This racial school of social philosophers derives much of its data from French sources. For this reason, and also because our anthropological knowledge of that country is more complete than for any other part of Europe, we shall confine our attention primarily to France. In the unattractive upland areas of isolation is the Alpine broad-headed race common to central Europe. At the north, extending down in a broad belt diagonally as far as Limoges and along the coast of Brittany, there is intermixture with the blond, long-headed Teutonic race; while along the southern coast, penetrating up the Rhone Valley, is found the extension of the equally long-headed but brunet Mediterranean stock. These ethnic facts correspond to physical ones; three areas of geographical isolation are distinct centers of distribution of the Alpine race.

The organization of the family is the surest criterion of the stage of social evolution attained by a people. No other phase of human association is so many-sided, so fundamental, so pregnant for the future. For this reason we may properly begin our study by an examination of a phenomenon which directly concerns the stability of the domestic institution—viz., divorce. What are the facts as to its distribution in France? Marked variations between different districts occur. Paris is at one extreme; Corsica, as always, at the other. Of singular interest to us is the parallel which at once appears between this distribution of divorce and that of head form. The areas of isolation peopled by the Alpine race are characterized by almost complete absence of legal severance of domestic relations between husband and wife.

Do the facts instanced above have any ethnic significance? Do they mean that the Alpine type, as a race, holds more tenaciously than does the Teuton to its family traditions, resenting thereby the interference of the state in its domestic institutions? A foremost statistical authority, Jacques Bertillon, has devoted considerable space to proving that some relation between the two exists. Confronted by the preceding facts, his explanation is this: that the people of the southern departments, inconstant perhaps and fickle, nevertheless are quickly pacified after a passionate outbreak of any kind. Husband and wife may quarrel, but the estrangement is dissipated before recourse to the law can take place. On the other hand, the Norman peasant, Teutonic by race, cold and reserved, nurses his grievances for a long time; they abide with him, smoldering but persistent. "Words and even blows terminate quarrels quickly in the south; in the north they are settled by the judge." From similar comparisons in other European countries, M. Bertillon draws the final conclusion that the Teutonic race betrays a singular preference for this remedy for domestic ills. It becomes for him an ethnic trait.

Another social phenomenon has been laid at the door of the Teutonic race of northern Europe; one which even more than divorce is directly the concomitant of modern intellectual and economic progress. We refer to suicide. Morselli devotes a chapter of his interesting treatise upon this subject to proving that "the purer the German race—that is to say, the stronger the Germanism (e.g., Teutonism) of a country—the more it reveals in its psychical character an extraordinary propensity to self-destruction."

Consider for a moment the relative frequency of suicide with reference to the ethnic composition of France. The parallel between the two is almost exact in every detail. There are again our three areas of Alpine racial occupation—Savoy, Auvergne, and Brittany—in which suicide falls annually below seventy-five per million inhabitants. There, again, is the Rhone Valley and the broad diagonal strip from Paris to Bordeaux, characterized alike by strong infusion of Teutonic traits and relative frequency of the same social phenomenon.

Divorce and suicide will serve as examples of the mode of proof adopted for tracing a number of other social phenomena to an ethnic origin. Thus Lapouge attributes the notorious depopulation of large areas in France to the sterility incident upon intermixture between the several racial types of which the population is constituted. This he seeks to prove from the occurrence of a decreasing birth-rate in all the open, fertile districts where the Teutonic element has intermingled with the native population. Because wealth happens to be concentrated in the fertile areas of Teutonic occupation, it is again assumed that this coincidence demonstrates either a peculiar acquisitive aptitude in this race or else a superior measure of frugality.

By this time our suspicions are aroused. The argument is too simple. Its conclusions are too far-reaching. By this we do not mean to deny the facts of geographical distribution in the least. It is only the validity of the ethnic explanation which we deny. We can do better for our races than even its best friends along such lines of proof. With the data at our disposition there is no end to the racial attributes which we might saddle upon our ethnic types. Thus, it would appear that the Alpine type in its sterile areas of isolation was the land-hungry one described by Zola in his powerful novels. For, roughly speaking, individual land-holdings are larger in them on the average than among the Teutonic populations. Peasant proprietorship is more common also; there are fewer tenant farmers. Crime in the two areas assumes a different aspect. We find that among populations of Alpine type, in the isolated uplands, offenses against the person predominate in the criminal calendar. In the Seine basin, along the Rhone Valley, wherever the Teuton is in evidence, on the other hand, there is less respect for property; so that offenses against the person, such as assault, murder, and rape, give place to embezzlements, burglary, and arson. It might just as well be argued that the Teuton shows a predilection for offenses against property; the native Celt an equal propensity for crimes against the person.

Appeal to the social geography of other countries, wherein the ethnic balance of power is differently distributed, may be directed against almost any of the phenomena we have instanced in France as seemingly of racial derivation. In the case either of suicide or divorce, if we turn from France to Italy or Germany, we instantly perceive all sorts of contradictions. The ethnic type, which is so immune from propensity to self-destruction or domestic disruption in France, becomes in Italy most prone to either mode of escape from temporary earthly ills. For each phenomenon culminates in frequency in the northern half of the latter country, stronghold of the Alpine race. Nor is there an appreciable infusion of Teutonism, physically speaking, herein, to account for the change of heart. Of course, it might be urged that this merely shows that the Mediterranean race of southern Italy is as much less inclined to the phenomenon than the Alpine race in these respects, as it in turn lags behind the Teuton. For it must be confessed that even in Italy neither divorce nor suicide is so frequent anywhere as in Teutonic northern France. Well, then, turn to Germany. Compare its two halves in these respects again. The northern half of the empire is most purely Teutonic by race; the southern is not distinguishable ethnically, as we have sought to prove, from central France. Bavaria, Baden, and Wuertemberg are scarcely more Teutonic by race than Auvergne. Do we find differences in suicide, for example, following racial boundaries here? Far from it; for Saxony is its culminating center; and Saxony, as we know, is really half-Slavic at heart, as is also eastern Prussia. Suicide should be most frequent in Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, if racial causes were appreciably operative. The argument, in fact, falls to pieces of its own weight, as Durkheim has shown. His conclusion is thus stated:

"If the Germans are more addicted to suicide, it is not because of the blood in their veins, but of the civilization in which they have been raised."

A summary view of the class of social phenomena seemingly characteristic of the distinct races in France, if we extend our field of vision to cover all Europe, suggests an explanation for the curious coincidences and parallelisms noted above, which is the exact opposite of the racial one.

Our theory, then, is this: that most of the social phenomena we have noted as peculiar to the areas occupied by the Alpine type are the necessary outcome, not of racial proclivities but rather of the geographical and social isolation characteristic of the habitat of this race. The ethnic type is still pure for the very same reason that social phenomena are primitive. Wooden ploughs pointed with stone, blood revenge, an undiminished birth-rate, and relative purity of physical type are all alike derivatives from a common cause, isolation, directly physical and coincidently social. We discover, primarily, an influence of environment where others perceive phenomena of ethnic inheritance.

4. Natural versus Vicinal Location in National Development[115]

In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location, anthropogeography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term. The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet the frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or their specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of mountain, desert, and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to displace, or more often by both.

A people has, therefore, a twofold location, an immediate one, based upon their actual territory, and a mediate or vicinal one, growing out of its relations to the countries nearest them. The first is a question of the land under their feet; the other, of the neighbors about them. The first or natural location embodies the complex of local geographic conditions which furnish the basis for their tribal or national existence. This basis may be a peninsula, island, archipelago, an oasis, an arid steppe, a mountain system, or a fertile lowland. The stronger the vicinal location, the more dependent is the people upon the neighboring states, but the more potent the influence which it can, under certain circumstances, exert upon them. Witness Germany in relation to Holland, France, Austria, and Poland. The stronger the natural location, on the other hand, the more independent is the people and the more strongly marked is the national character. This is exemplified in the people of mountain lands like Switzerland, Abyssinia, and Nepal; of peninsulas like Korea, Spain, and Scandinavia; and of islands like England and Japan. Today we stand amazed at that strong primordial brand of the Japanese character which nothing can blur or erase.

