of the printing-press, feasible only because[2] of the existence of a leisure class in a stable social order, facilitated the communication between the minds of every age, thereby inestimably promoting the accumulation, criticism, and the diffusion of knowledge. Subtract from knowledge what communication has given us, and what little would be original! And of that little, what fraction would remain ours were we to take away what communication has made possible for us to acquire?
The effective play and scope of cognition depends in its origin on the presence of simple social relations, but in its development
( 183) upon the higher organization of human association. From the time that consciousness first came into play in forwarding social progress, the purposive control of activity, both of and by the individual and the group, has become a factor of ever-increasing importance. The earliest family groups, and so perhaps even primeval society itself, were formed with a minimum of purposive control. But the organizing of the hunting party, or of the war-band, was distinctively purposive in contrast with the instinctive character of aggregation in the herd and the pack of the animal stage. In recorded history, the process is patent. When a Caesar reorganizes the government of a world, or a group of barons wrest Magna Charta from a law-less king, or a Constitutional Convention frames the fundamental code for a nation, the purposive and deliberative control of political relations stands out in clear relief. Nor is the state the sole institution whose forms are shaped by conscious control. We do not always perceive that our legal system is an arrangement which em-bodies the experience of generations of men consciously engaged in regulating the actions of persons and in securing the civil rights of the individual. The amount of conscious thought and study that has gone into determining the form and content of our school system is often underestimated by the critics of our present educational methods. A survey of the evolution of industry will make evident the influence of men of initiative and ideas, who individually and in association have modified economic organization. In every institutionalized portion of life purposive and rational control is evident.
While the presence of the rational element in activity does not necessarily imply socialized activity, socialization would be abortive without the rationalizing function of the cognitive element. The conscious formation of ends, the appreciation of the relations of cause and effect, the consciousness of meaning in life, all depend upon the evolution of cognition. Without this development socialization would be little more than the innately determined expression of the sexual, paternal, and gregarious instincts. The slowness of the march of social progress in the past has been largely due to the dominance of the affective nature of man over his rational nature. For example, the emotion of pity is satisfied by an act which will relieve suffering, while an outraged sense of justice, if it cannot find immediate expression upon the perpetrator of the
( 184) wrong, will call into play the rational element in the effort to discover causes. Without the presence of the rational element in human nature, philanthropy would be the extent of social reform.
This introduction is sufficient to indicate the function and character of the cognitive element in socialization in the past. What does socialization require in the intellectual development of the person at the present time? From the standpoint of the cognitive element in experience, socialization means at least three rather well-defined aims : (1) The socializing of the fund of verified knowledge by its diffusion throughout the members of the group is indispensable to social progress. (2) The participation of the person in the common store of knowledge is the first step toward efficient and democratic participation in the politics and the industry of the twentieth century. (3) Participation by the person and by the group in the widest stretches of human experience is necessary for the sense of mastery over activity and for the completest control of life.
Without any preliminary explanation these propositions will be considered in order.
1. In the theoretical sense, socialization, from the standpoint of intellectual development, has two objectives. First of all, it calls for the personal appropriation of the accumulated knowledge of the ages. Then, in the second place, it requires the participation of the individual in the constructive thinking and action of the twentieth century. These two aspects of the intellectual side of socialization may be named, respectively, its static and its dynamic characteristics. We shall consider (a) the static, and (b) the dynamic aspects of the theoretical side of the intellectual socializing process.
a) To Lester F. Ward is due the credit for emphasizing the rôle of the diffusion of knowledge as characteristic of socialization. His entire sociological system is built up about this conception. Social progress, he asserts,[3] is due to the increment of knowledge. Human advance is conditioned[4] by the rate of the increase in the store of scientific facts. At the present time, the advance
( 185) in knowledge comes only from the favored few, because[5] science is a closed door to all but a fraction of the earth's population. In the degree, therefore, in which scientific principles become diffused, would social progress and improvement be accelerated. His book Applied Sociology is an argument for the theory of latent genius, and for the proposition that the radius of the diffusion of knowledge conditions achievement and social progress. No student of Ward can gainsay the generalization that the dissemination and creation of scientific knowledge constitutes, if not the dynamic, at any rate the directive agent in social progress.
