her. There
is honor among thieves, and a band of robbers has a common interest as
respects its members. Gangs are marked by fraternal feeling, and narrow
cliques by intense loyalty to their own codes. Family life may be marked
by exclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousy as to those without, and yet
be a model of amity and mutual aid within. Any education given by a
group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and value of the
socialization depends upon the habits and aims of the group. Hence, once
more, the need of a measure for the worth of any given mode of social
life. In seeking this measure, we have to avoid two extremes. We cannot
set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We
must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order
to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we
have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are
actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms
of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize
undesirable features and suggest improvement. Now in any social group
whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we find some interest held in
common, and we find a certain amount of interaction and cooperative
intercourse with other groups. From these two traits we derive
our standard. How numerous and varied are the interests which are
consciously shared? How full and free is the interplay with other forms
of association? If we apply these considerations to, say, a criminal
band, we find that the ties which consciously hold the members together
are few in number, reducible almost to a common interest in plunder; and
that they are of such a nature as to isolate the group from other
groups with respect to give and take of the values of life. Hence, the
education such a society gives is partial and distorted. If we take, on
the other hand, the kind of family life which illustrates the standard,
we find that there are material, intellectual, aesthetic interests in
which all participate and that the progress of one member has worth for
the experience of other members--it is readily communicable--and
that the family is not an isolated whole, but enters intimately into
relationships with business groups, with schools, with all the agencies
of culture, as well as with other similar groups, and that it plays a
due part in the political organization and in return receives support
fro