New York State College of Agriculture At Cornell University Ithaca, N. Y. The Professor Dtvight Sanderson Rural Sociology Library Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014032977 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK ■ BOSTON ■ CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON ' BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lta TORONTO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AN OUTLINE AND SOURCE BOOK BY EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AUTHOR OF "SOCIAL CONTROL," "THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY," "SIN AND SOCIETY," ETC. Wefa gorfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1915 All rights reserved fir ff/s" Copyright, 1908, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and elcctrotyped. Published June, xgo8. Reprinted November, 1908 ; March, July, 1909 ; August, 1911 ; January. Jaly, igi3 ; January, 1913 ; March, July, 1914; March, 1915. J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. MY HONORED CO-LABORER FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS BOLD SEEKER AND VALIANT PROCLAIMER OF TRUTH THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED PREFACE It requires some hardihood to put forth this, the pioneer treatise, in any language, professing to deal systematically with the subject of social psychology. In spite of infinite pains and thirteen years of experi- ence in university teaching of the subject, I feel sure this book is strewn with errors. The ground is new, and among the hundreds of interpretations, inferences, and generalizations I have ventured on, no doubt scores will turn out to be wrong. Of course I would strike them out if I knew which they are. I would hold back the book could I hope by longer scrutiny to detect them. But I have brought social psychology as far as I can unaided, and nothing is to be gained by delay. The time has come to hand over the results of my reflection to my fellow-workers, in the hope of provoking discus- sions which will part the wheat from the chaff and set it to producing an hundred fold. Nothing puts an edge on one's thinking like coming on new and interesting truth mixed, nevertheless, with some error. Therefore, if the young science is to advance rapidly, its friends must not be too fearful of being found wrong on a few points. Let each pros- pector — to change the metaphor — empty out his sack of specimens before his brother prospectors, even though he knows their practised glance will recognize some of his prized nuggets as mere pyrites. Then it will not take long to locate the rich veins. viii PREFACE So I offer this book with the wish that what in it is sound be promptly absorbed into the growth of the science, and the unsound be as promptly forgotten. Indeed, the swiftness of its disintegration will measure the rate of progress of the subject. If it is utterly superannuated in twenty years, that will be well ; if, in ten years, it is a back number, that will be better. Per- ish the book, if only social psychology may go forward ! Hence, I beg messieurs, the discreet critics, to lay on right heartily, remembering that in showing its errors they are triumphing with the author, not over him. At the moment of launching this work, I pause to pay heartfelt homage to the genius of Gabriel Tarde. Solicitous as I have been to give him due credit in the text, no wealth of excerpt and citation can reveal the full measure of my indebtedness to that profound and original thinker. While my system has swung wide of his, I am not sure I should ever have wrought out a social psychology but for the initial stimulus and the two great construction lines — conventionality and cus- tom — yielded by his incomparable Lois de l' imitation. If only this expression of my gratitude could reach him ! EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS. Madison, Wisconsin, May, igoS. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE The Nature and Scope of Social Psychology . . i Social psychology treats of planes and currents. Rela- tion of social psychology to sociology proper. A common environment or experience does not produce social planes. Race traits are not social planes. Such planes arise from interactions. Social psychology explains both society and the individual. Divisions. How planes of sentiment re- garding slavery formed. Factors in the formation of religious planes. Imitation vs. Affinity. CHAPTER n Suggestibility ii The higher psychic growths imply association. Much of one's mental content comes from others. Psychic resonance. Sub-human suggestibility. Nature men. Culture men. Suggestibility in relation to age, tempera- ment, and sex. Women more suggestible than men. In the normal state indirect suggestion succeeds best. Effect of fasting; of fatigue and hysteria. Nordau's theory. An alternative explanation. Theory of hypnotic phenomena. Normal and abnormal