Ward, as we see,[6] practically limits socialization to the diffusion of verifiable information. The value of the recognition of the important socializing function of the diffusion of knowledge cannot be overestimated. Our appreciation of its rôle, nevertheless, has outrun our success in the practical application of the principle. Certainly we must admit that in the last generation there has been a tremendous advance both in the quantity and in the quality of scientific knowledge available to the people and an in-crease in the number of persons who have taken advantage of the opportunity presented. University extension, chautanquas, lyceum courses, workingmen's educational clubs, the daily and Sunday newspapers, the magazines, the mechanical applications of scientific advance, and other agencies as well, have united to promote the spread of knowledge throughout society. But the other side of the picture is disheartening. Society today illustrates only too well the truth in Pope's line, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."The mania for patent medicines, fasting fads, the fanaticism of anti-vaccinationists and anti-vivisectionists, the Christian Science craze, the delusion of Dowieism, our perennial "gold-brick" schemes, lynch-law, jingoism, the palaver and platitudes of the politician, the devices of the demagogue: all these are only a few of the illustrations which clearly indicate the serious defects in our machinery for the diffusion of knowledge. It is not likely that too great emphasis can be laid upon the imperative of socializing knowledge.
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The foregoing indictment reduces, in the last analysis, to the point that a tremendous gap exists between the specialist and the mass of people. Certainly this charge is not to be denied in toto. The accusation is all the more serious when it is pointed out that this chasm is not only one of intellectual aloofness, on the one hand, and inability to understand on the other, but, in addition[7] a certain contempt for the people on the part of the expert and a corresponding attitude, on the part of the mass, of distrust in regard to the disinterestedness of the specialist. So far, then, as the separation is one of sympathy, the difficulty lies in the affective rather than in the cognitive phase of socialization. So far, however, as the question is one of intellectual division, or so far as this results in an affective line of demarkation, it will be considered here. First of all, we must recognize the fact that the distinction is only relative,[8] that the specialist in one department of activity is a part of the undifferentiated mass in regard to the other activities. At the same time it is true that as specialization increases, the problem of co-ordination also increases. Minute specialization must have as its corrective a comprehensive view of the entire state of knowledge.
To a large extent, the present situation contains within it the tendencies toward reform. With the advance of science in every phase of activity, a universally accepted standard of judgment is being evolved. The scientific method, common to men of the most diverse interests, is becoming one of the strongest unifying forces in society. Not only does the expert in one subject, therefore, have confidence in the specialist in another subject, but he can demand that the other submit to his examination not merely his conclusion, but his methods and his experiments. This general trend throughout society toward an appreciation of the value and the authority of science is plainly observable. The abortive tariff board was an indication of a desire for tariff revision by impartial experts. The immediate and unanimous acceptance by the public of the decision of the findings of the special committee of the University of Copenhagen in the Cook-Peary controversy over the discovery of the North Pole is a case in point. With the growth of popular interest and intelligence in all aspects of human experi-
( 187) -ence, the expert is under social obligation to admit the public to his confidence and thus to promote the mental interplay which is the fundamental characteristic of socialization. One reason for the success of the patent medicine panderer was, and still is, the unwillingness of the medical profession to make public the secrets of its "mystery." Then, too, in our specialization, we should not become so highly specialized as to ignore the unity and consequent inter-relation of all experience. The narrowness and bigotry of the physicians a generation ago made possible Christian Science, i. e., mental healing without rather than within the profession. The conservatism of the Church of England was responsible for the fact that the moral enthusiasm of the Wesleyan movement was diverted into a separate organization. The progress of science and reform is. delayed because of the want of efficient co-operation and common understanding. Thus a sociologist may be handicapped by a defective comprehension of the latest developments in biology, or a biologist misled by his ignorance of the significance of the social life of men.