Clearly defined natural locations, in which barriers of mountains and sea draw the boundaries and guarantee some degree of isolation, tend to hold their people in a calm embrace, to guard them against outside interference and infusion of foreign blood, and thus to make them develop the national genius in such direction as the local geographic conditions permit. In the unceasing movements which have made up most of the historic and prehistoric life of the human race, in their migrations and counter-migrations, their incursions, retreats, and expansions over the face of the earth, vast unfenced areas, like the open lowlands of Russia and the grasslands of Africa, present the picture of a great thoroughfare swept by pressing throngs. Other regions, more secluded, appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes on in such secluded-locations.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Isolation in Anthropogeography and Biology

A systematic treatise upon isolation as a sociological concept remains to be written. The idea of isolation as a tool of investigation has been fashioned with more precision in geography and in biology than in sociology.

Research in human geography has as its object the study of man in his relations to the earth. Students of civilization, like Montesquieu and Buckle, sought to explain the culture and behavior of peoples as the direct result of the physical environment. Friedrich Ratzel with his "thorough training as a naturalist, broad reading, and travel" and above all, his comprehensive knowledge of ethnology, recognized the importance of direct effects, such as cultural isolation. Jean Brunhes, by the selection of small natural units, his so-called "islands," has made intensive studies of isolated groups in the oases of the deserts of the Sub and of the Mzab, and in the high mountains of the central Andes.

Biology indicates isolation as one of the factors in the origin of the species. Anthropology derives the great races of mankind—the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Indian—from geographical separation following an assumed prehistoric dispersion. A German scholar, Dr. Georg Gerland, has prepared an atlas which plots differences in physical traits, such as skin color and hair texture, as indicating the geographical distribution of races.

2. Isolation and Social Groups

Anthropogeographical and biological investigations have proceeded upon the assumption, implicit or explicit, that the geographic environment, and the physical and mental traits of races and individuals, determine individual and collective behavior. What investigations in human geography and heredity actually demonstrate is that the geographic environment and the original nature of man condition the culture and conduct of groups and of persons. The explanations of isolation, so far as it affects social life, which have gained currency in the writings of anthropologists and geographers, are therefore too simple. Sociologists are able to take into account forms of isolation not considered by the students of the physical environment and of racial inheritance. Studies of folkways, mores, culture, nationality, the products of a historical or cultural process, disclose types of social contact which transcend the barriers of geographical or racial separation, and reveal social forms of isolation which prevent communication where there is close geographical contact or common racial bonds.

The literature upon isolated peoples ranges from investigations of arrest of cultural development as, for example, the natives of Australia, the Mountain Whites of the southern states, or the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island to studies of hermit nations, of caste systems as in India, or of outcast groups such as feeble-minded "tribes" or hamlets, fraternities of criminals, and the underworld of commercialized prostitution. Special research in dialects, in folklore, and in provincialism shows how spatial isolation fixes differences in speech, attitudes, folkways, and mores which, in turn, enforce isolation even when geographic separation has disappeared.

The most significant contribution to the study of isolation from the sociological standpoint has undoubtedly been made by Fishberg in a work entitled The Jews, a Study of Race and Environment. The author points out that the isolation of the Jew has been the result of neither physical environment nor of race, but of social barriers. "Judaism has been preserved throughout the long years of Israel's dispersion by two factors: its separative ritualism, which prevented close and intimate contact with non-Jews, and the iron laws of the Christian theocracies of Europe which encouraged and enforced 'isolation.'"[116]

3. Isolation and Personality

Philosophers, mystics, and religious enthusiasts have invariably stressed privacy for meditation, retirement for ecstatic communion with God, and withdrawal from the contamination of the world. In 1784-86 Zimmermann wrote an elaborate essay in which he dilates upon "the question whether it is easier to live virtuously in society or in solitude," considering in Part I "the influence of occasional retirement upon the mind and the heart" and in Part II "the pernicious influence of a total exclusion from society upon the mind and the heart."

Actual research upon the effect of isolation upon personal development has more of future promise than of present accomplishment. The literature upon cases of feral men is practically all of the anecdotal type with observations by persons untrained in the modern scientific method. One case, however, "the savage of Aveyron" was studied intensively by Itard, the French philosopher and otologist who cherished high hopes of his mental and social development. After five years spent in a patient and varied but futile attempt at education, he confessed his bitter disappointment. "Since my pains are lost and efforts fruitless, take yourself back to your forest and primitive tastes; or if your new wants make you dependent on society, suffer the penalty of being useless, and go to Bicetre, there to die in wretchedness."

Only second in importance to the cases of feral men are the investigations which have been made of the results of solitary confinement. Morselli, in his well-known work on Suicide, presented statistics showing that self-destruction was many times as frequent among convicts under the system of absolute isolation as compared with that of association during imprisonment. Studies of Auburn prison in New York, of Mountjoy in England, and penal institutions on the continent show the effects of solitary incarceration in the increase of cases of suicides, insanity, invalidism, and death.

Beginnings have been made in child study, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis of the effects of different types of isolation upon personal development. Some attention has been given to the study of effects upon mentality and personality of physical defects such as deaf-mutism and blindness. Students of the so-called "morally defective child," that is the child who appears deficient in emotional and sympathetic responses, suggest as a partial explanation the absence in infancy and early childhood of intimate and sympathetic contacts with the mother. An investigation not yet made but of decisive bearing upon this point will be a comparative study of children brought up in families with those reared in institutions.

Psychiatry and psychoanalysis in probing mental life and personality have related certain mental and social abnormalities to isolation from social contact. Studies of paranoia and of egocentric personalities have resulted in the discovery of the only or favorite child complex. The exclusion of the boy or girl in the one-child family from the give and take of democratic relations with brothers and sisters results, according to the theory advanced, in a psychopathic personality of the self-centered type. A contributing cause of homosexuality, it is said by psychoanalysts, is the isolation during childhood from usual association with individuals of the same sex. Research in dementia praecox discloses a symptom and probably a cause of this mental malady to be the withdrawal of the individual from normal social contacts and the substitution of an imaginary for a real world of persons and events. Dementia praecox has been related by one psychoanalyst to the "shut-in" type of personality.

The literature on the subject of privacy in its relation to personal development is fragmentary but highly promising for future research. The study of the introspective type of personality suggests that self-analysis is the counterpart of the inhibition of immediate and impulsive self-expression in social relations. Materials for an understanding of the relation of retirement and privacy to the aesthetic, moral, and creative life of the person may be found in the lives of hermits, inventors, and religious leaders; in the studies of seclusion, prayer, and meditation; and in research upon taboo, prestige, and attitudes of superiority and inferiority.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF ISOLATION

I. CHARACTERISTIC SENTIMENTS AND ATTITUDES OF THE ISOLATED PERSON

(1) Zimmermann, Johann G. Solitude. Or the effects of occasional retirement on the mind, the heart, general society. Translated from the German. London, 1827.

(2) Canat, Rene. Une forme du mal du siecle. Du sentiment de la solitude morale chez les romantiques et les parnassiens. Paris, 1904.

(3) Goltz, E. von der. Das Gebet in der aeltesten Christenheit. Leipzig, 1901.

(4) Strong, Anna L. A Consideration of Prayer from the Standpoint of Social Psychology. Chicago, 1908.

(5) Hoch, A. "On Some of the Mental Mechanisms in Dementia Praecox," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, V (1910), 255-73. [A study of the isolated person.]

(6) Bohannon, E. W. "Only Child," Pedagogical Seminary, V (1897-98), 475-96.

(7) Brill, A. A. Psychanalysis. Its theories and practical application. "The Only or Favorite Child in Adult Life," pp. 253-65. 2d rev. ed. Philadelphia and London, 1914.

(8) Neter, Eugen. Das einzige Kind und seine Erziehung. Ein ernstes Mahnwort an Eltern und Erzieher. Muenchen, 1914.

(9) Whiteley, Opal S. The Story of Opal. Boston, 1920.

(10) Delbrueck, A. Die pathologische Luege und die psychisch abnormen Schwindler. Stuttgart, 1891.

(11) Healy, Wm. Pathological Lying. Boston, 1915.