suggestibility. Miracle. Oriental magic. Source of suggestion — prestige. Traits of the born leader. Force vs. Prestige in politics. Duration of suggestion. Volume of suggestion: the secret of the might of public opinion ; the fatalism of the multitude ; individuality and numbers. CHAPTER III The Crowd 43 Individuality and voluntary movement. Wilting of the self in the crowd. Fixation of attention. Excitement. X CONTENTS PAGE Emotionalism. Arrest of thought. The leader. The psychic process in the crowd. The time element. The Kentucky Revival ; its psychology. Why the crowd can- not last. Instability, credulity, irrationality, simplicity, and non-morality of the crowd. It is the lowest form of association. How deliberative assemblies escape. Mob mind in city dwellers ; its bearing on booms and panics. Comparison of city and country in respect to crowd phenomena. CHAPTER IV Mob Mind 63 Differences between crowd and public. Ours the era of publics. Craze and fad as symptoms of mob mind. Theory of the craze. Socio-psychic phenomena in the early Church. The Children's Crusade. Mediaeval epi- demics. Mental epidemics in America: Millerism ; the Women's Crusade; Mrs. Nation. Financial crazes; the tulip mania. Stampedes. The "Great Fear." The war spirit of '61. The laws of crazes. Theory of the fad ; Faddism vs. Progress. Why fads flourish nowa- days. CHAPTER V Prophylactics against Mob Mind 83 Need of building up individuality. Education for criti- cism. How to become crank-proof. Steadying influence of the classic. The influence of sane teachers. Avoidance of the sensational newspaper. Sport trains to inhibition. Stability of the country-bred. Familism. Sobering effect of ownership. Voluntary association disciplines men. Intellectual self-possession as an ideal. Pride or love as moral mainspring. Avoidance of yellow religion. CHAPTER VI Fashion 94 Outward conformity and inward conformity. The pas- sion for self-individualization. Its persistence in American CONTENTS ' xi PAGE society. Democracy does not exclude inequality. The two movements in the fashion process. The shackling of competitive consumption ; the disappearance of sumptuary laws. Effect of caste. Acceleration of the fashion process in a commercialized democracy. Why fashions less stable. The characteristics of modern fashion. The rebellion against fashion and the liberalization of costume. CHAPTER VII The Nature of Conventionality no Conventionality reaches to the very framework of our lives and furnishes postulates for our thinking. Laborers accept the upper class stigma on toil ; accept the commer- cial standard of hunian worth ; and of civic worth. We adopt leisure class opinion touching conservativism. Cer- tain standards of beauty originate in leisure class snobbery. Why it is unwomanly for women to use stimulants. " The spirit of the age " is a plane established by imitation. CHAPTER VIII The Laws of Conventionality Imitation . . .121 Bodily movements spread readily : the Flagellants ; the Dancing Mania ; the Jumpers ; epidemics of convulsions ; national gestures. Onomatopoeia. The spread of dishes and drinks. Inflammability of the sex appetite. Feelings easily induced by suggestion ; infectiousness of hope, fear, courage, curiosity. Unity more attainable through feel- ings than through beliefs. Ideal vs. Dogma as a religious rallying point. Seductiveness of imaginary characters; the grave responsibility of the Artist. Contagiousness of personal ideals. Sex charm follows the conventional female type ; realizing a beauty ideal in the flesh. The radiation of will. Obedience draws other imitations in its wake. Tarde's law. Americanization of the Porto Ricans. Why nothing succeeds like success. Theory of survivals. Reverential imitation precedes competitive imi- tation. The spread of ideas precedes the spread of the arts. Why fundamental beliefs spread the farthest. xii CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PAGE The Radiant Points of Conventionality . . . 147 Workingmen's refusal to accept certain bourgeois stand- ards : late marriage ; child emancipation. Merit may mount in defiance of social gravity. What the superior borrows from the inferior. Why colonists are conserva- tive. Most diffusions, however, obey social gravity. The descent of wants ; of culture ; of manners and accomplish- ments ; of ideals. Aristocracies the first assimilators of peoples. A live aristocracy is progressive and cosmopoli- tan. Why democracies must foster higher education. Differentiation of the arts and professions. Titular aris- tocracy as a hindrance to the diffusion of culture ; the British nobility. CHAPTER X The Radiant Points of Conventionality {continued') . 166 The power-holder is copied; the Roman Emperor; Rome ; monarchs ; national imitation of court luxuries and extravagances. The imitation of the successful. Struggle between the aristocracy of achievement and the titled. The pace-setters in our democracy. Imitation of the rich by Mammon worshippers. The rise of the American doUarocracy. Barbarizing influence of the Smart Set. The spread of a pecuniary civilization. CHAPTER XI The Radiant Points of Conventionality {concluded') . 