THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 345
analogous to involuntary muscular action in the phenomena of mass movements, to be sure, but it is long before any new impulse becomes a permanent stimulus in masses, and con- stantly influences their action.
Intelligent reading of history, or observation of current events, should suffice to procure a proportionate place for this social incident in our theories. It is written large in every passage of human experience, and wisdom must recognize its importance.
Among the commonplaces of experience that are partially accounted for by this incident we may mention slow assimila- tion of modifying influence throughout human associations. As a rule men move with what often seems to the theorist irrational sluggishness in assimilating progressive forces. The fact of the discreteness of the units makes this inertia of masses not only intelligible but natural. It was six centuries before Englishmen realized in full on the investment they made when they wrested Magna Charta from King John. Baptists and Quakers, as well as Jews and Catholics, are still living who can testify from per- sonal knowledge how long it was after the declaration of the principle before there was security of religious toleration. Our country was a nation on paper in 1789 ; it only decided definitely to begin to be a nation in reality in 1865. Two million infe- rior Jiuman beings were made the legal equals of fifty million superiors in this country a generation ago ; but legal fictions cannot work miracles, and the race problem in America is in some respects more difficult than ever. For a hundred years we have had the right in America to be a self-governing people ; but when we weigh our municipal administrations in the balance, we are tempted to believe that we have accepted the ballot, a symbol of liberty, in substitution for the actual exercise of civic liberty. Here, then, is a constant condition of human relation- ship, to be placed in calculation most carefully when we are most convinced of the illimitable possibilities of human improve- ment. The enormous time necessary to secure a single item of social gain is perpetual prophecy against doctrinaire pro- gramism.
