406 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
managers. It is socialistic thinking that has led to the appearance of the trained expert who represents the labor union in conference with the employer, and recognizes the common situation between employer and employed upon which alone any arrangement or compromise can be made. Socialistic thinking may be different in France and Eng- land, but it is the same great force and cannot be studied in the camp of the programists alone. It is coming to represent, not a theory, but a standpoint and attitude. As the author says, it is a reac- tion against individualism. The other phase of conduct is rising above the threshold of consciousness — the community phase. Naturally it formulated itself first in dogma, and still lives in part in dogma. But its reality lies in the essentially social character of all conduct, and the gospel, according to socialism, is the recognition that all self-seeking has and must have a social end, if it belongs inside a social organism.
What society is struggling to accomplish is to bring this social side of our conduct out so that it may, in some conscious way, become the element of control. Now, as an analysis of this great, as yet inchoate, movement M. Le Bon's book is inadequate. For to him socialism is bound up with a creed and a program, and stands or falls with these symbols of faith. It is true that Latin definiteness of conception and the Latin feeling for and dependence upon the state tend toward the program-socialism, and reciprocal analysis of the program and the Latin social consciousness is valuable and edifying. Instead of being the end, however, this is but the beginning of a movement that must be appreciated in its strong as well as its weak side to be appreciated at all. There is, perhaps, little need of emphasizing this, but there is food for reflection in the attempt at psychological analysis of the use of socialistic dogma, which prefaces the treatise. I am not at all sure that I have fully grasped M. Le Bon's theory, but I take it to be something like the following :
Our conduct springs from impulses which belong to the ancestral soul. These springs of conduct are the heritage of countless genera- tions, which may be referred to as the few but deeply founded beliefs which underlie our civilization. But, though they take the form of beliefs in the dogma of the church and state, it would be a great mis- take to assume that they are the products of ratiocination, or are in any sense subject to reason as regards our recognition of their truth or falsity. And as they represent the heritage of the past, that which has been handed down by the race, they stand for the common impulses