181 High potential of the city. The cities pass the torch to the rest of society ; their spell upon the country. Capi- tals. Sapping of the country in monarchical France ; the ascendency of Paris. The revival of local centres. Why the city has a glamour. Limits to metropolitan leader- ship. In democracies majorities are imitated. Among equals the greater number has prestige. The fatalism of the multitude vs. the leadership of the dite. The spread of ideas of equality by means of social gravity. CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER XII PAGC Custom Imitation ig6 Contrast of custom and conventionality ; of custom and heredity. Why the familiar beaten paths are pleasant. Influence of animistic ideas. Fseuiio-scieati.&c sanction of customs ; " historical continuity." The true view. Tendency toward the formation of an etiquette in lan- guage ; in ritual ; in dogma ; in politics ; in law ; in ad- ministration ; in education. The arrest of progress by a cake of custom : British immobility ; American immobility. Why new societies outstrip all others ; the secret of the " Western " spirit. CHAPTER XIII Conditions affecting the Sway of Custom . . .217 Ancestor-worship. The age of governors and leaders : China compared with revolutionary France; old men in warfare and business ; old men as custodians of religion and law. Overgrowth of State and Church. Physical isolation ; mountains ; islands ; the backwoods ; effect of improved communication. Linguistic isolation. Social isolation ; the Jews ; guest-friendship among the Greeks. House life. Literacy. The school may be instrument either of progress or of tradition ; universities as citadels of dead learning. Freedom of discussion. The supremacy of an ancient sacred book. Strong group or race feeling: no inter-assimilation among custom-bound peoples ; Rus- sian vs. American assimilation. Sedentariness. Culture contacts. In primitive times no contact of peoples save through war. Warfare breaks up habit and commingles the products of local developments. Familism. Dissolu- tion of the kin group makes for individuality and initiative. CHAPTER XIV The Fields of Custom Imitation 254 Custom cannot thrive where there is competition. It persists in the less accessible fields. Collective habits XIV CONTENTS PAGB more stable than individual habits. Habits of consump- tion more persistent than habits of production. The standard of living ; ease of exploiting a custom-bound people ; why unrestricted Asiatic immigration is danger- ous ; race suicide. Custom powerful in matters of feel- ing. Inter-race, inter-class, inter-confession, and inter-sex feelings resist change. Feeling not to be overcome by argument. Institutions of control slow to change. Archa- ism of law ; of government ; of organized religion. CHAPTER XV Relation of Custom Imitation to Conventionality Imitation 275 Profound contrast between a traditional and an un- traditional society. Oscillations between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. When custom rules the new pretends to be old. When conventionality rules the old pretends to be new ; or the old denies the newness of the new. CHAPTER XVI Rational Imitation 285 Attitude of the rational imitator. Relation of moral and aesthetic progress to material and intellectual progress. Rational imitation admits of authority. Rationality in the spread of the practical arts : competition ; measurement ; why " schools " and " movements " in the fine arts. Ra- tionality in the spread of science : applications ; verifica- tion ; Science vs. " Thought " ; why " schools " in the latter. The extensive growth of rational imitation. Its intensive growth ; the rising sciences. CHAPTER XVII Interference and Conflict 296 Silent conflict and vocal conflict. Struggle of prestige against prestige ; of prestige against merit ; the conflict between old and new. Duel between merit and merit. Means of deciding silent conflicts. The appeal to author- CONTENTS XV ity ; the case of Joseph II. The resort to persecution ; the psychology of martyrdom. Why silent conflict tends to break out into discussion. CHAPTER XVIII Discussion 307 Discussion abbreviates conflicts. Why doomed causes hate it. Curative power of free discussion. Its growing copiousness. Tallc does change opinion. When contro- versy is fruitful ; when fruitless. Theory of the polemic. The path of degeneration of discussion ; the appeal to force. Three phases of discussion. The evolution of discussion ; its secular achievements ; its law of develop- ment. CHAPTER XIX The Results of Conflict 324 Struggles may last indefinitely because of innate differ- ences in people ; or because a paradox is pitted against an illusion. Struggles