b) The static side of socialization, the diffusion of knowledge, furnishes the basis for its dynamic aspect, the increase of knowledge. But the increase of knowledge is itself a process of socialization. In the first place, from the psychological and functional standpoints, there is no radical distinction between the dissemination or the appropriation and the creation of knowledge. Mentally, my appreciation of a truth you present may be as original an experience to me as was your original act of discovery. Psychologists tell us that the aesthetic appreciation of the work of art is psychically the same as the moment of artistic creation. So what from the objective standpoint may appear merely the dissemination and passive absorption of knowledge may from the subjective aspect be active participation in, if not actual creation of, knowledge. As all our concepts are the assimilations of percepts to past experience, so all our reactions contain personal and original elements. This, then, is the philosophy of "creative evolution" as opposed to the theory of the "treadmill of imitation."
In the second place, we cannot admit the limitation which Ward placed on the meaning of socialization. Our contention is that the socializing process includes the entire social process, and that inter-mental stimulation and response in its cognitive, emotional, and
( 188) volitional elements condition and determine all social life. Even were we to limit the meaning of the term to the intellectual aspect of behavior, our definition would extend the frontiers of socialization far beyond the boundaries established by Ward. For while he saw in socialization the widest possible extension of participation in knowledge, we perceive, as he only half perceived, that discovery and invention are part and parcel of the same process of socialization. Ward's thesis was that the diffusion of scientific knowledge would multiply further scientific discovery. Our proposition is that the socialization of knowledge is but one aspect of the inclusive socializing process, that the socializing process, on the cognitive side, is no less than the submission of all social inter-relationships to the functional standard for measurement.
In the third place, social invention and social reform are peculiarly a function of socialization. It is a well-known fact of social psychology that a group of persons may often arrive at a conclusion, which, while not the original idea of any one person, is not only superior to the original thought of any of them, but is also in a real sense the product of all the persons in the group taken as a whole.[9] A similar process on a larger scale is taking place in society in the solution of every social problem. Just as at bottom our social problems rise and are felt in the common everyday experience of every one of us; just as our customs and institutions are the integrated states of mind of the members, living and dead, of our group; so the solutions of our problems and the reconstruction of our institutions and ways of thinking are a co-operative mental process in which all the members of the group necessarily participate. The fact that the great social problems, those which grow out of the situations of birth, of adolescence, of marriage, of play, of labor and occupation, of disease, accident, and death, are crises common to all members of the race, and the fact that these problems come to consciousness in the integrated feeling and thought of the members of the group suggest that the mental attitude of every person is a factor in the solution of the problem.
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More often than not, it is the more intimate experience rather than greater knowledge that provides the incentive for social progress. As John Morley expresses this idea, "In matters of social improvement the most common reason why one hits upon a point of progress and not another, is that the one happens to be more directly touched than the other by the unimproved practice." [10]
Communication, then, as the social solvent, has these three aspects: a co-operative process, implying a group; the perfection of an idea in the process of its circulation among the persons in the group; and the acceptance of a criterion as a basis for agreement. Social philosophers have emphasized one or another of these elements or functions of communication. Comte thought that the positive, i. e., scientific method, supplied the common basis for agreement in the discussion of social questions.[11] He overlooked the fact that, while the scientific method is sufficient for description, it is inadequate for explanation and for telesis. Mill emphasized[12] the value of discussion as the knowledge-perfecting process necessary for reform. Today we smile in a superior manner in reading Mill's argument for discussion and his optimistic expectation of its magical efficacy. We have gone, we think, a step farther. The twentieth century is to be the era of the expert and is to witness the decline of amateur discussion and dilettante speculation. From one aspect this statement is true; from another, it is quite misleading. In so far as investigation and research will be substituted for the application of abstract theory or categorical imperatives in the solution of the problems of life, in so far as the scientific method and the functional standard will be accepted, we are right; but in so far as the co-operation of all persons in a given situation is necessary for the solution of the problems, there-in is Mill justified. There must, then, be the closest contact and freest interaction between the social student and society so that the person, self-directed but with full knowledge of the situation, may willingly and intelligently co-operate with his fellows in social progress.
