antecedence and consequence, or to relations of interaction. Either conception, in so far as it eliminates the other, is an abstraction; the interaction concept is perhaps the greater departure from naïve experience, but it is one which we need for the purposes of science. Relations of antecedence and consequence, except in so far as they are taken to be capable of extraction from time in relatively small units, are the terms of historical explanation-the kind of explanation which Comte and his most direct followers have sought to reduce to the most general terms.19 The terms of a scientific sociological vocabulary should designate types of interaction, in the course of which certain types of change take place. Otherwise stated, it is the task of sociology, as a natural science, not primarily to point out the "that" of the social becoming primarily, but to show "how" through the working of a process of interaction among the factors involved a certain typical form of relationship and of activity-i.e., of interaction-succeeds another typical form. 19 For a recent restatement of the Comtean tradition, see DeGrange, McQuilkin, La Courbe du Mouvement Sociétal (Paris: Librairie Auguste-Comte, 1923). THE NEED OF A SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROBLEMS OF SEX CONDUCT III. THE INVARIABLE PRESENCE OF SOCIAL CONTROL IN MAN'S SEXUAL CONDUCT CHARLES W. MARGOLD ABSTRACT Social control is not mere outward conformity, nor a rigid traditionalism which can be rendered futile by the private use of birth-control methods, as is alleged. Social influence and communication are, rather, inherent phases of man's inescapable social life. Social control may be rationally self-imposed. A study of the facts shows that social control is invariably present even in certain sex practices which might appear to be, among certain peoples, free from such control. As we have seen,' radical sex practices cannot be justified by merely biological data. A point of view that is primarily physiological cannot suffice as an approach to sex problems. Man's sexual conduct is necessarily social in its nature, because man's mental life is inherently social. Its source as biologically given is inadequate for man's sexual acts and practices. Man's conduct implies the mediation of thoughts, sentiments, habits, and ideals. And in those individuals are interdependent. No man lives his human life, sexual or other, altogether for himself, without giving and receiving suggestions, corrections, encouragements, and controls. All men and women are socii, living an inescapable social life, knowingly and unknowingly communicating, stimulating, determining, conditioning each other. This fact gives social control an inherent and invariable place in every individual's living. The common life, in its countless subgroups and aspects, necessarily has its standards and its ingrained notions of what constitutes the accepted good. The working ideals of right and wrong conduct, the worked-out ways of doing things, 1 See the first and second parts of this study in the January number of this Journal. 1 are necessarily parts of it. They lie at the basis of the individuals' doings, disciplining and compelling them. Whether society's control takes place by putting an increased premium upon intelligence, stressing the group's working principles rather than their crystallized forms-molding and regulating men, that is, by building up vigorously socialized imaginations and more generously inclusive ideas of self," with consciences well-instructed in the group's best heritage-or whether it controls for the most part through emphasis upon inculcated habituations or through mere rules of conduct; or whether it will even seek primarily to restrain and coerce by relying merely upon outward constraints and physical penalties, it does, and at its peril must, in one way or another, maintain in individuals the group ways of living. 3 The control of a group over its members can be noted directly by observing in detail the specific group arrangements, the particular working systems, and group modes of carrying out given lines of conduct, or by noting the similarities and common attitudes produced through group life, with the resulting specific ideals, peculiar desires, and characteristically group acts and practices of men.* It can also be seen, as Professor Dewey describes it, in its simple functioning, as a direct give-and-take process. "Some activity proceeds from a man," Professor Dewey says, "then it sets up reactions in the surroundings. Others approve, disapprove, protest, encourage, share, and resist. Even letting a man alone is a definite response. Envy, admiration, and imitation are complicities. Neutrality is non-existent." Professor E. A. Ross would have us see social control rather as the instruments to secure order in social organization, as the more organized and more elaborate agencies and social institutions." Says Professor Ross: 'Cf. C. H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, chaps. v and vi. 