PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 881 



largely upon the constitution of the society. Each of these special 

 horizons tends to form men into a class and create a mental type. 

 Hence arise two problems: first, to determine the characteristics 

 proper to each class, recognizing, of course, that in fact these are 

 often blurred and confused by modifying influences coming from 

 other classes; second, to show how these characteristics are gener- 

 ated by the manner of life imposed on that class by its position in 

 the social system. The married and the unmarried lead quite dis- 

 similar lives, and no doubt some day we shall know the nature and 

 causes of the psychic differences between the conjugal and the 

 celibate. Already the disciples of Le Play, after distinguishing the 

 communal family, the individualistic family, and the stem-family, 

 have sought to differentiate the moral types that tend to arise 

 within these several domestic groups. The contrasts of rural and 

 urban types must ever be drawn afresh, for the city and country 

 of our day are not city and country as Aristophanes and Moliere 

 knew them. 



Occupation is perhaps the chief molder of classes. The familiar 

 distinction of hunting, pastoral, agricultural, and industrial stages 

 of social evolution does not become significant until it is recognized 

 that each of these is not only a mode of production, but also a life. 

 The business-man and the farmer differ in their mental processes 

 and a full setting-forth of this contrast would throw much light on 

 revolutions in parties and policies. One of the greatest "finds" in 

 recent sociology resulted from carefully comparing the leisure-class 

 mind with the mind of the productive classes, and the traits devel- 

 oped by industrial employments with those called forth by pecun- 

 iary employments. Another nugget turned up by comparing the 

 mentality that prevails in plastic social formations, such as rising 

 cities, colonies, and frontier communities, with that of men in old 

 and crystallized societies. The psychology of the pauper, the pro- 

 stitute, and the criminal, belonging partly to anthropology, partly 

 to sociology, have afforded a scientific basis for charity and penology. 



The systematic survey of class-types ought to be extremely 

 helpful to general sociology. How can we definitively appraise 

 slavery until we know what manner of man the master tends to 

 become, what manner of man the slave? How can we estimate 

 militancy without understanding the mental type created by the 

 addiction to warlike pursuits? Ecclesiasticism and sacerdotalism 

 cannot be judged as to their influence on society until we know 

 the soul of the priest. The genesis of political liberalism is an enigma 

 unless we comprehend the type of mind that forms in cities. Take 

 a problem that now agitates the minds of sociologists that of 

 class-strife. What arrays class against class? "Interference of 

 interests," says the Marxian; "classes hate and fight each other 