What, then, is the relation of social science, the highest integration of knowledge, to the reconstruction and transformation of
( 190) social life? Comte believed that the study of social tendencies made possible the discovery of the trend of social evolution, which society by conscious effort could only accelerate.[13] Spencer assigned a negative rôle to social control. The study of social evolution, he thought, would demonstrate to the social thinker the folly of social interference[14] which only retarded and perverted the natural and beneficent course of human progress. Ward endorsed the position of Comte and contended that the diffusion of verifiable information would aid society in accelerating [15] social evolution. Small speaks for the trend of sociologists to the position that valuation as a social process has a qualitative effect upon the course of progress, and determines the direction of social progress.[16]
Valuation, then, as a social process, as the directive and selective activity in social progress, finds its highest integration in social science. Social science, as the rational expression of social life, tends to demand the submission of every social question to the functional standard for measurement. Knowledge of facts is a first step in reform. The taboo of the discussion of certain questions —sex-hygiene and sex-vice and abnormalities, the vital problems in the marriage relation, the historical development of the Bible, the functional basis of the rights of private property—introduces superficiality and hypocrisy into social thinking and retards the movements for rational, effective prevention of present-day evils and for advance to higher stages of human life.
The nineteenth century has marked a radical change in the personnel of the groups functioning in the process of social valuation.
( 191) Up to this time, valuation, so far as it determined national life and policy, was almost entirely a product of the masculine element of
' the classes in society. The nineteenth century has witnessed the demand for participation in this process made by the masses and by woman. In the economic and the political fields the labor movement and the Socialist propaganda are the two chief expressions of this demand for recognition. This conflict of classes has put so tremendous a strain upon the social order that the elevation of the struggle from physical force to intelligent understanding and rational settlement has become necessary. The task has fallen upon the social sciences "how to intellectualize the present conflict of interests." [17]
As significant for the change in the character of the process of social valuation as the class-conscious aspirations of the working class is the woman's movement of the past century. Our present social world is largely man-made.[18] The peculiarly womanly characteristics have had outside the home but slight effect upon the larger social organization. The double standard of morals, the cur-rent conception of feminine virtue,[19] the punitive character of our system of social control, the limitation of the state to its military and police functions,[20] are all expressions of the male mental attitude. The emancipation of woman, only begun, has indicated somewhat the revolution to follow upon the participation of both sexes on an equal and reciprocal footing in social reconstruction and human advance. To the workingman's demand for social justice woman adds the plea that all relations of life and programs of action be measured, not by the standards of efficiency alone, but by those of human nature as well. In the present situation the pressing problem in social valuation is the establishment of standards of social justice and the construction of practical programs of achievement. Social valuation has for its universal and ultimate end the appraisement and creation of human values in the process of personal and social development. Our contact with the immigrant and the comparative study of social groups have enlightened us in regard to the unsubstantial foundation of many of our
( 192) cherished values, and impelled us to be more critical in the appraisement of their worth.
The significance of the emergence of all classes of people and of womankind into participation in our thought-life is that here-after the conflict of classes and the relation of sexes will be elevated from the physical to the psychic plane of conduct and from arbitrary to functional standards of action. This transformation is at present in the lowest stage of development. In the contest of brute force the classes by virtue of the monopoly of a superior social technique[21] effectively shut out the disinherited masses from the enjoyment of many of the highest goods of life. Now that physical coercion and the more intangible but also more efficient bonds of custom, superstition, and narrow mental horizon are slip-ping from the minds of the masses and of women, social order seems to be threatened with disintegration. The dominant factors in the present social changes appear to be sense-appeal, imitation, and suggestion. The rational directive force seems to exercise only a slight control. The entire process is largely in the social unconsciousness, or where socially conscious is without functional direction.
The relation of the social scientist to social life must, therefore, become increasingly more intimate. No clever story of Socrates concerning the golden, the silver, and the leaden natures of men[22] can be imposed on our generation. The days of the Sophist are over. The service of the social scientist is to effect the highest integration of thought on social problems, to endeavor to appreciate the points of view of both sides of a question, and to secure a resolution of the difficulty that will preserve all the elements of value in the contention.
