Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and MoralsSumner, William Graham
General
Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
Sumner, William Graham
Manners and customs
+5. The strain of improvement and consistency.+ The folkways, being ways
of satisfying needs, have succeeded more or less well, and therefore
have produced more or less pleasure or pain. Their quality always
consisted in their adaptation to the purpose. If they were imperfectly
adapted and unsuccessful, they produced pain, which drove men on to
learn better. The folkways are, therefore, (1) subject to a strain of
improvement towards better adaptation of means to ends, as long as the
adaptation is so imperfect that pain is produced. They are also (2)
subject to a strain of consistency with each other, because they all
answer their several purposes with less friction and antagonism when
they cooperate and support each other. The forms of industry, the forms
of the family, the notions of property, the constructions of rights, and
the types of religion show the strain of consistency with each other
through the whole history of civilization. The two great cultural
divisions of the human race are the oriental and the occidental. Each is
consistent throughout; each has its own philosophy and spirit; they are
separated from top to bottom by different mores, different standpoints,
different ways, and different notions of what societal arrangements are
advantageous. In their contrast they keep before our minds the possible
range of divergence in the solution of the great problems of human life,
and in the views of earthly existence by which life policy may be
controlled. If two planets were joined in one, their inhabitants could
not differ more widely as to what things are best worth seeking, or what
ways are most expedient for well living.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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