285.

Primary contacts of the greatest intimacy are (a) those represented by
the affections that ordinarily spring up within the family, particularly
between parents and children, husband and wife; and (b) those of
fellowship and affection outside the family as between lovers, bosom
friends, and boon companions. These relations are all manifestations of
a craving for response. These personal relationships are the nursery for
the development of human nature and personality. John Watson, who
studied several hundred new-born infants in the psychological
laboratory, concludes that "the first few years are the all-important
ones, for shaping the emotional life of the child."[118] The primary
virtues and ideals of which Cooley writes so sympathetically are, for
the most part, projections from family life. Certainly in these most
intimate relations of life in the contacts of the family circle, in the
closest friendships, personality is most severely tried, realizes its
most characteristic expressions, or is most completely disorganized.

[Illustration: FIG. 3

A, primary contacts; x, greater intimacy; y, acquaintanceship;
B, secondary contacts]

Just as the life of the family represents the contacts of touch and
response, the neighborhood or the village is the natural area of primary
contacts and the city the social environment of secondary contacts. In
primary association individuals are in contact with each other at
practically all points of their lives. In the village "everyone knows
everything about everyone else." Canons of conduct are absolute, social
control is omnipotent, the status of the family and the individual is
fixed. In secondary association individuals are in contact with each
other at only one or two points in their lives. In the city, the
individual becomes anonymous; at best he is generally known in only one
or two aspects of his life. Standards of behavior are relative; the old
primary controls have disappeared; the new secondary instruments of
discipline, necessarily formal, are for the most part crude and
inefficient; the standing of the family and of the individual is
uncertain and subject to abrupt changes upward or downward in the social
scale.

Simmel has made a brilliant contribution in his analysis of the
sociological significance of "the stranger." "The stranger" in the
sociological sense is the individual who unites in his social relations
primary and secondary contacts. Simmel himself empl