(12) Dostoevsky, F. The House of the Dead; or, Prison Life in Siberia. Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York, 1915.

(13) Griffiths, Arthur. Secrets of the Prison House, or Gaol Studies and Sketches. I, 262-80. London, 1894.

(14) Kingsley, Charles. The Hermits. London and New York, 1871.

(15) Baring-Gould, S. Lives of Saints. 16 vols. Rev. ed. Edinburgh, 1916. [See references in index to hermits.]

(16) Solenberger, Alice W. One Thousand Homeless Men. A study of original records. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1911.

II. TYPES OF ISOLATION AND TYPES OF SOCIAL GROUPS

(1) Fishberg, Maurice. The Jews. A study of race and environment. London and New York, 1911.

(2) Gummere, Amelia M. The Quaker. A study in costume. Philadelphia, 1901.

(3) Webster, Hutton. Primitive Secret Societies. A study in early politics and religion. New York, 1908.

(4) Heckethorn, C. W. The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries. A comprehensive account of upwards of one hundred and sixty secret organizations—religious, political, and social—from the most remote ages down to the present time. 2 vols. New ed., rev. and enl. London, 1897.

(5) Fosbroke, Thomas D. British Monachism, or Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England. London, 1817.

(6) Wishart, Alfred W. A Short History of Monks and Monasteries. Trenton, N.J., 1900. [Chap. i, pp. 17-70, gives an account of the monk as a type of human nature.]

III. GEOGRAPHICAL ISOLATION AND CULTURAL AREAS

(1) Ratzel, Friedrich. Politische Geographie; oder, Die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges. 2d. ed. Muenchen, 1903.

(2) Semple, Ellen. Influences of Geographic Environment, on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropogeography. Chap. xiii, "Island Peoples," pp. 409-72. New York, 1911. [Bibliography.]

(3) Brunhes, Jean. Human Geography. An attempt at a positive classification, principles, and examples. 2d ed. Translated from the French by T. C. LeCompte. Chicago, 1920. [See especially chaps. vi, vii, and viii, pp. 415-569.]

(4) Vallaux, Camille. La Mer. (Geographie Sociale.) Populations maritimes, migrations, peches, commerce, domination de la mer, Chap. iii, "Les isles et l'insularite." Paris, 1908.

(5) Gerland, Georg. Atlas der Voelkerkunde. Gotha, 1892. [Indicates the geographical distribution of differences in skin color, hair form, clothing, customs, languages, etc.]

(6) Ripley, William Z. The Races of Europe. A sociological study. New York, 1899.

(7) Campbell, John C. The Southern Highlander and His Homeland. New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1921. [Bibliography.]

(8) Barrow, Sir John. A Description of Pitcairn's Island and Its Inhabitants. With an authentic account of the mutiny of the ship "Bounty" and of the subsequent fortunes of the mutineers. New York, 1832.

(9) Routledge, Mrs. Scoresby. The Mystery of Easter Island. The story of an expedition. Chap. xx, "Pitcairn Island." London, 1919.

(10) Galpin, Charles J. Rural Life. New York, 1918.

IV. LANGUAGE FRONTIERS AND NATIONALITY

(1) Dominian, Leon. The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe. New York, 1917. [Bibliography, pp. 348-56.]

(2) Auerbach, Bertrand. Les Races et les nationalites en Autriche-Hongrie. 2d rev. ed. Paris, 1917.

(3) Bernhard, L. Das polnische Gemeinwesen im preussischen Staat. Die Polenfrage. Leipzig, 1910.

(4) Bourgoing, P. de. Les guerres d'idiome et de nationalite. Tableaux, esquisses, et souvenirs d'histoire contemporaine. Paris, 1849.

(5) Cambridge Modern History, Vol. XI, "The Growth of Nationalities." Cambridge, 1909.

(6) Meillet, A. "Les Langues et les Nationalites," Scientia, Vol. XVIII, (Sept., 1915), pp. 192-201.

(7) Pfister, Ch. "La limite de la langue francaise et de la langue allemande en Alsace-Lorraine," Considerations historiques. Bull. Soc. Geogr. de l'Est, Vol. XII, 1890.

(8) This, G. "Die deutsch-franzoesische Sprachgrenze in Lothringen," Beitraege zur Landes- und Volkskunde von Elsass-Lothringen, Vol. I, Strassburg, 1887.

(9)——. "Die deutsch-franzoesische Sprachgrenze in Elsass," ibid., 1888.

V. DIALECTS AS A FACTOR IN ISOLATION

(1) Babbitt, Eugene H. "College Words and Phrases," Dialect Notes, II (1900-1904), 3-70.

(2)——. "The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and Vicinity," Dialect Notes, Vol. I, Part ix, 1896.

(3)——. "The Geography of the Great Languages," World's Work, Feb. 15 (1907-8), 9903-7.

(4) Churchill, William. Beach-la-mar: the Jargon or Trade Speech of the Western Pacific. Washington, 1911.

(5) Dana, Richard H., Jr. A Dictionary of Sea Terms. London, 1841.

(6) Elliott, A.M. "Speech-Mixture in French Canada: English and French," American Journal of Philology, X (1889), 133.

(7) Flaten, Nils. "Notes on American-Norwegian with a Vocabulary," Dialect Notes, II (1900-1904), 115-26.

(8) Harrison, James A. "Negro-English," Transactions and Proceedings American Philological Association, XVI (1885), Appendix, pp. xxxi-xxxiii.

(9) Hempl, George. "Language-Rivalry and Speech-Differentiation in the Case of Race-Mixture," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. XXIX (1898), 31-47.

(10) Knortz, Karl. Amerikanische Redensarten und Volksgebraeuche. Leipzig, 1907.

(11) Letzner, Karl. Woerterbuch der englischen Volkssprache Australiens und der englischen Mischsprachen. Halle, 1891.

(12) Pettman, Charles. Africanderisms. A glossary of South African colloquial words and phrases and of place and other names. London and New York, 1913.

(13) Ralph, Julian. "The Language of the Tenement-Folk," Harper's Weekly, XLI (Jan. 23, 1897), 90.

(14) Skeat, Walter W. English Dialects from the Eighth Century to the Present Day. Cambridge, 1911.

(15) Yule, Henry, and Burnell, A. C. Hobson-Jobson. A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical, and discursive; new ed. by Wm. Crooke, London, 1903.

VI. PHYSICAL DEFECT AS A FORM OF ISOLATION

(1) Bell, Alexander G. "Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race." National Academy of Sciences, Memoirs, II, 177-262. Washington, D.C., 1884.

(2) Fay, Edward A. Marriages of the Deaf in America. An inquiry concerning the results of marriages of the deaf in America. Washington, D.C., 1893.

(3) Desagher, Maurice. "La timidite chez les aveugles," Revue philosophique, LXXVI (1913), 269-74.

(4) Best, Harry. The Deaf. Their position in society and the provision for their education in the United States. New York, 1914.

(5) ——. The Blind. Their condition and the work being done for them in the United States. New York, 1919.

VII. FERAL MEN

(1) Rauber, August. Homo Sapiens Ferus; oder, Die Zustaende der Verwilderten und ihre Bedeutung fuer Wissenschaft, Politik, und Schule. Leipzig, 1885.

(2) Seguin, Edward. Idiocy and Its Treatment by the Physiological Method. Pp. 14-23. New York, 1866.

(3) Bonnaterre, J. P. Notice historique sur le sauvage de l'Aveyron, et sur quelques autres individus qu'on a trouves dans les forets a differentes epoques. Paris, 1800.

(4) Itard, Jean E. M. G. De l'education d'un homme sauvage, et des premiers developpemens physiques et moraux du jeune sauvage de l'Aveyron. Pp. 45-46. Paris, 1801.

(5) Feuerbach, Paul J. A. von. Caspar Hauser. An account of an individual kept in a dungeon from early childhood, to about the age of seventeen. Translated from the German by H. G. Linberg. London, 1834.

(6) Stanhope, Philip Henry [4th Earl]. Tracts relating to Caspar Hauser. Translated from the original German. London, 1836.

(7) Lang, Andrew. Historical Mysteries. London, 1904.

