is open to sale or exchange under the some conditions as govern the disposition of other pieces of property. Our copyright laws establish virtually the same arrangement for a limited term of years. But a man may even feel a vested ownership in a theory which he has enunciated, and be loath to give it up long after the facts have shown themselves to be against it. It is then that the winds of dialectic are most frequently unloosed.

Social forces upholding routines.

(1) Tradition. The mass of culture tends to perpetuate itself by virtue of its magnitude, interdependence and inertia. It is seldom questioned, for it involves a compact and well-rounded view of things that can to some extent be supplemented or extended, or perhaps even be corrected in minor details, but which in the end must stand or fall as a unit. Its different parts are so intricately intertwined and connected that little or nothing can be done towards their separation. A man can take the culture scheme or leave it, as he may desire, but if he tries to take part of it and leave the rest, his task becomes extremely difficult.

The growth of tradition, that is, the accumulation of knowledge, ideas, beliefs, standards and values, has gradually substituted a psychic environment for an environment of real objects. This does not mean that civilized man has a smaller world of real objects, but only a larger world of ideas; and that he approaches his world of real objects with certain values which he has gotten from the social tradition behind him.8

An example may help to establish more clearly the bearings of this point. Modern historians have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about the past, which they interpret in the terms peculiar to our culture, such as democracy, development, nationalism. Now suppose one of us were eager to study history, but desired to see each period not with the eyes of the present, but somewhat as it must have appeared to a contemporary. The task would not be an easy one, for the materials needed for his synthesis would not be available, or they would be hidden away in obscure sources. A man might believe, for example, that the peasants were more important in effecting the French Revolution than is commonly understood. How shall he determine whether his hypothesis is sound? The histories and the sources are full of evidence tending to show that the middle class, or the nobles, or the city proletariat, or the intellectuals, were especially active in bringing about and consummating the Revolution, while references to the peasants are incidental or trivial. This may be because they were actually relatively inactive; or because, although they were importantly active, their activity has

left relatively few traces; or because few historians have been interested in the part they played. The prevailing conceptions of the historians might here be preventing them from satisfactorily understanding a great event. In such a case, it would be easier to invent history than to rewrite it, but it would be easier still to take over the history that has already been written. If a group of persons so interested in attaining impartiality as are the historians carry over into their writings their own interests and viewpoint-that is to say, their accustomed set of mindwe are not surprised to find more uncritical folk reading their own mental surroundings and habits into their interpretations, and following in their behavior well-established because timehonored social patterns.

(2) Indoctrination of the young in the course of education. A large proportion of the members of nearly every society are immature children who, though social by nature and dependent upon others for everything they have, are in the beginning absolutely ignorant of the ways of life of the particular group into which they have been born. Everything they are ever to know and feel about these behaviors must be learned, and therefore one of the chief functions of the group is the communication of these attitudes. The term education may be used to indicate all phases of the process by which the body of tradition is transmitted from one generation to the next.

The formal education offered in the schools is of minor importance in comparison with the informal training that one gains inside the family circle and in other face-to-face associations. The latter kind of education takes place, as it were, by osmosis or seepage, and gives a bent to the mind of many a child who apparently remains utterly impervious to all direct attempts to train him. The school can teach a child how to read and write, but whether he will have real interests that can be satisfied only by good literature and what he will write usually depend on influences radiating from the home and from his more immediate circle of associates. Similarly, the school can preach the desirability of high moral standards, but to little or no effect if the child's parents and friends do not in their lives support the preachments. This in some ways is discouraging, for institutions like the home and neighborhood groups are not strikingly amenable to external improvement; but it must also be admitted that society is held together by these primary groups, for they furnish a firm basis for the development of the ideal of social solidarity.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.9

Other social relations are more precariously established when the training in social unity offered by primary groups has been denied, and in addition the major part of our deepest and most valuable experiences develop out of these associations.

A large part of all education, formal and informal, is devoted to indoctrination, and but little time and attention is given to a freeing of the mind. Perhaps all a little child is capable of is the former, since he must first really have a mind before it can be free, and for that some knowledge, true or false, and some modes of action, good or bad, are necessary. But it would certainly seem that in colleges and universities more effort and thought might be devoted to the attainment of mental liberation. The problem is by no means a simple one, and we must remember that, though it is certainly worth having, few people would know what to do with freedom. The Erewhonians were accustomed to address the following adjuration to their children before permitting them to be born:

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Remember also, that if you go into the world you will have free will; that you will be obliged to have it; that there is no escaping it; that you will be fettered to it during your whole life, and must on every occasion do that which on the whole seems best to you at any given time, no matter whether you are right or wrong in choosing it.

Social functions of routine.

