Power (social)

“ In some early states of society, these forces might be, and were, too much ahead of the power which society then possessed of disciplining and controlling them. There has been a time when the element of spontaneity and individuality was in excess, and the social principle had a hard struggle with it. ”

“ As we move beyond civilization onto a more mature and more complicated culture level, we may have a workable system of social priorities, but does our oncoming stream of manpower have the interest, the imagination, the competence, the sense of social responsibility and the staying power necessary to arouse in a series of generations the will and determination to carry out social policy? ”

“ Each social formation, through each of its material activities, exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and ideals wins also its place and power. ”

“ But the significant point is that the power both have is social power, and is in no sense proportional to the intensity of their own emotions. It arises from the emotional power in the minds of many men. ”

“ Many other social forces, national character, ideas, customs—the whole inherited ethos of the people—individual peculiarities, love of power, sense of fair dealing, public opinion, conscience, local ties, family connections, civil legislation—all exercise upon industrial affairs as real an influence as personal interest, and, furthermore, they exercise an influence of precisely the same kind. They all operate ethically, through human will, judgment, motives, and in this respect one of them has no advantage over another. ”

“ The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognised as the vital question of the future. ”

“ In modern as in mediaeval times, devotion of the strong to the weak follows as a natural consequence from the subordination of Politics to Morals. Now, as then, the spiritual power will be nobly seconded by members of the governing class in the attempt to bring that class to a stricter sense of social duty. ”

“ Such, for instance, are the poets, prophets, philosophers, inventors and men of science of all ages, the great political, military and religious organizers, [Pg 265] and even the real captains of industry and commerce. All power involves in its origin mental or spiritual force of some sort; and so far as it attaches to passive attributes, like hereditary social position, offices, bank-accounts, and the like, it does so through the aid of conventions and habits which regard these things as repositories of spiritual force and allow them to exercise its function. ”

“ Ultimate moral motives and forces are nothing more or less than social intelligence—the power of observing and comprehending social situations,—and social power—trained capacities of control—at work in the service of social interest and aims. ”

“ It is settled by opinion, prejudice, and preference, not by knowledge, skill, and tact.
It is for this reason that the ethical or political problem takes precedence of the technical and persuasive problems, both in the management of subordinate institutions, and in the exer- cise of public coercion. Men are, first of all, creatures of desire. The individual may choose to use his control of his fellows in industry, in the family, in the church, for self-aggran- dizement, for political power, for social promotion, for philan- thropy, education, or religion. ”

“ The powers of state, therefore, should embrace individual life in its entirety; from infancy to mature age, “in all conditions and relations, whether domestic, religious, social, industrial or political.” ”

“ The answer is, capacity on the part of the subject for membership of a society, for determination of the will, and through it of the bodily organisation, by the conception of a well-being as common to self with others. This capacity is the foundation of the right, or the right potentially, which becomes actual through the recognition of the capacity by a society, and through the power which the society in consequence secures to the individual of acting according to the capacity. ”

“ That which, when we become capable of reflection, we term conscience, consists in pleasure in forms of action furthering the welfare of society—forms gradually moulded to habit with the development of social relations,—and in a corresponding pain at the realization of having failed of such action; the knowledge of the demand, by society as a whole or by a part of society, of action in accord with the general welfare, and the sense of the justice of this demand, constituting the feeling of obligation and duty. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ There are ambitions, interests, customs, prejudices, conventionalities, and a thousand intangible forms of social force, that all react upon the individual man like so many conflicting winds and currents. ”

“ We hear, indeed, some wild talk about the establishment of a social order, or disorder, without government and without laws and courts of justice, in which everybody can do what he or she pleases, and that when everybody can do what he or she pleases, everybody will do right, and have enough of the good things of the world, and be happy. ”

“ Workers should rule because they are the only useful people; the sole creators of wealth; their dominance would mean the end of social wrong, and the coming of the millennium of peace and brotherhood, the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth, the final triumph of Humanity! ”

“ But in estimating the power of a community, moral, as well as physical causes, must be taken into the calculation; and in estimating the effects of liberty on power, it must not be overlooked, that it is, in itself, an important agent in augmenting the force of moral, as well as of physical power. ”

“ Your workman or your bourgeois who has risen, and who interests himself in social or political questions, is always thinking, “Why shouldn’t I have as many rights and privileges as these other people have?” The aristocrat who descends is always thinking, “Why shouldn’t these other people have as many rights and privileges as I have?” ”

“ How can one in the seclusion of private life accurately measure the force of {278} the influence those are subjected to who live and act in the center of vast and powerful civil and social circles? The more you mix with men the less you will be disposed to quarrel, and the more charitable and liberal will you become. The fact that you do not understand another is quite as likely to be your fault as his. ”

“ And the prosperity of individuals, of families, and of nations, for this life and the life to come, depends more on the proper control and regulation of these principles than on any other social or moral duty. ”