(8) Tredgold, A. F. Mental Deficiency. "Isolation Amentia," pp. 297-305. 3d rev. ed. New York, 1920.

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES

1. Isolation as a Condition of Originality.

2. The Relation of Social Contact and of Isolation to Historic Inventions and Discoveries, as the Law of Gravitation, Mendelian Inheritance, the Electric Light, etc.

3. Isolated Types: the Hermit, the Mystic, the Prophet, the Stranger, and the Saint.

4. Isolation, Segregation, and the Physically Defective: as the Blind, the Deaf-Mute, the Physically Handicapped.

5. Isolated Areas and Cultural Retardation: the Southern Mountaineer, Pitcairn Islanders, the Australian Aborigines.

6. "Moral" Areas, Isolation, and Segregation: City Slums, Vice Districts, "Breeding-places of Crime."

7. The Controlled versus the Natural process of Segregation of the Feeble-minded.

8. Isolation and Insanity.

9. Privacy in the Home.

10. Isolation and Prestige.

11. Isolation as a Defence against the Invasion of Personality.

12. Nationalism as a Form of Isolation.

13. Biological and Social Immunity: or Biological Immunity from Infection, Personal or Group Immunity against Social Contagion.

14. The Only Child.

15. The Pathological Liar Considered from the Point of View of Isolation.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Is the distinction between isolation and social contact relative or absolute?

2. What illustrations of the various forms of isolation, spatial, structural, habitudinal, and psychical, occur to you?

3. By what process does isolation cause racial differentiation?

4. What is the relation of endogamy and exogamy (a) to isolation, and (b) to the establishment of a successful stock or race?

5. In what ways do the Jews and the Americans as racial types illustrate the effects of isolation and of contact?

6. What do you understand to be Bacon's definition of solitude?

7. What is the point in the saying "A great town is a great solitude"?

8. What is the sociology of the creation by a solitary person of imaginary companions?

9. Under what conditions does an individual prefer solitude to society? Give illustrations.

10. What are the devices used in prayer to secure isolation?

11. "Prayer has value in that it develops the essentially social form of personal self-realization." Explain.

12. What are the interrelations of social contact and of privacy in the development of the ideal self?

13. What do you understand by the relation of erudition to originality?

14. In what ways does isolation (a) promote, (b) impede, originality? What other factors beside isolation are involved in originality?

15. What is the value of privacy?

16. What was the value of the monasteries?

17. What conclusions do you derive from the study of the cases of feral men? Do these cases bear out the theory of Aristotle in regard to the effect of isolation upon the individual?

18. What is the significance of Helen Keller's account of how she broke through the barriers of isolation?

19. What were the mental effects of solitude described by Hudson? How do you explain the difference between the descriptions of the effect of solitude in the accounts given by Rousseau and by Hudson?

20. How does Galpin explain the relation of isolation to the development of the "rural mind"?

21. What are the effects of isolation upon the young man or young woman reared in the country?

22. Was Lincoln the product of isolation or of social contact?

23. To what extent are rural problems the result of isolation?

24. What do you understand by Thomas' statement, "The savage, the Negro, the peasant, the slum dwellers, and the white woman are notable sufferers by exclusion"?

25. What other of the subtler forms of isolation occur to you?

26. Is isolation to be regarded as always a disadvantage?

27. What do you understand by segregation as a process?

28. Give illustrations of groups other than those mentioned which have become segregated as a result of isolation.

29. How would you describe the process by which isolation leads to the segregation of the feeble-minded?

30. Why does a segregated group, like the feeble-minded, become an isolated group?

31. What are other illustrations of isolation resulting from segregation?

32. How would you compare Europe with the other continents with reference to number and distribution of isolated areas?

33. What do you understand to be the nature of the influence of the cradle land upon "the historical race"?

34. What illustrations from the Great War would you give of the effects (a) of central location; (b) of peripheral location?

35. How do you explain the contrast between the characteristics of the inhabitants of the Grecian inland and maritime cities?

36. To what extent may (a) the rise of the Greek city state, (b) Grecian intellectual development, and (c) the history of Greece, be interpreted in terms of geographic isolation?

37. To what extent can you explain the cultural retardation of Africa, as compared with European progress, by isolation?

38. Does race or isolation explain more adequately the following cultural differences for the several areas of France—divorce, intensity of suicide, distribution of awards, relative frequency of men of letters?

39. What is the relation of village and city emigration and immigration to isolation?

40. What is the difference between a natural and a vicinal location?

41. In what ways does isolation affect national development?

42. What is the relation of geographical position in area to literature?

FOOTNOTES:

[94] J. Arthur Thomson, Heredity, pp. 536-37. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908.)

[95] From Francis Bacon, Essays, "Of Friendship."

[96] Adapted from Jean Jacques Rousseau, Letter to the President de Malesherbes, 1762.

[97] Adapted from George Albert Coe, The Psychology of Religion, pp. 311-18. (The University of Chicago Press, 1917.)

[98] From T. Sharper Knowlson, Originality, pp. 173-75. (T. Werner Laurie, 1918.)

[99] From Maurice H. Small, "On Some Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude," in the Pedagogical Seminary, VII, No. 2 (1900), 32-36.

[100] Anthropological Review, I (London, 1863), 21 ff.

[101] All the Year, XVIII, 302 ff.

[102] Chambers' Journal, LIX, 579 ff.

[103] The Penny Magazine, II, 113.

[104] Wagner, Beitragen zur philosophischen Anthropologie; Rauber, pp. 49-55.

[105] "Histoire d'une jeune fille sauvage trouvee dans les bois a l'age de dix ans," Magazin der Natur, Kunst, und Wissenschaft, Leipzig, 1756, pp. 219-72; Mercure de France, December, 1731; Rudolphi, Grundriss der Physiologie, I, 25; Blumenbach, Beitraege zur Naturgeschichte, II, 38.

[106] Adapted from Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, pp. 22-24. (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1917.)

[107] Adapted from W. H. Hudson, "The Plains of Patagonia," Universal Review, VII (1890), 551-57.

[108] Adapted from C. J. Galpin, Rural Social Centers in Wisconsin, pp. 1-3. (Wisconsin Experiment Station, Bulletin 234, 1913.)

[109] Adapted from W. I. Thomas, "Race Psychology," in the American Journal of Sociology, XVII (1911-12), 744-47.

[110] Adapted from Robert E. Park, "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Behavior in the City Environment," in the American Journal of Sociology, XX (1915), 579-83.

[111] Adapted from L. W. Crafts and E. A. Doll, "The Proportion of Mental Defectives among Juvenile Delinquents," in the Journal of Delinquency, II (1917), 123-37.

[112] Adapted from N. S. Shaler, Nature and Man in America, pp. 151-66. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900.)

[113] Adapted from George Grote, History of Greece, II, 149-57. (John Murray, 1888.)

[114] From William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 515-30. (D. Appleton & Co., 1899.)

[115] Adapted from Ellen C. Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment, pp. 132-33. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.)

[116] Fishberg, op. cit., p. 555.



CHAPTER V

SOCIAL CONTACTS

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Preliminary Notions of Social Contact

The fundamental social process is that of interaction. This interaction is (a) of persons with persons, and (b) of groups with groups. The simplest aspect of interaction, or its primary phase, is contact. Contact may be considered as the initial stage of interaction, and preparatory to the later stages. The phenomena of social contact require analysis before proceeding to the more difficult study of the mechanism of social interaction.

"With whom am I in contact?" Common sense has in stock ready answers to this question.

There is, first of all, the immediate circle of contact through the senses. Touch is the most intimate kind of contact. Face-to-face relations include, in addition to touch, visual and auditory sensations. Speech and hearing by their very nature establish a bond of contact between persons.

Even in common usage, the expression "social contact" is employed beyond the limits fixed by the immediate responses of touch, sight, and hearing. Its area has expanded to include connection through all the forms of communication, i.e., language, letters, and the printed page; connection through the medium of the telephone, telegraph, radio, moving picture, etc. The evolution of the devices for communication has taken place in the fields of two senses alone, those of hearing and seeing. Touch remains limited to the field of primary association. But the newspaper with its elaborate mechanism of communication gives publicity to events in London, Moscow, and Tokio, and the motion picture unreels to our gaze scenes from distant lands and foreign peoples with all the illusion of reality.