may terminate because one side is beaten ; because a middle ground is found ; or because specialization takes place. But no struggle is settled until it is settled right. CHAPTER XX Union and Accumulation 330 Two sides to every culture fabric. Rigid and plastic sides of religion ; of science ; of law ; of industry and art. The non-accumulable elements are superior. But advance is easier on the plastic side than on the rigid. Precipita- tion of conflicts by the pressure of accumulated materials. CHAPTER XXI Compromise 338 Compromise frequent in matters calling for collective action. Sometimes it breaks a social deadlock. Oftener it indicates an uncompleted conflict. Tragic feud between XVI CONTENTS PAGE compromiser and reformer. English fondness for com- promise. The Toleration Act. French penchant for symmetry and system. Advantages and disadvantages of compromise. CHAPTER XXII Public Opinion 346 The formation of public opinion in a campaign. Pri- mary impression. The marshalling of authorities. Why independent judgment is often impossible ; necessity of relying on the expert. The ascendency of the dlite. Bal- loting a means of registering pubUc opinion ; manhood suffrage does not equalize Socrates and Sambo. Class influence in the guidance of opinion. The merging of public opinion into social tradition. CHAPTER XXIII DiSEQUILIBRATION 35; Why an equilibrium is not reached. Disturbing influ- ence of culture contacts ; of a shifting of the social founda- tions; of the afflux of inventions and discoveries. No prospect of the stationary state in the Occident. The laws of invention : degrees of possibility ; degrees of difficulty ; how society can promote invention. A lasting equilibrium neither possible nor desirable. Contradictions in a culture not due to want of logic ; putting new wine into old bottles. An epoch of disequilibration gives the individual a chance. Effect of the ripening of the social mind upon individuality : the integration of culture ; the diversification of culture. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER I THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Social psychology, as the writer conceives it, studies the Social Psy- psychic planes and currents that come into existence t^eate^of among men in consequence of their association. It seeks social planes to understand and account for those uniformities in feel- ing, belief, or volition — and hence in action — which are due to th e interaction of human beingSj i.e.j, to_jWcia/ causes. No two persons have just the same endowment. Looking at their heredity, we should expect people to be far more dissimilar and individual than we actually find them to be. The aligning power of association triumphs over diversity of temperament and experience. There ought to be as many religious creeds as there are human beings; but we find people ranged under a few great religions. It is the same in respect to dress, diet, pastimes, or moral ideas. The individuality each has received from the hand of nature is largely effaced, and we find people gathered into great planes of uniformity. In shifting attention from the agreements in which men rest, such as languages, religions, and cultures, to the agi- tations into which they are drawn, it is natural to change the metaphor from plane to current. The spread of the lynching spirit through a crowd in the presence of an atrocious criminal, the contagion of panic in a beaten SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Relation of social psy- chology to sociology nroper Planes pro- duced by a common en- vironment or experience are not social army, an epidemic of religious emotion, and the sympa- thetic extension of a strike call up the thought of a current, which bears people along for a time and then ceases. Social psychology differs from sociology proper in that the former considers planes and currents ; the latter, groups and structures.' Their interests bring men into coopera- tion or conflict. They group themselves for the purpose of cooperating or struggling, and they devise structures as a means of adjusting interests and attaining practical ends. Social psychology considers them only as coming into planes or currents of uniformity, not as uniting into groups. Since the former determine the latter more than the latter determine the former, social psychology should precede rather than follow sociology proper in the order of studies. Social psychology pays no attention to the non-psychic parallelisms among human beings (an epidemic of disease or the prevalence of chills and fever among the early settlers of river-bottom lands), or to the psychic parallel- isms that result therefrom (melancholia or belief in eternal punishment). It neglects the uniformities among people that are produced by the direct action of a common physical environment (superstitiousness of sailors, gayety of open-air peoples, suggestibility of dwellers on