res to act.

Back of every other form of control--ceremonial, public opinion, or
law--there is always this interaction of the elementary social forces.
What we ordinarily mean by social control, however, is the arbitrary
intervention of some individual--official, functionary, or leader--in
the social process. A policeman arrests a criminal, an attorney sways
the jury with his eloquence, the judge passes sentence; these are the
familiar formal acts in which social control manifests itself. What
makes the control exercised in this way social, in the strict sense of
that term, is the fact that these acts are supported by custom, law, and
public opinion.

The distinction between control in the crowd and in other forms of
society is that the crowd has no tradition. It has no point of reference
in its own past to which its members can refer for guidance. It has
therefore neither symbols, ceremonies, rites, nor ritual; it imposes no
obligations and creates no loyalties.

Ceremonial is one method of reviving in the group a lively sense of the
past. It is a method of reinstating the excitements and the sentiments
which inspired an earlier collective action. The savage war dance is a
dramatic representation of battle and as such serves to rouse and
reawaken the warlike spirit. This is one way in which ceremonial becomes
a means of control. By reviving the memories of an earlier war, it
mobilizes the warriors for a new one.

Ernst Grosse, in _The Beginnings of Art_, has stated succinctly what has
impressed all first-hand observers, namely, the important role which the
dance plays in the lives of primitive peoples.

The dances of the hunting peoples are, as a rule, mass dances.
Generally the men of the tribe, not rarely the members of
several tribes, join in the exercises, and the whole assemblage
then moves according to one law in one time. All who have
described the dances have referred again and again to this
"wonderful" unison of the movements. In the heat of the dance
the several participants are fused together as into a single
being, which is stirred and moved as by one feeling. During the
dance they are in a condition of complete social unification,
and the dancing group feels and acts like a single organism.
_The social significance of the primitive dance lies precisely
in this effect of social unification._ It brings and accustoms
a number of men who, i