The frontiers of social contact are farther extended to the widest horizons, by commerce. The economists, for example, include in their conception of society the intricate and complex maze of relations created by the competition and co-operation of individuals and societies within the limits of a world-wide economy. This inclusion of unconscious as well as conscious reciprocal influences in the concept of social relations brings into "contact" the members of a village missionary society with the savages of the equatorial regions of Africa; or the pale-faced drug addict, with the dark-skinned Hindu laborers upon the opium fields of Benares; or the man gulping down coffee at the breakfast table, with the Java planter; the crew of the Pacific freighter and its cargo of spices with the American wholesaler and retailer in food products. In short, everyone is in a real, though concealed and devious, way in contact with every other person in the world. Contacts of this type, remote from the familiar experiences of everyday life, have reality to the intellectual and the mystic and are appreciated by the masses only when co-operation breaks down, or competition becomes conscious and passes into conflict.

These three popular meanings of contacts emphasize (1) the intimacy of sensory responses, (2) the extension of contact through devices of communication based upon sight and hearing, and (3) the solidarity and interdependence created and maintained by the fabric of social life, woven as it is from the intricate and invisible strands of human interests in the process of a world-wide competition and co-operation.

2. The Sociological Concept of Contact

The use of the term "contact" in sociology is not a departure from, but a development of, its customary significance. In the preceding chapter the point was made that the distinction between isolation and contact is not absolute but relative. Members of a society spatially separate, but socially in contact through sense perception and through communication of ideas, may be thereby mobilized to collective behavior. Sociological interest in this situation lies in the fact that the various kinds of social contacts between persons and groups determine behavior. The student of problems of American society, for example, realizes the necessity of understanding the mutual reactions involved in the contacts of the foreign and the native-born, of the white and the negro, and of employers and employees. In other words, contact, as the first stage of social interaction, conditions and controls the later stages of the process.

It is convenient, for certain purposes, to conceive of contact in terms of space. The contacts of persons and of groups may then be plotted in units of social distance. This permits graphic representation of relations of sequence and of coexistence in terms both of units of separation and of contact. This spatial conception may now be applied to the explanation of the readings in social contacts.

3. Classification of the Materials

In sociological literature there have grown up certain distinctions between types of social contacts. Physical contacts are distinguished from social contacts; relations within the "in-group" are perceived to be different from relations with the "out-group"; contacts of historical continuity are compared with contacts of mobility; primary contacts are set off from secondary contacts. How far and with what advantage may these distinctions be stated in spatial terms?

a) Land as a basis for social contacts.—The position of persons and peoples on the earth gives us a literal picture of the spatial conception of social contact. The cluster of homes in the Italian agricultural community suggests the difference in social life in comparison with the isolated homesteads of rural America. A gigantic spot map of the United States upon which every family would be indicated by a dot would represent schematically certain different conditions influencing group behavior in arid areas, the open country, hamlets, villages, towns, and cities. The movements of persons charted with detail sufficient to bring out variations in the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly routine, would undoubtedly reveal interesting identities and differences in the intimacy and intensity of social contacts. It would be possible and profitable to classify people with reference to the routine of their daily lives.

b) Touch as the physiological basis of social contact.—According to the spatial conception the closest contacts possible are those of touch. The physical proximity involved in tactile sensations is, however, but the symbol of the intensity of the reactions to contact. Desire and aversion for contacts, as Crawley shows in his selection, arise in the most intimate relations of human life. Love and hate, longing and disgust, sympathy and hostility increase in intensity with intimacy of association. It is a current sociological fallacy that closeness of contact results only in the growth of good will. The fact is, that with increasing contact either attraction or repulsion may be the outcome, depending upon the situation and upon factors not yet fully analyzed. Peculiar conditions of contact, as its prolonged duration, its frequent repetition, just as in the case of isolation from normal association, may lead to the inversion of the original impulses and sentiments of affection and antipathy.[117]

c) Contacts with the "in-group" and with the "out-group."—The conception of the we-group in terms of distance is that of a group in which the solidarity of units is so complete that the movements and sentiments of all are completely regulated with reference to their interests and behavior as a group. This control by the in-group over its members makes for solidity and impenetrability in its relations with the out-group. Sumner in his Folkways indicates how internal sympathetic contacts and group egotism result in double standards of behavior: good-will and co-operation within the members of the in-group, hostility and suspicion toward the out-group and its members. The essential point is perhaps best brought out by Shaler in his distinction between sympathetic and categoric contacts. He describes the transition from contacts of the out-group to those of the in-group, or from remote to intimate relations. From a distance, a person has the characteristics of his group, upon close acquaintance he reveals his individuality.

d) Historical continuity and mobility.—Historical continuity, which maintains the identity of the present with the past, implies the existence of a body of tradition which is transmitted from the older to the younger generations. Through the medium of tradition, including in that term all the learning, science, literature, and practical arts, not to speak of the great body of oral tradition which is after all a larger part of life than we imagine, the historical and cultural life is maintained. This is the meaning of the long period of childhood in man during which the younger generation is living under the care and protection of the older. When, for any reason, this contact of the younger with the older generation is interrupted—as is true in the case of immigrants—a very definite cultural deterioration frequently ensues.

Contacts of mobility are those of a changing present, and measure the number and variety of the stimulations which the social life and movements—the discovery of the hour, the book of the moment, the passing fads and fashions—afford. Contacts of mobility give us novelty and news. It is through contacts of this sort that change takes place.

Mobility, accordingly, measures not merely the social contacts that one gains from travel and exploration, but the stimulation and suggestions that come to us through the medium of communication, by which sentiments and ideas are put in social circulation. Through the newspaper, the common man of today participates in the social movements of his time. His illiterate forbear of yesterday, on the other hand, lived unmoved by the current of world-events outside his hamlet. The tempo of modern societies may be measured comparatively by the relative perfection of devices of communication and the rapidity of the circulation of sentiments, opinions, and facts. Indeed, the efficiency of any society or of any group is to be measured not alone in terms of numbers or of material resources, but also in terms of mobility and access through communication and publicity to the common fund of tradition and culture.

e) Primary and secondary contacts.—Primary contacts are those of "intimate face-to-face association"; secondary contacts are those of externality and greater distance. A study of primary association indicates that this sphere of contact falls into two areas: one of intimacy and the other of acquaintance. In the diagram which follows, the field of primary contacts has been subdivided so that it includes (x) a circle of greater intimacy, (y) a wider circle of acquaintanceship. The completed chart would appear as shown on page 285.

Primary contacts of the greatest intimacy are (a) those represented by the affections that ordinarily spring up within the family, particularly between parents and children, husband and wife; and (b) those of fellowship and affection outside the family as between lovers, bosom friends, and boon companions. These relations are all manifestations of a craving for response. These personal relationships are the nursery for the development of human nature and personality. John Watson, who studied several hundred new-born infants in the psychological laboratory, concludes that "the first few years are the all-important ones, for shaping the emotional life of the child."[118] The primary virtues and ideals of which Cooley writes so sympathetically are, for the most part, projections from family life. Certainly in these most intimate relations of life in the contacts of the family circle, in the closest friendships, personality is most severely tried, realizes its most characteristic expressions, or is most completely disorganized.



Just as the life of the family represents the contacts of touch and response, the neighborhood or the village is the natural area of primary contacts and the city the social environment of secondary contacts. In primary association individuals are in contact with each other at practically all points of their lives. In the village "everyone knows everything about everyone else." Canons of conduct are absolute, social control is omnipotent, the status of the family and the individual is fixed. In secondary association individuals are in contact with each other at only one or two points in their lives. In the city, the individual becomes anonymous; at best he is generally known in only one or two aspects of his life. Standards of behavior are relative; the old primary controls have disappeared; the new secondary instruments of discipline, necessarily formal, are for the most part crude and inefficient; the standing of the family and of the individual is uncertain and subject to abrupt changes upward or downward in the social scale.

