Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/140

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128 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the self. Society is the better-than-self (p. 194). " Once started the process cannot stop until energy is idealized as God and society is considered the mother of all" (p. 194). Emphasis is laid on the power of the ideal in nationalizing the group, and application is made to our own country. Says Dr. Patten :

Men should reason where they are alike, but where they differ they must have impulses to move them toward some common goal (p. 209).

For individuals and for single classes reasoning may become a guide to action, but it cannot arbitrate between classes (p. 203).

In a heterogeneous group, therefore, reason only tends to tear men asunder, for it accents the past and local environments. Only com- mon ideals of a common future can draw men of different races and classes together. Hence " social harmony lies in what the race has before it and not in that through which its component elements have individually passed " (p. 204). There is no doubt but that, if this point of view were adhered to in political and social action, assimila- tion of the heterogeneous elements in the group would be much more rapid than at present. The fact that a nation like the United States has no rational basis for unity is again accented in the last chapter. While each class has its own needs, each section its own peculiarities evoking particular desires, and each race its own heredity, the new impulses that prosperity brings are common to all, and from them will come the forces creating national unity (p. 212).

The aim of the concluding chapter is to show that

Freedom consists not merely of political rights, but is dependent upon the possession of economic rights freely recognized and universally granted to each man by his fellow-citizens (p. 215).

An enumeration of these rights which " must be incorporated in the national thought and become as clearly defined as are political rights," is here given. For Dr. Patten tells us that

It is not from a theory of distribution that a solution of present difficulties will come, but from a better formulation of the moral code and from a clearer perception of the common rights that new impulses and ideals evoke (p. 214). The rights are grouped as : (i) public or market rights ; (2) social rights; (3) rights of leisure; (4) exceptional rights. Under public or market rights are discussed the right to publicity, the right to security, and the right to co-operate. Under social rights are treated the right to a home, the right to develop or the right of contact with all the elevat- ing forces in a civilization as long as life lasts, the right to whole- some standards, the right to homogeneity of population, and the