2.
These methods of control are so obvious (because so intentionally
employed) that it would hardly be worth while to mention them if it were
not that notice may now be taken, by way of contrast, of the other more
important and permanent mode of control. This other method resides in
the ways in which persons, with whom the immature being is associated,
use things; the instrumentalities with which they accomplish their
own ends. The very existence of the social medium in which an individual
lives, moves, and has his being is the standing effective agency of
directing his activity.
This fact makes it necessary for us to examine in greater detail what is
meant by the social environment. We are given to separating from each
other the physical and social environments in which we live. The
separation is responsible on one hand for an exaggeration of the moral
importance of the more direct or personal modes of control of which we
have been speaking; and on the other hand for an exaggeration, in
current psychology and philosophy, of the intellectual possibilities
of contact with a purely physical environment. There is not, in fact, any
such thing as the direct influence of one human being on another apart
from use of the physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a
frown, a rebuke, a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some
physical change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over to
alter the attitude of another.
Comparatively speaking, such modes of influence may be regarded as
personal. The physical medium is reduced to a mere means of personal
contact. In contrast with such direct modes of mutual influence, stand
associations in common pursuits involving the use of things as means and
as measures of results. Even if the mother never told her daughter to
help her, or never rebuked her for not helping, the child would be
subjected to direction in her activities by the mere fact that she was
engaged, along with the parent, in the household life. Imitation,
emulation, the need of working together, enforce control.
If the mother hands the child something needed, the latter must reach
the thing in order to get it. Where there is giving there must be
taking. The way the child handles the thing after it is got, the use to
which it is put, is surely influenced by the fact that the child has
watched the mother. When the child sees the parent looking for
something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and to
give it over when it finds it, as it was, under other circumstances, to
receive it. Multiply such an instance by the thousand details of daily
intercourse, and one has a picture of the most permanent and enduring
method of giving direction to the activities of the young.
In saying this, we are only repeating what was said previously about
participating in a joint activity as the chief way of forming disposition.
We have explicitly added, however, the recognition of the part played in
the joint activity by the use of things. The philosophy
of learning has been unduly dominated by a false psychology. It is
frequently stated that a person learns by merely having the qualities of
things impressed upon his mind through the gateway of the senses.
Having received a store of sensory impressions, association or some
power of mental synthesis is supposed to combine them into
ideas—into things with a meaning. An object, stone, orange,
tree, chair, is supposed to convey different impressions of color, shape,
size, hardness, smell, taste, etc., which aggregated together constitute
the characteristic meaning of each thing. But as matter of fact, it is
the characteristic use to which the thing is put, because of its
specific qualities, which supplies the meaning with which it is
identified. A chair is a thing which is put to one use; a table, a
thing which is employed for another purpose; an orange is a thing which
costs so much, which is grown in warm climes, which is eaten, and when
eaten has an agreeable odor and refreshing taste, etc.
The difference between an adjustment to a physical stimulus and a mental
act is that the latter involves response to a thing in its meaning;
the former does not. A noise may make me jump without my mind being
implicated. When I hear a noise and run and get water and put out a
blaze, I respond intelligently; the sound meant fire, and fire meant
need of being extinguished. I bump into a stone, and kick it to one
side purely physically. I put it to one side for fear some one will
stumble upon it, intelligently; I respond to a meaning which the thing
has. I am startled by a thunderclap whether I recognize it or
not—more likely, if I do not recognize it. But if I say, either
out loud or to myself, that is thunder, I respond to the disturbance as
a meaning. My behavior has a mental quality. When things have a meaning
for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they do not,
we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently.
In both kinds of responsive adjustment, our activities are directed or
controlled. But in the merely blind response, direction is also blind.
There may be training, but there is no education. Repeated responses to
recurrent stimuli may fix a habit of acting in a certain way. All of us
have many habits of whose import we are quite unaware, since they were
formed without our knowing what we were about. Consequently they
possess us, rather than we them. They move us; they control us. Unless
we become aware of what they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the
worth of the result, we do not control them. A child might be made to
bow every time he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles,
and bowing would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be an
act of recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a
certain end in view—as having a certain meaning. And not till he
knew what he was about and performed the act for the sake of its meaning
could he be said to be "brought up" or educated to act in a certain way.
To have an idea of a thing is thus not just to get certain sensations
from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place
in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and
probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and of our
action upon it.
To have the same ideas about things which others have, to be like-minded
with them, and thus to be really members of a social group, is therefore
to attach the same meanings to things and to acts which others attach.
Otherwise, there is no common understanding, and no community life. But
in a shared activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the
other is doing and vice-versa. That is, the activity of each
is placed in the same inclusive situation. To pull at a rope at which
others happen to be pulling is not a shared or conjoint activity, unless
the pulling is done with knowledge that others are pulling and for the sake
of either helping or hindering what they are doing. A pin may pass in
the course of its manufacture through the hands of many persons. But
each may do his part without knowledge of what others do or without any
reference to what they do; each may operate simply for the sake of a
separate result—his own pay. There is, in this case, no common
consequence to which the several acts are referred, and hence no genuine
intercourse or association, in spite of juxtaposition, and in spite of
the fact that their respective doings contribute to a single outcome.
