The case becomes more interesting still when we give the matter
another turn, and say that in this learning all the members of society
agree; _all must be born to learn the same things_. They enter, if so
be that they do, into the same social inheritance. This again seems
like a very commonplace remark; but certain things flow from it. Each
member of society gives and gets the same set of social suggestions;
the differences being the degree of progress each has made, and the
degree of variation which each one gives to what he has before
received. This last difference is treated below where we consider the
genius.
There grows up, in all this give and take, in all the interchange of
suggestions among you, me, and the other, an obscure sense of a
certain social understanding about ourselves generally--a _Zeitgeist_,
an atmosphere, a taste, or, in minor matters, a style. It is a very
peculiar thing, this social spirit. The best way to understand that
you have it, and something of what it is, is to get into a circle in
which it is different. The common phrase "fish out of water" is often
heard in reference to it. But that does not serve for science. The
next best thing that I can do in the way of rendering it is to appeal
to another word which has a popular sense, the word Judgment. Let us
say that there exists in every society a general system of values,
found in social usages, conventions, institutions, and formulas, and
that our judgments of social life are founded on our habitual
recognition of these values, and of the arrangement of them which has
become more or less fixed in our society. For example, to be cordial
to a disagreeable neighbour shows good social judgment in a small
matter; not to quarrel with the homoeopathic enthusiast who meets
you in the street and wishes to doctor your rheumatism out of a
symptom book--that is good judgment. In short, the man gets to show
more and more, as he grows up from childhood, a certain good judgment;
and his good judgment is also the good judgment of his social set,
community, or nation. The psychologist might prefer to say that a man
"feels" this; perhaps it would be better for psychological readers to
say simply that he has a "sense" of it; but the popular use of the
word "judgment" fits so accurately into the line of distinction we are
now making that we may adhere to it. So we reach the general position
that the eligible candidate for social life must have good judgment as
represented by the common standards of judgment of his people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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