Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/176

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1 62 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

is, therefore, not careful of the qualities in himself which he exercises in order to secure the services of others.

From the standpoint of the subject it is the part of sanctions to arouse motives leading to acts of service. Here the question concerns, not the nature of the sanction, but the susceptibility to suggestion. Individuals differ widely in personal character, dis- position, bias, responsiveness. For our present purpose the different kinds of susceptibility may be grouped upon two different principles of classification : first, with reference to insti- tutions ; second, with reference to coercion and persuasion. Upon the first principle of classification, susceptibilities are primary or institutional, and secondary or supplementary. The institutional susceptibilities are those primary beliefs and desires, already mentioned in chap. 2, which form the psychic basis on which the several institutions are successively built up. The religious susceptibilities are the belief in moral perfection and the consciousness of guilt ; the domestic susceptibilities are sexual and parental love ; the political are common national or class consciousness ; the industrial are consciousness of future wants and love of work. These susceptibilities, blended and homogeneous in primitive man, are separated out by the division of labor, and they become each the motive which holds its peculiar institution together.

Secondary susceptibilites are those which modify the respon- siveness of the primary, and give that tone or bias to personal character which fits or unfits individuals for social life in general or for specialization in a particular institution. They are such qualities as cheerfulness, appetite, sensuality, thrift, avarice, curiosity, intelligence, pride, ambition, indolence, self-interest, love of life, antipathy, devotion, and hundreds of other finer and rougher shades of character which an exhaustive analysis would reveal. The above institutional susceptibilities, together with the secondary ones, are the motives which are appealed to by persuasion. Here, however, the second principle of classifi- cation is called for.

Individuals differ in wide degree with regard to the amount of coercion or persuasion needed to move them to action. There