But if each views the consequences of his own acts as having a bearing
upon what others are doing and takes into account the consequences of
their behavior upon himself, then there is a common mind; a common
intent in behavior. There is an understanding set up between the
different contributors; and this common understanding controls the
action of each.
Suppose that conditions were so arranged that one person automatically
caught a ball and then threw it to another person who caught and
automatically returned it; and that each so acted without knowing where
the ball came from or went to. Clearly, such action would be without
point or meaning. It might be physically controlled, but it would not
be socially directed. But suppose that each becomes aware of what the
other is doing, and becomes interested in the other's action and thereby
interested in what he is doing himself as connected with the action of
the other. The behavior of each would then be intelligent; and socially
intelligent and guided. Take one more example of a less imaginary kind.
An infant is hungry, and cries while food is prepared in his presence.
If he does not connect his own state with what others are doing, nor
what they are doing with his own satisfaction, he simply reacts with
increasing impatience to his own increasing discomfort. He is
physically controlled by his own organic state. But when he makes a
back and forth reference, his whole attitude changes. He takes an
interest, as we say; he takes note and watches what others are doing.
He no longer reacts just to his own hunger, but behaves in the light of
what others are doing for its prospective satisfaction. In that way, he
also no longer just gives way to hunger without knowing it, but he
notes, or recognizes, or identifies his own state. It becomes an object
for him. His attitude toward it becomes in some degree intelligent.
And in such noting of the meaning of the actions of others and of his
own state, he is socially directed.
It will be recalled that our main proposition had two sides. One of
them has now been dealt with: namely, that physical things do not
influence mind (or form ideas and beliefs) except as they are implicated
in action for prospective consequences. The other point is persons
modify one another's dispositions only through the special use they make
of physical conditions. Consider first the case of so-called expressive
movements to which others are sensitive; blushing, smiling, frowning,
clinching of fists, natural gestures of all kinds. In themselves, these
are not expressive. They are organic parts of a person's attitude. One
does not blush to show modesty or embarrassment to others, but because
the capillary circulation alters in response to stimuli. But others use
the blush, or a slightly perceptible tightening of the muscles of a
person with whom they are associated, as a sign of the state in which
that person finds himself, and as an indication of what course to
pursue. The frown signifies an imminent rebuke for which one must
prepare, or an uncertainty and hesitation which one must, if possible,
remove by saying or doing something to restore confidence.
A man at some distance is waving his arms wildly. One has only to
preserve an attitude of detached indifference, and the motions of the
other person will be on the level of any remote physical change which we
happen to note. If we have no concern or interest, the waving of the
arms is as meaningless to us as the gyrations of the arms of a windmill.
But if interest is aroused, we begin to participate. We refer his
action to something we are doing ourselves or that we should do. We
have to judge the meaning of his act in order to decide what to do. Is
he beckoning for help? Is he warning us of an explosion to be set off,
against which we should guard ourselves? In one case, his action means
to run toward him; in the other case, to run away. In any case, it is
the change he effects in the physical environment which is a sign to us
of how we should conduct ourselves. Our action is socially controlled
because we endeavor to refer what we are to do to the same situation in
which he is acting.
Language is, as we have already seen
(Ante, p. 18)
a case of this joint reference of our own action and that of another to
a common situation. Hence its unrivaled significance as a means of social
direction. But language would not be this efficacious instrument were it
not that it takes place upon a background of coarser and more tangible use
of physical means to accomplish results. A child sees persons with whom
he lives using chairs, hats, tables, spades, saws, plows, horses, money in
certain ways. If he has any share at all in what they are doing, he is
led thereby to use things in the same way, or to use other things in a
way which will fit in. If a chair is drawn up to a table, it is a sign
that he is to sit in it; if a person extends his right hand, he is to
extend his; and so on in a never ending stream of detail. The
prevailing habits of using the products of human art and the raw
materials of nature constitute by all odds the deepest and most
pervasive mode of social control. When children go to school, they
already have "minds"—they have knowledge and dispositions of
judgment which may be appealed to through the use of language. But
these "minds" are the organized habits of intelligent response which
they have previously required by putting things to use in connection
with the way other persons use things. The control is inescapable; it
saturates disposition.
The net outcome of the discussion is that the fundamental means of
control is not personal but intellectual. It is not "moral" in the
sense that a person is moved by direct personal appeal from others,
important as is this method at critical junctures. It consists in the
habits of understanding, which are set up in using objects in
correspondence with others, whether by way of coöperation and
assistance or rivalry and competition. Mind as a concrete thing
is precisely the power to understand things in terms of the use made of
them; a socialized mind is the power to understand them in terms of the
use to which they are turned in joint or shared situations. And mind
in this sense is the method of social control.
