This latter principle of cross-fertilization of cultures is, in my judgment, a fine example of a sociological principle as illustrative both of the nature of such principles and their significance in sociology, and in the social art of social self-direction. First we study natural social evolution to see how it takes place, how nature brings about social change. That is pure sociology. We discover that nature brings it about, in one way, through the conflict of social groups and the survival of the fittest. Now we know how it is done, and we can do it ourselves. But, obviously, if we should utilize this principle, it would mean enormous waste. We should kill off an entire group for perhaps a small increment of superiority represented by the surviving group. But when we find that nature brings about social progress also by the intermingling of cultures, and that this intermingling is achieved in many ways, we may then bring the same thing to pass by that way which to us seems most economical. In either case a knowledge of the principle is equivalent to the power to control. As Comte said, Science, d'où prévoyance; prévoyance, d'où action.

Without insistence on overpreciseness, may we not say that there are really two kinds of principles that may not improperly be called principles of sociology? (Sometimes they may be two aspects of the same principle.) First, there are the fundamental truths about society that serve the sociologist primarily in the discovery of additional social truths, and so in building up the body of knowledge that has come to be known as the science of society-"keys to unlock doors," as Professor Ross has said. These are primarily of scientific concern. They may be "organized and combined into a coherent whole." Science, from one point of view, is itself an art. It is the art of discovering truth. As such it is interested in the formulation of laws and the statement of fundamental truths (principles) that enable it to penetrate farther into regions of the unknown. Such principles are used by the scientist in laying down the foundations and constructing the framework of his scientific structure. Sociological principles from this viewpoint are of primary importance to the sociologist as such. They enable him to practice with increasing success the art of ascertaining sociological truth. They may properly be called principles of

the science of sociology, the aim being scientific discovery through scientific organization and synthesis.

Secondly, there are fundamental truths about society that definitely explain social processes. These are important, not so much, perhaps, from the viewpoint of sociological science—although they may be that, too-as from that of possible social control or direction. They are for the service of the social art, for which sociological science exists. They are in a sense the ultima Thule of sociological exploration. Their discovery finishes the task of the sociologist as providing explanations of the social process and modes of intelligent social action for the use of those who would undertake to modify social evolution in the interest of social betterment, that is, in social direction and social self-direction, which, again, is the final object of sociology, though it lies outside of the science itself. It is this identity of those truths with the finalities of-sociological investigation, and their character as prerequisites of successful social control, that make this class of sociological principles of supreme importance. They are principles of sociology and, at the same time, principles of social change.

We see, then, in conclusion, that there is confusion among sociologists in the use of the term "principle"; that sociological principles, in a comprehensive sense, are general and fundamental truths applicable (1) in scientific procedure, and (2) in social procedure. But in the final and most meaningful and helpful significance of the expression, particularly from the viewpoint of action, they are the modes of operation employed by nature in the initiation and continuance of the various changes observable in the realm of natural social phenomena. Such changes may always be expressed in terms of law. A knowledge of the laws of social change is of practical value, since in successful social direction we must act in conformity with them. But behind each law, and explaining it, is a corresponding principle. This principle, when discovered, may be effectively employed in the great art of social direction, which may, in time, become social self-direction. Such being the case, the discovery of this kind of sociological principles is the fundamental and ultimate object of the scientific study of society.

STUDIES IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

VI. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF KIND OF A FUNDAMENTALIST

GROUP

HEINRICH HERMAN MAURER
Lewis Institute

ABSTRACT

The categories of the spiritual man serve to define the social situation between the group and the outgroup. The evaluative emphasis of theology upon “rationalism," the rational medium of out-groups, neutralizes the drift toward a new social synthesis. The process is illustrated in a set of attitudes of a group toward Calvinists, Methodists, Masons, which groups, by presenting new social objects, gave rise in American society to a new self-consciousness, a new consciousness of kind.

"Something there is that does not love a wall," but the farmer is apt to suspect behind that something "just varmint." Where he meets it as a social attitude, he is prone to rationalize the thing as coming from the "natural man." Because, for the farmer, good fences make good neighbors; the good neighbor minds his fences, and the good Christian prompts him with the bowlders of his theology.

