2 SOCIAL CULTURE 



II 



I shall announce as my thesis, that: Social culture is the training 

 of the individual for social institutions. 



Man by his social institutions secures the adjustment of the in- 

 dividual to the social whole, the social unit. The person or indi- 

 vidual comes into such harmony and cooperation with human 

 society as a whole that he may receive a share of all the production 

 of his fellow men, be protected against violence by their united 

 strength, given the privilege of accumulating property and of en- 

 joying it in peace and security in such a manner as to escape from 

 sudden approaches of famine and penury by reason of seasonal ex- 

 tremes or by reason of the vicissitudes of infancy, old age, disease, 

 or of the perturbations affecting the community. And finally, there 

 is participation in the wisdom of the race, the opportunity of shar- 

 ing in the knowledge that comes from the scientific inventory of 

 nature in all its kingdoms, and of human life on the globe in all 

 its varied experiments, successful and unsuccessful; the oppor- 

 tunity of gaining an insight into the higher results of science in the 

 field of discovery of laws and principles, the permanent forms of 

 existence under the variable conditions of time and place. Finally 

 we may share through our membership in the social unity in the 

 moral insights that have resulted from the discipline of pain, the 

 defeat and discomfitures arising from the choice of mistaken careers 

 on the part of individuals and entire communities. The sin and error 

 of men have vicariously helped the race by great object-lessons which 

 have taught mankind through all the ages, and now teach the present 

 generation of men all the more effectively because of the devices 

 of our civilization, which not only make the records of the past ac- 

 cessible to each and every individual, but institute a present means 

 of intercommunication by and through which each people, each 

 individual, may see from day to day the unfolding of the drama 

 of human history. 



The good of this unity of the individual with the social whole by 

 means of institutions may be summed up by saying that it reen- 

 forces the individual by the labor of all, the thought of all, and the 

 good fortune of all. It takes from him only his trifling contribution 

 from his trade or vocation and gives in return a share in the gigantic 

 aggregate of productions of all mankind. It receives from him the 

 experience of his little life and gives him in return the experience 

 of the race, a myriad of myriads strong, and working through 

 millenniums. 



What Thomas Hobbes said of the blessings of the political whole, 

 the state, is true when applied to civilization as an international 

 combination of states. 