Two points have been emphasized in the discussion of the function of the intellectual aspect of socialization from the theoretical point of view. For the intellectualization of the social process each person is to participate in the accumulated store of knowledge, each person is to function in the inter-mental thought-process involved in social reconstruction.
2. Socialization on the cognitive side, in the practical as well as in the theoretical sense, means preparation for efficient func-
( 193) -tioning in the social life. In a practical way, what means does society_ provide for fitting the individual for participation in our industrial, political, and social democracy?
Apart from legislation the chief conscious agency of society for the socialization of the individual is the public schools. Our modern educational system stands as the objective expression of the valuation placed by the people upon education. The public-school system has proved itself to be a unifying, assimilating agency. According to traditional standards of education, it must be appraised as relatively efficient. Judged from two elementary standards of twentieth-century socialization, the educational institutions of the country are found to be woefully ill adapted [23] to life. The public schools fit their graduates to be neither efficient producers nor effective citizens. Prominent among the "new demands in education" is the demand that "the main emphasis of schooling be placed on the social side, on preparing the boy and girl . . . for effective living as a member of the community of which he finds himself a constituent part." [24]
The present movement for industrial and social education is a protest against the failure of the public school to adapt its functions to the needs and activities of industry and society. Leavitt in his book Examples of Industrial Education indicates the broad aims of the promoters of industrial education in this country: "Industrial education means the complete and appropriate education of industrial workers of whatever grade_ . . . It means a thorough revision of our school system with the purpose of furnishing for the working classes an education which bears somewhat the same relation to their prospective life work as does the college education to the future work of the professional and managerial classes. . . . Industrial education, therefore, provides participation in, rather than fancied preparation for, some activity. It means practice in real work for real people as an effective medium of education. It means, in the final analysis, the fitting of a particular boy for a particular job, and it is therefore strongly individualistic." [25] Nor do the advocates of industrial education
( 194) desire to sacrifice anything of value in the present curriculum. "Our great contention is that vocational training be introduced into our school system as an essential part of its education—in no illiberal sense and with no intention of separating out a class of workingmen's children who are to receive trade training at the expense of academic training. . . . We are convinced that just as liberal a training can be given in the vocational school as that given in the present academic school. Indeed, we feel that the vocational training will be more liberal if its full educational possibilities are worked out."[26] Kerschensteiner, the leading German exponent of industrial education, states its purpose in terms of socialization. "Starting from the highest outward ethical good of a community, from the ideal cultural and just state of ethics, we have found that each elementary school has three and only three principal problems to solve : (1) preparation of the individual for his future vocation in the community; (2) the making ethical of this vocation; (3) to make the individual able to join in the common work of raising the ethical standard of the community of which he is a member." [27]
The opportunity for the individual to acquire the highest possible skill in a particular vocation is the minimum of the social heritage which society is duty-bound to guarantee its members. Yet it is possible to overestimate the significance of industrial efficiency for industrial activity. The advance in the utilization of machinery has been marked by a proportional decrease in the need for skilled labor. A machine-tender, rather than a skilled mechanic, is the function of the mass of employees in present-day industry. In many industries, the workman, from an individual and class standpoint, may hope to increase his wages rather by industrial and political action than by his share in the increased productivity that may result from industrial education. Therefore, in the present emphasis upon industrial education the importance of education for citizenship should not be overlooked. The practical achievement of social justice through industrial democracy depends upon economic, civic, and social education. The insistent industrial question is not increased production but better distribution.[28] While advocates of industrial education emphasize, and rightly, the funda-
( 195) -mental importance of efficiency in production for the increase of the total commodities for consumption and for permanent human welfare, the supporters of civic education stress the necessity for the participation of all of us as producers and citizens in the impersonal consideration of proposals looking to fairer distribution.
