ficiencies are developed to carry into
effect policies and purposes. The Salvation Army, of which we have a
more adequate history than of most other religious movements, is an
example.

A sect in its final form may be described, then, as a movement of social
reform and regeneration that has become institutionalized. Eventually,
when it has succeeded in accommodating itself to the other rival
organizations, when it has become tolerant and is tolerated, it tends to
assume the form of a denomination. Denominations tend and are perhaps
destined to unite in the form of religious federations--a thing which is
inconceivable of a sect.

What is true of the sect, we may assume, and must assume if social
movements are to become subjects for sociological investigation, is true
of other social institutions. Existing institutions represent social
movements that survived the conflict of cultures and the struggle for
existence.

Sects, and that is what characterizes and distinguishes them from
secular institutions, at least, have had their origin in movements that
aimed to reform the mores--movements that sought to renovate and renew
the inner life of the community. They have wrought upon society from
within outwardly. Revolutionary and reform movements, on the contrary,
have been directed against the outward fabric and formal structure of
society. Revolutionary movements in particular have assumed that if the
existing structure could be destroyed it would then be possible to erect
a new moral order upon the ruins of the old social structures.

A cursory survey of the history of revolutions suggests that the most
radical and the most successful of them have been religious. Of this
type of revolution Christianity is the most conspicuous example.

6. Classification of the Materials

The materials in this chapter have been arranged under the headings:
(a) social contagion, (b) the crowd, and (c) types of mass
movements. The order of materials follows, in a general way, the order
of institutional evolution. Social unrest is first communicated, then
takes form in crowd and mass movements, and finally crystallizes in
institutions. The history of almost any single social movement--woman's
suffrage, prohibition, protestantism--exhibit in a general way, if not
in detail, this progressive change in character. There is at first a
vague general discontent and distress. Then a violent, confused, and
disorderly, but enthusiastic and popula