Some degree of routination is absolutely necessary for the saving of time and energy, as can be seen by comparing the ease with which an adult dresses with the slow and bungling movements of the child. The day would be over before we were ready for it, if it were not for our habits. Patients afflicted with aboulia offer pathetic confirmation of this fact. They are sometimes unable to make even the simplest decisions without a fierce internal struggle which leaves them quite exhausted. "Shall I wear my coat, or shall I not?" may be the question which such an individual has to decide, but the reasons pro and con are so convincing that they seem to cancel each other out, leaving the poor fellow with absolutely nothing to do. It is fortunate that for most of us all the simple acts of life have been settled beforehand by habits based upon the routines of our group. Stereotyped actions are easily enslaving, but for a really free mind it is nevertheless necessary to form many habits. If we are to think seriously about some things we cannot waste time over others, but must deliver them over to the care either of other persons or of habit.

Routines stabilize action-they make the responses both of individuals and of groups more invariable, and therefore more predictable. A concert manager who planned his concerts without allowing for the fact that a certain proportion of his audiences would arrive late, and a certain proportion leave early, no matter when the concert began or ended, would be reckoning without human nature. Someone has summed up the matter in the observation that no single Congressman is as big a fool as Congress can be. We are continually acting on the principle that in the long run life will grind out so much of this and so much of that, and in the human sphere the existence of routines is one of the chief reasons why it is safe to act on this principle.

Routines generalize our responses by leading us to deal with the individuals whom we meet according to the canons of age, sex, caste, locality, relationship, wealth, or other classifications. A certain type of behavior, varying somewhat from denomination to denomination, is held to be appropriate to religious functionaries, and it is surprising to what a degree the various members of these groups finally come to resemble each other. Thus the routines of life have the effect of reducing the differences between members of the same group, and of widening the gaps between different groups. Frenchmen and Americans are more nearly alike at birth than they are as developed individuals. As adults they have become accustomed to different modes of life and different ways of looking at things, and in spite of their personal idiosyncrasies it is seldom difficult to determine to which group they belong. There are few of us who do not feel a real pleasure in being like the other members of some group-or, as one young fellow once put it, "Why not be original and do as the others do?"

The trend of routines is therefore towards superficiality and social inertia. It is difficult enough for a man to get rid of a habit when he really so desires, but it is a thousand times harder for a group of persons to change settled ways of acting when they haven't the least inclination to do so. "That isn't the way we do it" is often the only answer given to a suggestion involving novelty. In addition the various cultural elements usually interpenetrate to such a degree that an alteration of one would involve changes in many others, and the game is seldom thought to be worth the candle. As a result we observe the phenomenon of the cultural lag, or the latent period when forces making for change are present in the social order but are seemingly impotent. This latent period may vary from a very short time up to many centuries, as may be seen by comparing the rapid

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manner in which the radio was recently introduced with the long history of the antislavery movement.

Most of our routines represent adjustments rather to past conditions than to the way things actually are at the present moment. It is fascinating when a man begins to realize that the world in which he lives is really a great historical museum in which are preserved all manner of ideas, customs, traditions, beliefs, and institutions. Even today many people to all intents and purposes are still living in the stone age, and if a census were taken of the contents of our minds it would be safe to wager, in the case of even the most brilliant and independent of us, that a large proportion of our ideas would be found to be of an extremely ancient origin. Even when the basic conditions of life are in rapid flux, as in a frontier community or on the battlefield, the old routines may persist to retard much needed adaptations to the new situations.

Yet when all is said and done a good word may still be put in for routine as the chief social conservator. Intelligence and innovation are after all far too fragile instruments to be entrusted with the task of holding society together. What is required here is not some subtle principle of affinity as between one individual and another, but gross and general forces which can act on and through all men, whether they will or no; and among such forces routine is by no means the least significant. Then too, although the threads with which it binds us do hold us tightly in our places, we seldom feel them as chains, and if they were ever cut we would undoubtedly at once start replacing them with others.

REFERENCES

1 Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1923). 2 See Josephine Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency, A study in industry (3 ed., N. Y., Russell Sage Foundation, 1919), 43-53; based largely on Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours of Employment between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd., and Operators at Toronto (Ottawa, 1907), and Investigation of Telephone Companies made by the U. S. Bureau of Labor (Senate Doc. No. 380, 61 Congress, 2 Session, Washington, 1910).

3 Charles H. Judd, The Psychology of Social Institutions (N. Y., Macmillan, 1926), 105-128; the quotation is from pages 105-106.

4 Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or Over the range (N. Y., Dutton, 1920; 1 ed., 1872), 63 f.

5 Cf. Hamlet's soliloquy, Act 3, Scene 1.

6 Franz Boas, Anthropology (N. Y., Columbia Univ. Press, 1908), 11.

7 Graham Wallas, Our Social Heritage (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1921), 17.

8 Charles A. Ellwood, Introduction to Social Psychology (N. Y., Appleton, 1917), 130.

9 Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man.

10 Butler, Erewhon, 194.

11 Cf. W. F. Ogburn, Social Change, with respect to culture and original nature (N. Y., Huebsch, 1922).