If industrial democracy is to come about through the extension of the control of labor unions, as Ely prophesies, economic training will have to be a part of education. The following picture of industrial society would be impossible without an enormous advance in popular education. "Indeed, we expect to see industrial democracy achieved through the labor organization. Since the formation of the trades union and the introduction of collective bargaining, the range of this bargaining has constantly widened. . . . The point lies in the possibility, and in general the desirability, of ex-tending the range of collective bargaining until the employees shall have a voice—and it is to be hoped a prevailing voice—in deter-mining all the conditions of employment. Through collective bar-gaining the control of the employees over the business may be in-definitely expanded. . . . The past may be pictured by the single entrepreneur with his capital hiring a thousand men to do his bidding. The future may behold the thousand hiring the entrepreneur and his capital to do their bidding. And the latter is the more pleasing, the more democratic, and altogether the more whole-some picture."[29] Trade education is certainly necessary; but it should be correlated with training in economics and civics.
Our political democracy presupposes the fitness of the individual to participate in the solution of our most difficult and complex social problems. The introduction of our new political instruments, the initiative and the referendum, demands social provision for instruction in their use. Mr. Crane in his diatribes against higher education[30] seems never to have appreciated the fact that education for civic life was quite as important as training for industry. The examination of a concrete instance will illustrate the rôle in a democracy which the average man may play in controlling the economic policy of the nation. The prosecution of the Chicago beef packers under the criminal section of the Sherman Anti-Trust
( 196) Act exhibits the way in which a democracy submits to the judgment of its citizens the legality of the conduct of its most prominent industrial leaders. The following telling comparison of the economic power of the packing magnates with the obscure industrial position of their judges, the jury, carries its own moral: "These are the beef men whose fate rests with the jury. These ten men are the defendants in the government's suit brought under the criminal section of the Sherman anti-trust law and the amount of their fortunes : J. Ogden Armour, president Armour & Co., $100,000,000; Thomas J. Connors, member executive committee Armour & Co., $1,000,000; Arthur Meeker, member executive committee Armour & Co., $3,000,000; Louis F. Swift, president Swift & Co., $25,000,000; Edward F. Swift, vice-president Swift & Co., $25,00,000; Charles H. Swift, vice-president Swift & Co., $25,-000,000 (the three Swifts together, $75,000,000) ; Francis A. Fowler, head of the beef department Swift & Co., $2,000,000; Edward Morris, president Morris & Co., $50,000,000 ; Louis H. Heyman, head beef department Morris & Co., $1,000,000; Edward Tilden, president National Packing Co., $5,000,000; combined wealth of the indicted packers, $237,000,000. Here are the men who decide fate of beef packers : J. H. Edwards, twenty-eight years old, inspector for Streator Independent Telephone & Telegraph Company, Streator. Asa Bannister, sixty-two years old, farmer, grain and live stock; operates a farm of 260 acres with his sons near Naperville. H. I. Bucklin, fifty-four years old, lives at Dundee and superintends operation of the farm he has lived on all his life. Jacob Gleim, forty-six years old, lives in Ottawa and is a baker; he owned a bakeshop two years ago at Seneca. Howard G. Bates, forty-three years old, lives at La Grange and is president of a Chicago tailoring firm. William J. Thomas, forty-five years old, lives at Ottawa and is employed as a clerk; at one time he was jailer at Ottawa. Burton H. Myers, forty-two years old, town clerk of Naperville, also a fire insurance solicitor. Adam S. Clow, fifty years old, lives in Wheatland Township, near Plainfield; operates a farm, but is active in politics, having been a candidate for Congress recently. Charles H. Nare, fifty-eight years old, 3338 Flournoy Street ; a house salesman for the Fuller & Fuller Drug Company; one of the two Chicagoans on the jury. Judson E. Harvey, fifty-eight years old; conducts a grocery at Wilton Center, a town
( 197) of fifty inhabitants. Edward J. Ryon, fifty-two years old; lives in Streator and is a carpenter foreman. Thomas Scott, sixty years old, 551 East Forty-sixth Street; cable splicer; has not been employed at his trade for some time; at one time he was a sailor on the lakes." [31] The spectacle of submitting the question of the legality of the business practices of our "captains of industry" to a jury of farmers, clerks, and small business men should sober the most optimistic believer in the automatic realization of the ideals of democracy. If specific industrial education is necessary because of the specialization of life, in the promotion of social education we emphasize the essential unity of society and interdependence of the activities of its members. Strenuous social action for the encouragement of the diffusion of civic and economic knowledge will facilitate the solution of current social and industrial questions.