Simmel has made a brilliant contribution in his analysis of the sociological significance of "the stranger." "The stranger" in the sociological sense is the individual who unites in his social relations primary and secondary contacts. Simmel himself employs the conception of social distance in his statement of the stranger as the combination of the near and the far. It is interesting and significant to determine the different types of the union of intimacy and externality in the relations of teacher and student, physician and patient, minister and layman, lawyer and client, social worker and applicant for relief.

A complete analysis of the bearing upon personal and cultural life of changes from a society based upon contacts of continuity and of primary relations to a society of increasing mobility organized around secondary contacts cannot be given here. Certain of the most obvious contrasts of the transition may, however, be stated. Increasing mobility of persons in society almost inevitably leads to change and therefore to loss of continuity. In primary groups, where social life moves slowly, there is a greater sense of continuity than in secondary groups where it moves rapidly.

There is a further contrast if not conflict between direct and intimate contacts and contacts based upon communication of ideas. All sense of values, as Windelband has pointed out,[119] rests upon concrete experience, that is to say upon sense contacts. Society, to the extent that it is organized about secondary contacts, is based upon abstractions, upon science and technique. Secondary contacts of this type have only secondary values because they represent means rather than ends. Just as all behavior arises in sense impressions it must also terminate in sense impressions to realize its ends and attain its values. The effect of life in a society based on secondary contacts is to build up between the impulse and its end a world of means, to project values into the future, and to direct life toward the realization of distant hopes.

The ultimate effect upon the individual as he becomes accommodated to secondary society is to find a substitute expression for his primary response in the artificial physical environment of the city. The detachment of the person from intimate, direct, and spontaneous contacts with social reality is in large measure responsible for the intricate maze of problems of urban life.

The change from concrete and personal to abstract and impersonal relations in economic and social life began with the Industrial Revolution. The machine is the symbol of the monotonous routine of impersonal, unskilled, large-scale production just as the hand tool is the token of the interesting activity of personal, skilled, handicraft work. The so-called "instinct of workmanship" no longer finds expression in the anonymous standardized production of modern industry.[120]

It is not in industry alone that the natural impulses of the person for response, recognition, and self-expression are balked. In social work, politics, religion, art, and sport the individual is represented now by proxies where formerly he participated in person. All the forms of communal activity in which all persons formerly shared have been taken over by professionals. The great mass of men in most of the social activities of modern life are no longer actors, but spectators. The average man of the present time has been relegated by the influence of the professional politician to the role of taxpayer. In social work organized charity has come between the giver and the needy.

In these and other manifold ways the artificial conditions of city life have deprived the person of most of the natural outlets for the expression of his interests and his energies. To this fact is to be attributed in large part the restlessness, the thirst for novelty and excitement so characteristic of modern life. This emotional unrest has been capitalized by the newspapers, commercialized recreations, fashion, and agitation in their appeal to the sensations, the emotions, and the instincts loosened from the satisfying fixations of primary-group life. The raison d'etre of social work, as well as the fundamental problem of all social institutions in city life must be understood in its relation to this background.

II. MATERIALS

A. PHYSICAL CONTACT AND SOCIAL CONTACT

1. The Frontiers of Social Contact[121]

Sociology deals especially with the phenomena of contact. The reactions which result from voluntary or involuntary contact of human beings with other human beings are the phenomena peculiarly "social," as distinguished from the phenomena that belong properly to biology and psychology.

In the first place, we want to indicate, not the essence of the social, but the location, the sphere, the extent, of the social. If we can agree where it is, we may then proceed to discover what it is. The social, then, is the term next beyond the individual. Assuming, for the sake of analysis, that our optical illusion, "the individual," is an isolated and self-sufficient fact, there are many sorts of scientific problems that do not need to go beyond this fact to satisfy their particular terms. Whether the individual can ever be abstracted from his conditions and remain himself is not a question that we need here discuss. At all events, the individual known to our experience is not isolated. He is connected in various ways with one or more individuals. The different ways in which individuals are connected with each other are indicated by the inclusive term "contact." Starting, then, from the individual, to measure him in all his dimensions and to represent him in all his phases, we find that each person is what he is by virtue of the existence of other persons, and by virtue of an alternating current of influence between each person and all the other persons previously or at the same time in existence. The last native of Central Africa around whom we throw the dragnet of civilization, and whom we inoculate with a desire for whiskey, adds an increment to the demand for our distillery products, and affects the internal revenue of the United States, and so the life-conditions of every member of our population. This is what we mean by "contact." So long as that African tribe is unknown to the outside world, and the world to it, so far as the European world is concerned, the tribe might as well not exist. The moment the tribe comes within touch of the rest of the world, the aggregate of the world's contacts is by so much enlarged; the social world is by so much extended. In other words, the realm of the social is the realm of circuits of reciprocal influence between individuals and the groups which individuals compose. The general term "contact" is proposed to stand for this realm, because it is a colorless word that may mark boundaries without prejudging contents. Wherever there is physical or spiritual contact between persons, there is inevitably a circuit of exchange of influence. The realm of the social is the realm constituted by such exchange. It extends from the producing of the baby by the mother, and the simultaneous producing of the mother by the baby, to the producing of merchant and soldier by the world-powers, and the producing of the world-powers by merchant and soldier.

The most general and inclusive way in which to designate all the phenomena that sociology proper considers, without importing into the term premature hypotheses by way of explanation, is to assert that they are the phenomena of "contact" between persons.

In accordance with what was said about the division of labor between psychology and sociology, it seems best to leave to the psychologist all that goes on inside the individual and to say that the work of the sociologist begins with the things that take place between individuals. This principle of division is not one that can be maintained absolutely, any more than we can hold absolutely to any other abstract classification of real actions. It serves, however, certain rough uses. Our work as students of society begins in earnest when the individual has become equipped with his individuality. This stage of human growth is both cause and effect of the life of human beings side by side in greater or lesser numbers. Under those circumstances individuals are produced; they act as individuals; by their action as individuals they produce a certain type of society; that type reacts on the individuals and helps to transform them into different types of individuals, who in turn produce a modified type of society; and so the rhythm goes on forever. Now the medium through which all this occurs is the fact of contacts, either physical or spiritual. In either case, contacts are collisions of interests in the individuals.

2. The Land and the People[122]

Every clan, tribe, state, or nation includes two ideas, a people and its land, the first unthinkable without the other. History, sociology, ethnology, touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. These areas gain their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features, and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the development of actual or possible inhabitants. A land is fully comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its activities. More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated them in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution of navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population, can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data for the conclusions are drawn from every part of the world and each fact interpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang. Therefore anthropology, sociology, and history should be permeated by geography.

Most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detached from the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. The anthropogeographer recognizes the various social forces, economic and psychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies; but he has something to add. He sees in the land occupied by a primitive tribe or a highly organized state the underlying material bond holding society together, the ultimate basis of their fundamental social activities, which are therefore derivatives from the land. He sees the common territory exercising an integrating force—weak in primitive communities where the group has established only a few slight and temporary relations with its soil, so that this low social complex breaks up readily like its organic counterpart, the low animal organism found in an amoeba; he sees it growing stronger with every advance in civilization involving more complex relations to the land—with settled habitations, with increased density of population, with a discriminating and highly differentiated use of the soil, with the exploitation of mineral resources, and, finally, with that far-reaching exchange of commodities and ideas which means the establishment of varied extra-territorial relations. Finally, the modern society or state has grown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographic advantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself by international trade, and, when possible, to absorb outlying territories by means of colonies. The broader this geographic base, the richer, more varied, its resources, and the more favorable its climate to their exploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections which the members of a social group can establish with it, and through it with each other; or, in other words, the greater may be its ultimate historical significance.

3. Touch and Social Contact[123]

General ideas concerning human relations are the medium through which sexual taboo works, and these must now be examined. If we compare the facts of social taboo generally, or of its subdivision, sexual taboo, we find that the ultimate test of human relations, in both genus and species, is contact. An investigation of primitive ideas concerning the relations of man with man, when guided by this clue, will lay bare the principles which underlie the theory and practice of sexual taboo. Arising, as we have seen, from sexual differentiation, and forced into permanence by difference of occupation and sexual solidarity, this segregation receives the continuous support of religious conceptions as to human relations. These conceptions center upon contact, and ideas of contact are at the root of all conceptions of human relations at any stage of culture; contact is the one universal test, as it is the most elementary form, of mutual relations. Psychology bears this out, and the point is psychological rather than ethnological.

