CHAPTER XIII

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE INSTITUTION

§ I. THE DEBT OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE INSTITUTION By way of supplement to the more or less theoretical discussion of the foregoing chapter it may not be amiss to add some practical observations as to the relation of the individual and the institution. We have to ask first what is the debt of the individual to the institution? The individual is dependent upon the institution above everything else because it represents the accumulated wisdom of the nation and of the race. The institution occupied the stage long before the individual made his appearance. The institution, therefore, exhibits the traits of a gray-haired old man, namely, conservatism, the emphasis of authority and precedent, lack of plasticity, the dignity and poise born of ripe experience, and scorn for fads or thoughtless innovations. The institution is essentially paternalistic. Its measures of values are sought in the past rather than in the present. Just because of these traits the institution appears to childhood and immature youth to speak the final word of wisdom, to embody the sober and chastened knowledge of the race.

It should be remembered, however, that the sheer fact of social survival establishes no a priori claim to absolute finality for the institution. To assert of an institution that every part of it "has survived because it was in some sense the fittest" is hardly justifiable. We thereby attribute to the constitution of society as a whole and to the process of evolution a fundamentally rational character which the facts do not warrant. It has been pointed out that emphasis of survival and the value of the selective process in social evo1 Cooley, Social Organization, p. 320.

lution has been overdone. Many institutions survive not because of their inherent value but because they occupy a protected position in the social order. Others represent the sheer inertia of social habits. Like glacial boulders on a New England farm they persist, not because they possess social utility or fit their environment, but because they are able to resist the disintegrating forces of the cosmic weather.

Even those who revolt against the institution thereby confess their debt to it. "All innovation is based upon conformity, all heterodoxy on orthodoxy, all individuality on solidarity". Paradox, to a certain extent, lies at the very heart of life. Augustine, while repudiating the institutions of the civitas terrena as utterly given over to sin and destruction, was unable to construct his civitas dei without smuggling in the logical framework of the pagan city-state he had condemned. Luther and the reformers, who used the individualistic and radical doctrine of justification by faith to pry the world loose from the decadent authoritarianism of the mediaeval church, found it necessary to substitute for the authority of the church the authority of the Book. The founders of American democracy vigorously rejected the political absolutism of kings only to find refuge under the metaphysical absolutism of the eighteenth century doctrine of a body of unalterable and inalienable human rights, the final definition of which was laid down in the Constitution.

§ 2. THE SELF-MADE MAN

There is deeply implanted in American life an antagonism to the institution. Since this antagonism is intimately connected with the lack of an efficient social conscience it merits. a more detailed analysis. This anti-institutional bent appears in business and in the world of practical affairs in the glorification of the self-made man. The self-made man is the flower of American individualism and presupposes a background partly religious (Puritanism), partly political (natural rights),

1 Folsom: "The Social Psychology of Morality," The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 23, p. 433 f.

partly economic (Adam Smith's economic man and the doctrine of "enlightened selfishness "), and partly the outgrowth of a first-hand struggle with the untamed forces of nature. The ethic of the self-made man assumes the autonomy of the individual. He is supposed not to stand in need of his fellows to attain his ends. Rather he bends them to serve his will. It follows from the philosophy of the self-made man that life is essentially a fight, a struggle with men who like oneself are trying to master other men and the machinery of the social order in their own interests. Hence the predominance of the militant virtues in the ethic of the self-made man. The worshipful man is the masterful man. This is a form of Nietzsche's Uebermensch, softened and disguised by a democratic environment. In those happy hunting-grounds of the self-made man, the world of business, it is by no means unusual to find the philosophy of Wille-zur-Macht, masquerading, to be sure, under the form of unrestricted competition.

But the self-made man's neglect of those values embodied in the institution exacts its penalty. It strips him of a sense of social responsibility, the indispensable lever for reform, the inspiration to social progress. Hence the example of the self-made man has encouraged in many Americans a state of mind that makes an effective social conscience impossible. For example, his individualistic idea of ownership threatens constantly to absorb or deny those social values for which the institution of property exits. Property has significance for the self-made man primarily because it is owned. Thus property values gain a local habitation and a name only as appanages of individual rights, as instruments for furthering private and individual ends.

Too often the higher spiritual, moral, or aesthetic values, the most precious heritage of the race, embodied in the institutional forms of civilization, have little or no place in the philosophy of the self-made man. For his claim to preëminence is based upon opposition to, or at least independence of, these values. To acknowledge that all the permanent achievements in the field of science, art, religion, or even of

industry are never the work of one man, is a confession of weakness and limitation.

Into the great Gothic cathedrals of northern France entered the religious aspirations and artistic genius of generations of men. The series of inventions that paved the way for the industrial revolution during the eighteenth century were the products of many brains. The perfecting and applying of scientific method to the problems of modern life were the joint achievement of three great European nations, France, England, and Germany. These enduring higher values, the joint creation of the past, lie safeguarded in political, scientific, and religious institutions, in the masterpieces of literary and plastic art. Slowly did they receive articulate form through the loyal and whole-hearted devotion of a great company of noble spirits that were inspired by the thought, "He that loseth his life shall find it ". This sublime self-abnegation, this patient elimination of the hard and unlovely outcroppings of individuality, this merging of self into something that transcends self, or rather this rediscovery of self in the institution, the nation or the race-this attitude is one that the self-made man cannot understand. He cannot realize that his very claim to greatness is a confession of essential weakness and limitations. He fails to see that he is admired not for what he was able to do in opposition to man's institutional heritage but because of what he was able to do in spite of the unfortunate handicaps of environment, training, or what not, which prevented him from living the fuller and richer life he might have lived had he been able to make himself master of that heritage. In his case as well as in every other the institution, not the individual, provides the measure of values.

§3. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE INSTITUTION

The institution, however, has its essential limitations. These arise out of its origin, structure, and function. Because it is traditional and affiliated with the past the institution is dogmatic and authoritarian. Hence, the institution is con

stantly forced to compromise with new situations. It is ever seeking means to justify its ends. It is inclined to cultivate habits of casuistry. It is the arch opportunist. The institution seeks to give concrete and permanent form to spiritual and moral values, a task that is possible only to a limited degree, and thereby dooms itself to a partial, mechanical, even materialistic rôle in the social order. These are some of the original sins of the institution, "original" in the sense that they inhere in the very nature, origin, and function of the institution itself.

From the very nature and purpose of the institution it must assume its own inherent and enduring worth. For it is essentially autonomous; it does not look beyond itself for its justification. The very raison d'être of the institution lies in the fact that it sets itself in permanent opposition to the eternal flux of men and things. Its persistence, therefore, depends upon its claim to have isolated from the flux of immediate reality that which endures and defies change. Upon this service the institution bases its claim to the loyalty and obedience of men; to permit this to be challenged is for the institution to stultify its own existence. Hence there is a profound truth in the remark, "The supernatural is always a conceit of the institution". For the essence of the supernatural lies in its inscrutable and self-sufficient guarantee of the truth of its deliverances. "And Moses said unto God, Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel ". This is essentially the spirit of the institution towards those who seek its credentials.

The institution is the product of the past. It is the result of a slow process of organizing human experience, the crystallization of ideas, beliefs, customs, and conventions. The institution, therefore, is essentially backward-looking. It stands for economy. It saves the individual the embarrass