The movement for the diffusion of social knowledge among the people is not superfluous, insincere, or unappreciated. There is the public library, to be sure, but slight attempt at comparative classification of books according to their authoritativeness and but negligible effort to provide systematic courses of study. The newspaper is undoubtedly a great social organ for the diffusion of information, but its credibility as a teacher of good citizenship is seriously impeached by its political affiliations, by its business interests, and by its function to some extent as a sensation monger.[32] The political campaign is a public education in the issues of the day, an education, it is true, characterized by superficiality, "clap-trap," and partisan bias. Nor is the attitude of the advocates of civic and economic education hypercritical. The most thoughtful of them recognize that within ten or twenty years the wage-earners of our cities will be in control of our municipal government If the shame of San Francisco be not repeated elsewhere, it is desirable that the labor leaders and the rank and file of workmen be given the opportunity of acquaintance with the present state of knowledge in political and economic science. The workingman, in his turn, though some-what suspicious at first, soon becomes the sworn friend of "university extension." Social education fits in with his aspirations
( 198) and shows practical means of realization. The following incident from the experience of the movement for university extension in Oxford exhibits the mental attitude of the workman: "On one occasion, while presiding at a formal dinner in the hall, my tutor asked for the name of the man present who was most radically opposed to the movement. The man was indicated—a gray-headed, hard-fisted product of the north country . . . . The man rose to his feet and said that all his life he had been opposed to truck and dicker with the classes Oxford represented. His friends had been obliged to use main force to get him there; but he was glad he had come. `I have seen the Conservatives try to govern us,' he said, `and they failed because they were ignorant of the country as a whole. I am watching the Liberals. They are failing for the same reason. The next ruler of England will be my people. When they come to power they must not fail. And, to succeed, they must have knowledge. So I've changed my mind. I want my people to use this place—learn everything they can from you!' " [33]
The movement for social and industrial education is, then, functionally a part of the great social movement of our time for wider participation in the enjoyment of the goods of civilization and the directing of further progress. The achieving of social and industrial democracy for the attainment of this end is a socializing process the index of whose efficiency is the direct ratio of intelligent investigation and discussion involved to brute force.
3. Participation by the person and the group in the widest stretches of human experience is necessary for the sense of mastery over activity and for the completest control over life.
Personal appropriation of knowledge means the possibility of utilizing to the full the psychic energy of each individual and of the raising of personality to the nth point of efficiency. Man has exploited the resources of earth; has marvelously adapted the natural forces to his use, but has scarcely realized the untouched re-sources and the undeveloped capacities of human nature and human mind. "Indeed it must be admitted," says Ward, "that mediocrity is the normal condition, and working efficiency comparatively rare. The question, therefore, is whether society has ever had, or has
( 199) now, its maximum working efficiency."[34] However much inaccuracy and distortion entered into the newspaper accounts of the education and intellectual attainments of young Sidis,[35] the case indicates how naive and haphazard are our social arrangements for securing intellectual development. We live, in general, upon too low a level of achievement. Our social surroundings do not present the crises to call out what James[36] calls our "stored-up reserves of energy."
Control over a particular segment of activity endows the individual with the sense of mastery which is the core of personality. Herein lies the serious defect of Mr. Crane's criticism of technical education. "Give the boys a good grammar-school education and plenty of manual training in the grammar grades. Then let them get to work in the shops. Working at their trades, and using their spare time wisely, will give them all the practical and technical knowledge they require for any position and for the solving of any problem that the shop may have to offer."[37] If the mechanic were simply a cog in the industrial mechanism, if he be merely considered a means for the employer's end, a mere factor in increased productivity, then practical shopwork with a minimum of theory is the socially desirable policy. But the mechanic is a human being with psychic faculties capable of development, organization, and refinement, and with an intellectual interest which rises above the routine of the mechanical operations. Even if modern industrial technique does not provide opportunity for all to give expression to the "instinct" of workmanship, there is no reason why the intellectual interest should not be free to expand to the widest circumference.
