of
competition. Social control and the mutual subordination of individual
members to the community have their origin in conflict, assume definite
organized forms in the process of accommodation, and are consolidated
and fixed in assimilation.

Through the medium of these processes, a community assumes the form of a
society. Incidentally, however, certain definite and quite spontaneous
forms of social control are developed. These forms are familiar under
various titles: tradition, custom, folkways, mores, ceremonial, myth,
religious and political beliefs, dogmas and creeds, and finally public
opinion and law. In this chapter it is proposed to define a little more
accurately certain of these typical mechanisms through which social
groups are enabled to act. In the chapter on "Collective Behavior" which
follows, materials will be presented to exhibit the group in action.

It is in action that the mechanisms of control are created, and the
materials under the title "Collective Behavior" are intended to
illustrate the stages, (a) social unrest, (b) mass movements, (c)
institutions in which society is formed and reformed. Finally, in the
chapter on "Progress," the relation of social change to social control
will be discussed and the role of science and collective representations
in the direction of social changes indicated.

The most obvious fact about social control is the machinery by which
laws are made and enforced, that is, the legislature, the courts, and
the police. When we think of social control, therefore, these are the
images in which we see it embodied and these are the terms in which we
seek to define it.

It is not quite so obvious that legislation and the police must, in the
long run, have the support of public opinion. Hume's statement that
governments, even the most despotic, have nothing but opinion to support
them, cannot be accepted without some definition of terms, but it is
essentially correct. Hume included under opinion what we would
distinguish from it, namely, the mores. He might have added, using
opinion in this broad sense, that the governed, no matter how numerous,
are helpless unless they too are united by "opinion."

A king or a political "boss," having an army or apolitical "machine" at
his command, can do much. It is possible, also, to confuse or mislead
public opinion, but neither the king nor the boss will, if he be wise,
challenge the mores and the common sense of the community.

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