hat any group of persons constitutes a society
is the fact that the group is able to act with some consistency, and as
a unit. It follows that the literature on social control, in the widest
extension of that term, embraces most that has been written and all that
is fundamental on the subject of society. In chapter ii, "Human Nature,"
and the later chapters on "Interaction" and its various forms,
"Conflict," "Accommodation," and "Assimilation," points of view and
literature which might properly be included in an adequate study of
social control have already been discussed. The present chapter is
concerned mainly with ceremonial, public opinion, and law, three of the
specific forms in which social control has universally found
expression.

Sociology is indebted to Edward Alsworth Ross for a general term broad
enough to include all the special forms in which the solidarity of the
group manifests itself. It was his brilliant essay on the subject
published in 1906 that popularized the term social control. The
materials for such a general, summary statement had already been brought
together by Sumner and published in 1906 in his _Folkways_. This volume,
in spite of its unsystematic character, must still be regarded as the
most subtle analysis and suggestive statement about human nature and
social relations that has yet been written in English.

A more systematic and thoroughgoing review of the facts and literature,
however, is Hobhouse's _Morals in Evolution_. After Hobhouse the next
most important writer is Westermarck, whose work, _The Origin and
Development of the Moral Ideas_, published in 1906, was a pioneer in
this field.

2. Elementary Forms of Social Control

Literature upon elementary forms of social control includes materials
upon ceremonies, taboo, myth, prestige, and leadership. These are
characterized as elementary because they have arisen spontaneously
everywhere out of original nature. The conventionalized form in which we
now find them has arisen in the course of their repetition and
transmission from one generation to another and from one culture group
to another. The fact that they have been transmitted over long periods
of time and wide areas of territory is an indication that they are the
natural vehicle for the expression of fundamental human impulses.

It is quite as true of leadership, as it is of myth and prestige, that
it springs directly out of an emotional setting. The natural leaders are
n