In a similar way, participation in the long reach of human experience is a requirement not only of the human mind, but also of personal and. social well-being. The ideal of socialization on the cognitive side is for the person to become conscious not solely of his individual ends and aims but also of those of the race. It is this control by the person over human experience which gives a
( 200) rational basis for self-direction. Socrates taught that the intelligent guidance of human conduct lay in the aphorism "Know thy-self." The logical outcome of the development of this attitude is revealed in the skepticism of Hume[38] with his denial of the certainty of aught beyond the mental process of the moment. The genetic and objective viewpoints in present-day psychology are emphasizing the truth that the understanding of the self is dependent upon a knowledge of the evolution 'of the mind and upon the study of behavior. Fundamentally, of course, Socrates is right. Rational self-control implies knowledge of the self. But knowledge of the self, of the meaning of instincts and emotions, of the springs of volition, of the ends of conduct, requires a knowledge of all human experience. Social self-control, i. e., the voluntary acceptance by the person of the requirement of his organic mental membership in the social body, can reach its highest expression only when the experience of the individual becomes coeval with that of the race.
To make the consciousness of society and of the person coeval with human experience is the great task of history as conceived by Professor Robinson. "Could we suddenly be endowed with a Godlike and exhaustive knowledge of the whole history of man-kind, far more complete than the combined knowledge of all the histories ever written, we should gain forthwith a Godlike appreciation of the world in which we live, and a Godlike insight into the evils which mankind now suffers, as well as into the most promising methods for alleviating them."[39] This would come about "not because the past would furnish precedents of conduct, but because our conduct would be based upon a perfect comprehension of existing conditions founded upon a perfect knowledge of the past."[40] This same point of view has been repeatedly emphasized by the sociologist. "Sociology (even better `social science') is an attempt so to visualize and so to interpret the whole of human experience that it will reveal the last discoverable grounds upon which to base conclusions about the rational conduct of life."[41] Feeble as have
( 201) been our efforts to analyze the meaning of the events of the past, any endeavor to democratize the knowledge thus achieved has been yet feebler. Conscious of the importance of their task, social scientists should co-operate[42] for its more speedy and perfect accomplishment, mindful that the value of their labors lies in its practical application and its availability for use.
In the social order of the future which we are evolving with its economic security and realized democracy, competition and rivalrywill be raised from the economic to the intellectual plane. With no waste of stunted bodies and dwarfed minds the social situation will require a higher standard of intellectual efficiency and a more rational direction of psychic energy. In the unfettered and un-cramped development of the intellectual interest will be found the freest unfolding of personality and the most effective guide for life-control.
A paragraph will suffice to sum up the argument concerning the function of the cognitive element in socialization. The socializing process in its intellectual aspect demands the participation of the person in the inter-mental activity of the group for the promotion of social progress, for the achieving of political and industrial democracy, and for life-control. Fundamentally, socialization on its cognitive side means that social evolution has become ideational. The ideational character of the process has two meanings. First of all, it signifies that there may now be inserted between the stimulus and the response of an individual an idea which may summarize the experience, not merely of the person, but also of generations. In the same way the group may, in a present crisis, utilize its own past experience or that of other groups and thus avoid the dangers of experiment. In the second place, the ideational character of the socializing process signifies that its efficient functioning depends upon the widest circle of participation in it.
This, then, is the paradox of the cognitive aspect of socialization : that our present equipment of scientific knowledge is greatly ahead of its practical application; that its dissemination has out-run its practical utilization. The truth is that change in mental attitude is necessary before conduct can be affected, because "intel-
( 202) -lect is not an impelling but a directing force."[43] But change in mental attitude involves change of the affective as well as change of the cognitive aspect of ideation. As Ward has demonstrated, "The motive of all action is feeling."[44] What, then, is the nature of personal participation in the attitude, sentiment, and social feeling of the group? What effective influence does social feeling exert over the conduct of the individual?