As I have pointed out before and shall have occasion to do so again, a comparative examination, assisted by psychology, of the emotions and ideas of average modern humanity is a most valuable aid to ethnological inquiry. In this connection, we find that desire or willingness for physical contact is an animal emotion, more or less subconscious, which is characteristic of similarity, harmony, friendship, or love. Throughout the world, the greeting of a friend is expressed by contact, whether it be nose-rubbing, or the kiss, the embrace, or the clasp of hands; so the ordinary expression of friendship by a boy, that eternal savage, is contact of arm and shoulder. More interesting still for our purpose is the universal expression by contact of the emotion of love. To touch his mistress is the ever-present desire of the lover, and in this impulse, even if we do not trace it back, as we may without being fanciful, to polar or sexual attraction inherent in the atoms, the [Greek: philia] of Empedocles, yet we may place the beginning and ending of love. When analyzed, the emotion always comes back to contact.

Further, mere willingness for contact is found universally when the person to be touched is healthy, if not clean, or where he is of the same age or class or caste, and, we may add, for ordinary humanity the same sex.

On the other hand, the avoidance of contact, whether consciously or subconsciously presented, is no less the universal characteristic of human relations where similarity, harmony, friendship, or love is absent. This appears in the attitude of men to the sick, to strangers, distant acquaintances, enemies, and in cases of difference of age, position, sympathies or aims, and even of sex. Popular language is full of phrases which illustrate this feeling.

Again, the pathology of the emotions supplies many curious cases where the whole being seems concentrated upon the sense of touch, with abnormal desire or disgust for contact; and in the evolution of the emotions from physiological pleasure and pain, contact plays an important part in connection with functional satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the environment.

In the next place, there are the facts, first, that an element of thought inheres in all sensation, while sensation conditions thought; and secondly, that there is a close connection of all the senses, both in origin—each of them being a modification of the one primary sense of touch—and in subsequent development, where the specialized organs are still co-ordinated through tactile sensation, in the sensitive surface of organism. Again, and here we see the genesis of ideas of contact, it is by means of the tactile sensibility of the skin and membranes of sense-organs, forming a sensitized as well as a protecting surface, that the nervous system conveys to the brain information about the external world, and this information is in its original aspect the response to impact. Primitive physics, no less than modern, recognizes that contact is a modified form of a blow. These considerations show that contact not only plays an important part in the life of the soul but must have had a profound influence on the development of ideas, and it may now be assumed that ideas of contact have been a universal and original constant factor in human relations and that they are so still. The latter assumption is to be stressed, because we find that the ideas which lie beneath primitive taboo are still a vital part of human nature, though mostly emptied of their religious content; and also because, as I hold, ceremonies and etiquette, such as still obtain, could not possess such vitality as they do unless there were a living psychological force behind them, such as we find in elementary ideas which come straight from functional processes.

These ideas of contact are primitive in each sense of the word, at whatever stage of culture they appear. They seem to go back in origin and in character to that highly developed sensibility of all animal and even organized life, which forms at once a biological monitor and a safeguard for the whole organism in relation to its environment. From this sensibility there arise subjective ideas concerning the safety or danger of the environment, and in man we may suppose these subjective ideas as to his environment, and especially as to his fellow-men, to be the origin of his various expressions of avoidance or desire for contact.

Lastly, it is to be observed that avoidance of contact is the most conspicuous phenomenon attaching to cases of taboo when its dangerous character is prominent. In taboo the connotation of "not to be touched" is the salient point all over the world, even in cases of permanent taboo such as belongs to Samoan and Maori chiefs, with whom no one dared come in contact; and so we may infer the same aversion to be potential in all such relations.

B. SOCIAL CONTACT IN RELATION TO SOLIDARITY AND TO MOBILITY

1. The In-Group and the Out-Group[124]

The conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the groups is determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence. The internal organization of each group corresponds to its size. A group of groups may have some relation to each other (kin, neighborhood, alliance, connubium, and commercium) which draws them together and differentiates them from others. Thus a differentiation arises between ourselves, the we-group, or in-group, and everybody else, or the others-groups, out-groups. The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so far as agreements have modified it. If a group is exogamic, the women in it were born abroad somewhere. Other foreigners who might be found in it are adopted persons, guest-friends, and slaves.

The relation of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war toward others-groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest internal discord should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies also make government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent quarrels and enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are, the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without—all grow together, common products of the same situation.

Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination.

2. Sympathetic Contacts versus Categoric Contacts[125]

Let us now consider what takes place when two men, mere strangers to one another, come together. The motive of classification, which I have considered in another chapter, leads each of them at once to recognize the approaching object first as living, then as human. The shape and dress carry the categorizing process yet farther, so that they are placed in groups, as of this or that tribe or social class, and as these determinations are made they arouse the appropriate sympathies or hatreds such as by experience have become associated with the several categories. Be it observed that these judgments are spontaneous, instinctive, and unnoticed. They are made so by immemorial education in the art of contact which man has inherited from the life of the ancestral beasts and men; they have most likely been in some measure affirmed by selection, for these determinations as to the nature of the neighbor were in the lower stages of existence in brute and man of critical importance, the creatures lived or died according as they determined well or ill, swiftly or slowly. If we observe what takes place in our own minds at such meetings we will see that the action in its immediateness is like that of the eyelids when the eye is threatened. As we say, it is done before we know it.

With this view as to the conditions of human contact, particularly of what occurs when men first meet one another, let us glance at what takes place in near intercourse. We have seen that at the beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is inevitably dealt with in the categoric way. He is taken as a member of a group, which group is denoted to us by a few convenient signs; as our acquaintance with a particular person advances, this category tends to become qualified. Its bounds are pushed this way and that until they break down. It is to be noted in this process that the category fights for itself, or we for it, so that the result of the battle between the immediate truth and the prejudice is always doubtful. It is here that knowledge, especially that gained by individual experience, is most helpful. The uninformed man, who begins to find, on the nearer view of an Israelite, that the fellow is like himself, holds by his category in the primitive way. The creature is a Jew, therefore the evidence of kinship must not count. He who is better informed is, or should be, accustomed to amend his categories. He may, indeed, remember that he is dealing with a neighbor of the race which gave us not only Christ, but all the accepted prophets who have shaped our own course, and his understanding helps to cast down the barriers of instinctive prejudice.

At the stage of advancing acquaintance where friendship is attained, the category begins to disappear from our minds. We may, indeed, measure the advance in this relation by the extent to which it has been broken down. Looking attentively at our mental situation as regards those whom we know pretty well, we see that most of them are still, though rather faintly, classified into groups. While a few of the nearer stand forth by themselves, all of the nearest to our hearts are absolutely individualized, so that our judgments of them are made on the basis of our own motives and what we of ourselves discern. We may use categoric terms concerning our lovers, spouses, or children, but they have no real meaning; these persons are to us purely individual, all trace of the inclusive category has disappeared; they are, in the full sense of the word, our neighbors, being so near that when we look upon them we see nothing else, not even ourselves.

Summing up these considerations concerning human contact, it may be said that the world works by a system of individualities rising in scale as we advance from the inorganic through the organic series until we find the summit in man. The condition of all these individuals is that of isolation; each is necessarily parted from all the others in the realm, each receiving influences, and, in turn, sending forth its peculiar tide of influences to those of its own and other kinds. This isolation in the case of man is singularly great for the reason that he is the only creature we know in the realm who is so far endowed with consciousness that he can appreciate his position and know the measure of his solitude. In the case of all individuals the discernible is only a small part of what exists. In man the measure of this presentation is, even to himself, very small, and that which he can readily make evident to his neighbor is an exceedingly limited part of the real whole. Yet it is on this slender basis that we must rest our relations with the fellow man if we are to found them upon knowledge. The imperfection of this method of ascertaining the fellow-man is well shown by the trifling contents of the category discriminations we apply to him. While, as has been suggested, much can be done by those who have gained in knowledge of our kind by importing understandings into our relations with men, the only effective way to the betterment of those relations is through the sympathies.