“ Their social units they endow with religious beliefs, moral distinctions, a full-fledged ethical code, a sense of honor and self-respect, various ideals and valuations of conduct, and Heaven knows what besides—all of which, far from being instinctive, are products of education, and by their presence give signal proof that the more delicate devices of control have done their work so well that the cruder and more vigorous machinery need not be put into motion. ”

“ Control.—The public mirror of the press reveals a third characteristic of social life. Activity and association are both under control. Activity would result in exploitation of the weak by the strong, and finally in anarchy, if there were no exercise of control. Under control activities are co-ordinated, individuals and classes are brought to work in co-operation and not in antagonism, and under an enlightened and sanctioned authority life becomes richer, fuller, and more truly free.
Social control begins in the individual mind. Instincts and feelings are held in the leash of rational thought. ”

“ Skill and sagacity in managing the affairs of common life, or wisdom in council and command, is nothing else than an extensive and ready knowledge of the intricate movements of the great machine of the social system; and the high price which this skill and wisdom always bears among men, may be held to represent two abstractions; first, the perplexing Irregularities of the system to which human agency is to be conformed; and then, the real and substantial Uniformity of the movements of that system. ”

“ Rash indeed, would be the man, who, if required to dispense, not only with law and usage, but with all religious faith, all distinctions as to the moral worth of types of conduct, all sense of duty, all pride and self-reverence, should undertake to build an orderly and stable society on the spontaneous sympathies and social instincts of men. ”

“ In these letters will be found, along with many crude ideas, the same belief in the conformity of social phenomena to unvariable laws; the same belief in human progression as determined by such laws; the same belief in the moral modification of men as caused by social discipline; the same belief in the tendency of social arrangements “of themselves to assume a condition of stable equilibrium;” the same repudiation of state-control over various departments of social life; the same limitation of state-action to the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens. ”

“ Has man individual traits, physical and mental, sufficiently strong to stand the strain of a highly complex social order? It will depend upon the strength of his moral character, mental traits, and physical resistance, and whether justice among men shall prevail, manifested in humane and sound social action. Future progress will depend upon a clearness of vision, a unity of thought, the standardization of the objectives of social achievement, and, moreover, an elevation of human conduct. ”

“ The other aims decreed in the fundamental law like the development of personal and collective discipline, civic conscience, vocational skill and social efficiency, should be subordinated to the cultivation of moral character as the handmaiden of an intransigent nationalism. ”

“ To keep in view this general end, to ascertain the way in which the powers composing that social necessity act, and their variable ingredients, and to maintain that end in them and against them, is the work of an institution which assumes on one hand, to the concrete of civil society, the position of an external universality. ”

“ I was about to say that the overruling will of Providence and the free agency of man were the two great motive powers of the moral universe—the human free will, being the great inward and impulsive force, is the centrifugal or flying-off power, and the government of God the centripetal or constraining power ”

“ The modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to social relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social progress. ”

“ It was therefore necessary to give them a few positive precepts, moulding and regulating their moral and social conduct, to make them 'new creatures' with new notions and new purposes, and to remodel the national life. ”

“ A number of new passionate creeds and movements, appealing to the reason, justice, and welfare of mankind, to the interests of individuals, classes, nations, races, and humanity, are struggling to gain power over human conduct in the arts of economic and political organization. ”

“ They arise, as the individual's conception of the society on the well-being of which his own depends, and of the constituents of that well-being, becomes wider and fuller; and they are embodied in the laws, institutions, and social expectation, which make conventional morality. This embodiment, again, constitutes the moral progress of mankind. This progress, however, is only a moral progress in so far as it tends to bring about the harmony of will and reason, in the only form in which it can really exist, viz. ”

“ Likewise, the freedom of the mind and freedom in governmental action furnish great opportunities for progress, but the final result will be determined by use of such opportunities in the creation of a higher type of mind characterized by a well-balanced social attitude. ”

“ WHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society? ”

“ The guiding force back of public will, now as ever, is of course human nature itself in its more enduring characteristics, those which find expression in primary groups and are little affected by institutional changes. ”

“ In aristocratic societies the nobility of birth and wealth, representing the intelligence of the people, assume the role of social control, while the rest of the population are kept in bondage and ignorance. ”

“ For instance, all the propositions about the "people" are grand and true if we mean by the people every soul in the community, with all the interests and powers which give them an aggregate will and power, with capacity to suffer or to work ”

“ The social will is brought to bear upon the individual through a variety of agencies. The family, the neighborhood, the church, the trade or profession, the political party, the social class—all these have their habits and maxims. They tend to mold to their type those whom they count among their members. The pressure which they bring to bear is felt as a sense of moral obligation. ”

“ Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality, or justice, or freedom—for the terms here signify the same thing, the recognition of the moral law—prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless struggles. ”