The present writer has attempted to describe the individualism, the socialism of a particular type of American in terms of his fences, so to speak. Before proceeding to relate those fences to the pattern of a historical religion, he would now stop to consider some of the elements in the social situation which religion was here called to define, to rationalize and endow with feeling; the social attitudes which it was called upon to sanction. A want for fencing must be related to the moving of so much barren rock.1

1

The author has felt encouraged in his mode of procedure by reading Willey and Willey, "The Conditioned Response and the Consciousness of Kind," in Amer. Jour. Sociol., XXX, 1; C. F. Bartlett, "Group Organization and Social Behavior," in Int. Jour. Ethics, XXXV, 4, see esp. p. 356; also G. H. Mead, "The Genesis of Self and Social Control," ibid., Vol. XXXV, esp. pp. 254-61, 276. His general hypothesis is still Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes (1907), p. viii; his specific startingpoint, Simmel, Soziologie (1922), p. 318: “Die Structur der objectiven gesellschaftlichen Gebilde gibt. . . . die Möglichkeit die Singularität des Subjects zu constatieren oder auszudrücken."

The dominating element in the situation of our immigrant culture group is on the objective side, the element of change. The oldest rational medium for meeting change in its most startling form is religion. The valuation of change, then, any new situation and every new element therein, can hardly escape the implications of the hypothesis concerning change upon which the categories of theology are based. If it is granted that the particular creed under observation entails still the sublimation of a static universe and conceives the process of soul conservation in terms of identity and continuity, it stands to reason that the situation must be dominated, on the subjective side, by the element of fear. We shall relate the elements of change on the objective side of the situation to the element of fear on the other, and then proceed to show how this fear, rationalized into social fear, affected the social process in America. We continue to assume that thus we are analyzing the function of religion in conditioning an ego, a socius, a "consciousness of kind."

Nothing would be easier than an account of the causes for fear in the situation of our immigrant group; from the dangers of water and wilderness to the risks of a functional type in an environment to which he was not adjusted. Problematic indeed must seem the survival of a products-economy mind confronted with a moneyeconomy system of valuation. Desperate the case of a group with what must seem to be essentially the technique of a noncompetitive society in a world where to the victor belonged the spoils; with a mind set for continuous performance facing suddenly a dynamic situation. The relative rationalism of aping, adapted to a static situation, faced suddenly conditions where tinkering was in order.

The German Lutheran, we may indeed say, found much conspiring against his survival. Not only was the spirit of his time

Absolutely no conclusions are warranted from this as to the function of religion elsewhere and in general. The decisive element is the social situation, and religion is just as resourceful in sanctions for the putting on of "the new man." The history of the category "regeneration" is a case in point: the logic of baptism, regeneratio, renascimento, has shaped the attitude toward the Renaissance. It describes an entirely different evaluative emphasis of religion on the "natural man" and on "natural law" and a different relation of the same to the "spiritual man" and to the law of God. It also accounts in American history for the attitudes attached to the category "progress" by other religious and culture groups.

against him, his way of thinking, his group life, but in his creed and church he found here powerful rivals. He was, indeed, in the dispersion, in a minority everywhere, even in his church. His very language turned against him, for if it preserved him, it also stifled and mummified. In his American offspring he faced daily the problem of identity and continuity; with every child that he reared he brought on his own oblivion, for it must only swell the growing majority of those that understood him not. If anywhere, the sociological effectiveness of the question, "What must I do to be saved?" will be observable here.

The implication of change to the group is its assimilation; assimilation of a type to which its own hypothesis denies survival fitness in religion, and one which it dislikes in life. The conflict situation is thus necessarily endowed with much fear for body and soul, and the result is startling. For the sociology of conflict and the logic of religion combined to produce much momentum. Because the majority was identified with change, and with the relative rationalism of the Calvinistic creeds, our minority became traditionalism personified. But it did not merely stand pat. It went back to seventeenth-century ground to choose a foothold, it leaned strongly toward the sixteenth century, and sometimes fell over backward into the fifteenth and beyond. The demand for assimilation was met with alienation and estrangement.

Since the rational medium in the conflict is also a medium of social choices, the polarity of its categories entails of necessity the proposition that "he who is not for me is against me." Regardless, then, of the priority of the fear of or the fear for or even the actual objective ground for either, once the one or the other is aroused, the whole new situation is automatically defined. It is defined in terms of an earlier situation of which our categories are but symbols, and from which they have their meaning. In other words, granted that something within our group or without has mobilized the behavior mechanism, touched off the alarm system entailed in religion and theology for warding off fear, the whole scenery is illuminated as by magic. Whatever his real intentions or merit, he who by that light is banned beyond the charmed circle of the be