what is an institution?

What Is an Institution?Author(s): Edward Cary HayesSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Dec., 1926), pp. 556-557Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/7677 .

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WHAT IS AN INSTITUTION? By Professor EDWARD CARY HAYES

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

THE1 interesting article of Professor Ezra Bowen in the April SCIENTr'Ic MONTHLY calls for a supplement.

He truly says that private possession exists in its most absolute form in primitive society, but he confuses the mere fact of physical possession with an institution of private property. He gives no hint as to what an institution really is. And the facts he adduces have little or no bearing on the question he is argu- ing: what were the earliest forms of the institution of property? Mere physical possession he calls the "oldest and most uncompromising of social institutions." In reality, however, mere possession by the strong individual does not imply the existence of an institution of private property.

If (as he says) in time of drought the one remaining water-hole is monopolized by one enormous hippopotamus, that does not indicate that there is an institution of private property, neither does the dog's monopoly of his bone, the child's monopoly of his drum or the savage's monopoly of a well-shaped club that he has found or made or taken from a fallen foe. The institution of private property does not begin till society decides to protect the possessor in his possession and decides also on what terms and within what limits society will so protect him. The institution of private property defines and limits as well as protects the right of possession. Mere possession of the primitive sort is based on might and has nothing to do with right nor with any institution.

A relatively primitive institution re- anri'1ino. hr7svatP nrnnnPrtv is tn bA sPee in

the rules by which an Australian hunter divides the kangaroo which he has slain among his relatives-rules which require him to make this division as well as protect him in his own share.

True, as Professor Bowen says, we no longer bury a dead man's property with him for we no longer fear his ghost. We have substituted the institution of inheritance, a purely social convention grounded on a judgment of social ex- pediency and limited, if society so wills, and to any degree which society finds expedient, by the taxation of inheri- tances, by primogeniture or even by escheat. Taxes, eminent domain and police power are social institutions, but mere crude and primitive possession by the strong is not a social institution.

There have been scholars who insisted that only might makes right and that anything is right which can be enforced. They were utterly wrong when they meant that the assertion of interest or impulse by an individual against other individuals or by a class or group against other classes or groups created a right by virtue of the fact that the claim was asserted and enforced. But they would not have been wrong if they had said and meant that what the judgment and sentiment of a society enforces upon its own members is in that society right. "Right" as well as "rights" are social concepts, and as Professor Sumner says, "society can make anything right" in that society.

These two statements include the reasons why problems of ethics are matter-of-fact problems and why the study of ethics is no more the affair of meta-

556



WHAT IS AN INSTITUTION? 557

physical speculation than the problems of agriculture or of bridge building. The history of moral codes is altogether a part of the story of social evolution, and the criticism of moral codes is altogether a matter of fact inquiry. We still give to one who is trained in chemistry or physics the degree of doctor of phi- losophy. This is reminiscent of the period in which all sciences were only emerging from the metaphysical stage, as now at length ethics has begun to emerge. That ethics has thus begun to emerge from the metaphysical stage and to be treated as a matter of social evolution and practical social inquiry is per- haps the most important part of what sociology is bringing to pass.

The institutional definition of property rights is based on the perceptions (1) that private possession rewards and elicits productive effort, (2) secures orderly and efficient administration of material resources and (3) is just. By " just" we mean that it is an arrange- ment consonant with a balanced regard for all the interests affected. The institution of private property as distin- guished from the mere fact of possession is an effort on the part of society so to define, limit and protect possession as to secure so far as practicable the three re- sults just specified: reward and promo- tion of productive effort, orderly and efficient administration of material resources and justice. Any limitation of the rights of private possession or re- definition of them which is required by these three criteria is not only justified, but demanded.

An institution is a mode of social activity. It is one of those socially evolved and socially prevalent activities which are included in the "culture" of a peo- ple. Whether one is a behaviorist or not, from any scientific point of view having an idea or having a feeling is

an activity as truly as driving a nail. Ideas and feelings are elements in all distinctively human activity, whether the activity completes itself in overt muscu- lar movement or not. Any social activity that can be called an institution is essentially a set of ideas and feelings that prevail in a society and that go over into overt conduct when occasion arises, together with a prevalent habitual dis- position to these activities. Fundamen- tally institutions are states of mind, i.e., ideas and feelings are their essence. An institution like trial by jury, when the activity becomes overt, supplies itself with a personnel, such as judges, law- yers, jurors and bailiffs, and with a material equipment, such as court house, bench, bar and jury-box, but the building may be burned, the personnel be- headed and the surviving members of the society may migrate to a new conti- nent, yet they will carry their institutions with them if they retain their habitual states of mind.

An institution is a mode of social be- havior and one which in contrast with mere fashion and custom includes an element of rationality, a practical judgment, approving both the ends sought and the methods employed in the activity.

Human culture has three stages. In the first it is molded by biological necessity. Group practices are defined by the requirements of group survival. In the second stage, death being somewhat held at bay, there is room for many non- advantageous vagaries. In the third stage, rational acceptance in the light of experience converts useful customs into institutions and invents new institutional forms. And ripened institutions, economic, domestic, political, etc., have striking resemblances to the group customs which at an earlier stage were enforced by biological necessity.



what is an institution?

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