Charles Horton Cooley: Nulla linea sine Deo

Abstract Charles H. Cooley, a pioneer in the study of Communication, had been credited regarding the notions of the looking-glass self and the primary group, but his seminal ideas related to communication – inspired by the German economist and sociologist Albert Schäffle – remained almost ignored for decades. But, after many years of obscurity, the most recent literature is outlining Cooley’s contribution to symbolic interactionism and other concepts in the study of Communication. This paper focuses more specifically on how Cooley understood the relationship between communication and God. The original and surprising phrase nulla linea sine Deo (no one single line without God) that appears in his Journal, manifests his religious engagement during a time of intellectual and spiritual change in American universities. At twenty five years old he had written in his Journal on May 11, 1890: ‘I want to be a scholar in righteousness, to be taught all the ways of strength and truth. I pray that may be led in hard ways so that I may know in my own life that “man shall not live by bread alone”’.