'As is attempted for the most part below, in this essay, in regard to showing that social control is invariably present even in certain sex acts and practices conceived socially most free in the given societies. 'As is illustrated in the fourth section of the complete essay, "The Tenability of the Basic Claim for Some Radical Innovations in Man's Sexual Conduct," to be published shortly. "Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 16-17. 'Cf. his Social Control, especially Part II. Some of the instruments society employare directed upon the will; others are used to influence the feelings; while su others are addressed to the judgment. In the first group are Social Sugesti Custom, and Education, which use direct means to give the will a certain bent,nd Public Opinion, Law, and Religious Belief, which employ punishments and reards. Among the instruments which appeal to feelings are Social Religion, Pesonal Ideals, Ceremony, Art, and Personality. Enlightenment, Illusive and Soal Valuations are addressed to the judgment." ver so However, whether viewed in one of its phases or in alother, social control is hardly ever a mere device to obtain outward conformity to unmeaning convention and rigid tradition. It is ne external as to be rendered altogether futile in sex conduct, o dictates unenforceable by the mere use of contraceptive metho as is alleged. rits HS, As to social control issuing necessarily from a rigid traditional ism, it is true, of course, that the more institutional phases of social control can, under certain conditions, be so formalized as to tend to pervert the function and reduce to dead mechanisms the most essential instruments of human life. In societies, however, where such is the case, we have an ossified and abnormal condition. The collective means, without which the larger human life is impossible, are turned, indeed, into "shackles of the spirit." Instead of a vital social control we have a shallow and blind conventionalism, with the dwarfed and starved human life that must result, and also a disorganizing and threatening conflict between the vital urgings of man's psychic energies and the mechanical and otherwise inadequate expression afforded by the routinized ways.8 Moreover, even if it cannot be denied that in our own society and in current sex practices there is an unnecessary amount of dissimulation, of unintelligent ways, and dead routine, it does not follow that we are to disregard the social aspects of man's conduct or to posit a private sphere of "moral intellectual individualism.” What is necessary is rather an increased stress upon man's higher intelligence, making for an open-minded readiness in re-evaluing and reshaping the group ways. 8 'The Principles of Sociology, p. 429. Italics in the original. * Cf. C. H. Cooley, Social Organization, chap. xxx. Havelock Ellis, The Task of Social Hygiene, p. 494 et passim. Not the discarding of social symbols, nor the depreciation of custom, convention, and tradition as necessarily rigid, external, and undesirable; but rather a greater common effort to enhance man's psychic life, exercising in conduct the higher faculties of men's minds,1o is what will keep man's conduct at its best, and render the use of convention and tradition free and rational. What men of our civilization now need is not the doing away with, or minimizing, society's control over its members. It is rather the rendering men and women so actively desirous of the best ways of conduct, and so invigorating their understanding of these ways, as to make the group's control, as Professor Giddings calls it, a "social self-control," based progressively upon scientific fact and ascertainable utility. In this way social control can be self-ordained and rational, "a rational control through standards,"13 embracing a watchfulness over the operations of human life, which continually seeks to apply as intelligent a remedy, when things go wrong, as present and past social experience, group values, and scientific scrutiny can muster. Professor Ross points out that men need at times an "iron" control, while at other times, such as ours, perhaps a "silken❞ one will best do.1 Some men can be "steered" largely through social evaluations,15 by appeal to their socialized imaginations, or by fashioning their personal ideals. Even the rod of the law, with its physical coercions, cannot, for others, be dispensed with. Yet in all times, and everywhere, whatever specific means or level of appeal predominates, social control will emerge from the interrelated social whole of human life. In its widest working, social control includes all the mental interactions, all the approvals, condemnations, suggestions, coercions, and pressures that continually go on in human life. These form impersonal wholes, or tendencies of influence, which are sources of authority and discipline. The family, the school, the 10 Cf. C. A. Ellwood, Christianity and Social Science, chap. iii; C. H. Cooley, Social Process, chap. xxxv. 12 Cf. Studies in the Theory of Human Society, pp. 200–208. 13 C. H. Cooley, Social Process, chap. xxxii. 14 Cf. Principles of Sociology, p. 431. 15 Ibid. |