What can be done by knowledge in helping us to a comprehension of the fellow-man is at best merely explanatory of his place in the phenomenal world; of itself it has only scientific value. The advantage of the sympathetic way of approach is that in this method the neighbor is accounted for on the supposition that he is ourself in another form, so we feel for and with him on the instinctive hypothesis that he is essentially ourself. There can be no question that this method of looking upon other individualities is likely to lead to many errors. We see examples of these blunders in all the many grades of the personifying process, from the savage's worship of a tree or stone to the civilized man's conception of a human-like god. We see them also in the attribution to the lower animals of thoughts and feelings which are necessarily limited to our own kind, but in the case of man the conception of identity gives a minimum of error and a maximum of truth. It, indeed, gives a truer result than could possibly be attained by any scientific inquiries that we could make, or could conceive of being effectively made, and this for the following reasons.

When, as in the sympathetic state, we feel that the neighbor of our species is essentially ourself, the tacit assumption is that his needs and feelings are as like our own as our own states of mind at diverse times are like one another, so that we might exchange motives with him without experiencing any great sense of strangeness. What we have in mind is not the measure of instruction or education, not the class or station or other adventitious circumstances, but the essential traits of his being. Now this supposition is entirely valid. All we know of mankind justifies the statement that, as regards all the qualities and motives with which the primal sympathies deal, men are remarkably alike. Their loves, hates, fears, and sorrows are alike in their essentials; so that the postulate of sympathy that the other man is essentially like one's self is no idle fancy but an established truth. It not only embodies the judgment of all men in thought and action but has its warrant from all the science we can apply to it.

It is easy to see how by means of sympathy we can at once pass the gulf which separates man from man. All the devices of the ages in the way of dumb or spoken language fail to win across the void, and leave the two beings apart; but with a step the sympathetic spirit passes the gulf. In this strange feature we have the completion of the series of differences between the inorganic and the organic groups of individualities. In the lower or non-living isolations there is no reason why the units should do more than mechanically interact. All their service in the realm can be best effected by their remaining forever completely apart. But when we come to the organic series, the units begin to have need of understanding their neighbors, in order that they may form those beginnings of the moral order which we find developing among the members even of the lowliest species. Out of this sympathetic accord arises the community, which we see in its simple beginnings in the earlier stages of life; it grows with the advance in the scale of being, and has its supreme success in man. Human society, the largest of all organic associations, requires that its units be knit together in certain common purposes and understandings, and the union can only be made effective by the ways of sympathy—by the instinctive conviction of essential kinship.

3. Historical Continuity and Civilization[126]

In matters connected with political and economical institutions we notice among the natural races very great differences in the sum of their civilization. Accordingly we have to look among them, not only for the beginnings of civilization, but for a very great part of its evolution, and it is equally certain that these differences are to be referred less to variations in endowment than to great differences in the conditions of their development. Exchange has also played its part, and unprejudiced observers have often been more struck in the presence of facts by agreement than by difference. "It is astonishing," exclaims Chapman, when considering the customs of the Damaras, "what a similarity there is in the manners and practices of the human family throughout the world. Even here, the two different classes of Damaras practice rites in common with the New Zealanders, such as that of chipping out the front teeth and cutting off the little finger." It is less astonishing if, as the same traveler remarks, their agreement with the Bechuanas goes even farther. Now, since the essence of civilization lies first in the amassing of experiences, then in the fixity with which these are retained, and lastly in the capacity to carry them farther or to increase them, our first question must be, how is it possible to realize the first fundamental condition of civilization, namely, the amassing a stock of culture in the form of handiness, knowledge, power, capital? It has long been agreed that the first step thereto is the transition from complete dependence upon what Nature freely offers to a conscious exploitation through man's own labor, especially in agriculture or cattle-breeding, of such of her fruits as are most important to him. This transition opens at one stroke all the most remote possibilities of Nature, but we must always remember at the same time that it is still a long way from the first step to the height which has now been attained.

The intellect of man and also the intellect of whole races shows a wide discrepancy in regard to differences of endowment as well as in regard to the different effects which external circumstances produce upon it. Especially are there variations in the degree of inward coherence and therewith of the fixity or duration of the stock of intellect. The want of coherence, the breaking up of this stock, characterizes the lower stages of civilization no less than its coherence, its inalienability, and its power of growth do the higher. We find in low stages a poverty of tradition which allows these races neither to maintain a consciousness of their earlier fortunes for any appreciable period nor to fortify and increase their stock of intelligence either through the acquisitions of individual prominent minds or through the adoption and fostering of any stimulus. Here, if we are not entirely mistaken, is the basis of the deepest-seated differences between races. The opposition of historic and non-historic races seems to border closely upon it.

There is a distinction between the quickly ripening immaturity of the child and the limited maturity of the adult who has come to a stop in many respects. What we mean by "natural" races is something much more like the latter than the former. We call them races deficient in civilization, because internal and external conditions have hindered them from attaining to such permanent developments in the domain of culture as form the mark of the true civilized races and the guaranties of progress. Yet we should not venture to call any of them cultureless, so long as none of them is devoid of the primitive means by which the ascent to higher stages can be made—language, religion, fire, weapons, implements; while the very possession of these means, and many others, such as domestic animals and cultivated plants, testifies to varied and numerous dealings with those races which are completely civilized.

The reasons why they do not make use of these gifts are of many kinds. Lower intellectual endowment is often placed in the first rank. That is a convenient but not quite fair explanation. Among the savage races of today we find great differences in endowments. We need not dispute that in the course of development races of even slightly higher endowments have got possession of more and more means of culture, and gained steadiness and security for their progress, while the less endowed remained behind. But external conditions, in respect to their furthering or hindering effects, can be more clearly recognized and estimated; and it is juster and more logical to name them first. We can conceive why the habitations of the savage races are principally to be found on the extreme borders of the inhabited world, in the cold and hot regions, in remote islands, in secluded mountains, in deserts. We understand their backward condition in parts of the earth which offer so few facilities for agriculture and cattle-breeding as Australia, the Arctic regions, or the extreme north and south of America. In the insecurity of incompletely developed resources we can see the chain which hangs heavily on their feet and confines their movements within a narrow space. As a consequence their numbers are small, and from this again results the small total amount of intellectual and physical accomplishment, the rarity of eminent men, the absence of the salutary pressure exercised by surrounding masses on the activity and forethought of the individual, which operates in the division of society into classes, and the promotion of a wholesome division of labor. A partial consequence of this insecurity of resources is the instability of natural races. A nomadic strain runs through them all, rendering easier to them the utter incompleteness of their unstable political and economical institutions, even when an indolent agriculture seems to tie them to the soil. Thus it often comes about that, in spite of abundantly provided and well-tended means of culture, their life is desultory, wasteful of power, unfruitful. This life has no inward consistency, no secure growth; it is not the life in which the germs of civilization first grew up to the grandeur in which we frequently find them at the beginnings of what we call history. It is full rather of fallings-away from civilization and dim memories from civilized spheres which in many cases must have existed long before the commencement of history as we have it.

By the word "civilization" or "culture" we denote usually the sum of all the acquirements at a given time of the human intelligence. When we speak of stages, of higher and lower, of semi-civilization, of civilized and "natural" races, we apply to the various civilizations of the earth a standard which we take from the degree that we have ourselves attained. Civilization means our civilization.

The confinement, in space as in time, which isolates huts, villages, races, no less than successive generations, involves the negation of culture; in its opposite, the intercourse of contemporaries and the interdependence of ancestors and successors, lies the possibility of development. The union of contemporaries secures the retention of culture, the linking of generations its unfolding. The development of civilization is a process of hoarding. The hoards grow of themselves so soon as a retaining power watches over them. In all domains of human creation and operation we shall see the basis of all higher development in intercourse. Only through co-operation and mutual help, whether between contemporaries, whether from one generation to another, has mankind succeeded in climbing to the stage of civilization on which its highest members now stand. On the nature and extent of this intercourse the growth depends. Thus the numerous small assemblages of equal importance, formed by the family stocks, in which the individual had no freedom, were less favorable to it than the larger communities and states of the modern world, with their encouragement to individual competition.