THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 199
the title of this section, viz., the spiritual environment. As Pro- fessor Thomas has said in his paper on "The Gaming Instinct": 1
Psychologically the individual is inseparable from his surroundings, and his attitude toward the world is determined by the nature of suggestions from the outside. The general culture and social position of his parents, the ideals of the social set in which he moves, the schools he attends, the literature he sees, the girl he wants to marry, are among the factors which determine the life- directions of the youth. From the complex of suggestions coming to him in the social relations into which he is born or thrown, he selects and follows those recurring persistently, emanating from attractive personalities, or aris- ing in critical circumstances.
Professor Ross has used the term "social ascendency" for the whole sum of facts in a society by which tradition and derived standards impose themselves upon the individual. This social ascendency is partly by means of social machinery, like the industrial and the governmental systems. It is partly by means of ideas, customs, standards of taste, form, morals, which most of the persons affected by them do not express in words. They are an invisible presence, but they often dictate the course of social events as absolutely as a physical cause procures its effect. Perhaps the best illustration for Americans is the race- sentiment in the South, as contrasted with the promiscuity of sentiment on the same subject in the North. A visitor from the North goes to a southern state, and before he has been there an hour, if he mingles with the people, he detects a something in the social tone which he has read about, but never before directly experienced. He finds himself among some of the most genial, warm-hearted, high-minded people he has ever seen, but he finds them governed by a code of sentiments toward the colored man which seem to him unintelligible and inconsistent. The north- ern man does not know how to draw the distinctions in his conduct toward the black man which the southern man draws instinctively, and on the other hand the northern man will draw lines at points where the southern man does not feel the need of them. Here are two different spiritual environments. The southern man lives in an environment of race-distinctions. The northern man lives in an environment of merely personal dis-
1 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. VI, p. 761,
