factor in the development of effective action.

This excursus should, accordingly, have the effect of reinforcing
the conclusion that genuine social control means the formation of
a certain mental disposition; a way of understanding objects,
events, and acts which enables one to participate effectively in
associated activities. Only the friction engendered by meeting
resistance from others leads to the view that it takes place by
forcing a line of action contrary to natural inclinations. Only
failure to take account of the situations in which persons are
mutually concerned (or interested in acting responsively to one
another) leads to treating imitation as the chief agent in
promoting social control.

4. Some Applications to Education. Why does a savage group
perpetuate savagery, and a civilized group civilization?
Doubtless the first answer to occur to mind is because savages
are savages; being of low-grade intelligence and perhaps
defective moral sense. But careful study has made it doubtful
whether their native capacities are appreciably inferior to those
of civilized man. It has made it certain that native differences
are not sufficient to account for the difference in culture. In
a sense the mind of savage peoples is an effect, rather than a
cause, of their backward institutions. Their social activities
are such as to restrict their objects of attention and interest,
and hence to limit the stimuli to mental development. Even as
regards the objects that come within the scope of attention,
primitive social customs tend to arrest observation and
imagination upon qualities which do not fructify in the mind.
Lack of control of natural forces means that a scant number of