monoto- nous plains, independent spirit of mountaineers), or by subjection to similar conditions of life (dissipatedness of tramp printers, recklessness of cowboys, preciseness of elderly school teachers, suspiciousness of farmers). ' The present treatise is, therefore, by no means the same as psycho- logical sociology, for it omits the psychology of groups. The writer doubts whether it is practicable or wise to treat the psychological side of sociology quite apart from the morphological side. NATURE AND SCOPE 3 Social psychology ignores unifonnities arising directly Race traits or indirectly out of race endowment — negro volubility, ^^ai planes gypsy nomadism, Malay vindictiveness, Singhalese treach- ery, Magyar passion for music, Slavic mysticism, Teutonic venturesomeness, American restlessness. How far such common characters are really racial in origin and how far merely social is a matter yet to be settled. Probably they are much less congenital than we love to imagine. " Race " is the cheap explanation tyros offer for any collective trait that they are too stupid or too lazy to trace to its origin in the physical environment, the social environment, or his- torical conditions. Social psychology deals only with uniformities due tol Social planes social causes, i.e., to mental contacts or mental interactions. \^^^'^^ In each case we must ask, " Are these human beings aligned interactions by their common instincts and temperament, their com- mon geographical situation, their identical conditions of life, or by their inter psychology, i.e., the influences they have received from one another or from a common human source?" The fact that a mental agreement extends through society bringing into a common plane great numbers of men does not make it social. It is social only U in so far as it arises out of the interplay of minds. Social psychology seeks to enlarge our knowledge of Social society by explaining how so many planes in feeling, belief, sheds Ught or purpose have established themselves among men and on society supplied a basis for their groupings, their cooperations, and their conflicts. But for the processes which weave into innumerable men certain ground patterns of ideas, beliefs, and preferences, great societies could not endure. No communities could last save those held together by social pleasure or the necessity for cooperation. National SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY And on the individual Divisions of social psychology characteristics would not arise, and strife would be the rule outside of the group of men subject to the same area of characterization. It seeks to enlarge our knowledge of the individual by ascertaining how much of his mental content and choice is derived from his social surroundings. Each of us loves to think himself unique, self-made, moving in a path all his own. To be sure, he finds his feet in worn paths, but he imagines he follows the path because it is the right one, not because it is trodden. Thus Cooley ^ observes : "The more thoroughly American a man is, the less he can per- ceive Americanism. He will embody it ; all he does, says, or writes will be full of it ; but he can never truly see it, simply because he has no exterior point of view from which to look at it." Now, by demonstrating everywhere in our lives the unsuspected presence of social factors, social psychology spurs us to push on and build up a genuine individuality, to become a voice and not an echo, a person and not a parrot. The realization of how pitiful is the contribution we have made to what we are, how few of our ideas are our own, how rarely we have thought out a belief for ourselves, how little our feelings arise naturally out of our situation, how poorly our choices express the real cravings of our nature, first mortifies, then arouses, us to break out of our prison of custom and conventionality and live an open-air life close to reality. Only by eman- cipation from the spell of numbers and age and social eminence and personality can ciphers become integers. Social psychology falls into two very unequal divisions, viz., Social Ascendency and Individual Ascendency, the determination of the one by the many and the determina- ' " Human Nature and the Social Order," 36. NATURE AND SCOPE S tion of the many by the one ; the moulding of the ordinary person by his social environment and the moulding of the social environment by the extraordinary person. Thus the knightly pattern, the ideal of romantic love, the West- minster Catechism, and the belief in public education are at once achievements of superior persons, and elements in the social environment of innumerable ordinary persons. For example, we may distinguish three principal sources of the feelings on slavery extant in this country in i860. 1. Observation or Experience of Slave Holding. — In How planes the South slavery was profitable, and the economic interests °^ sentiment ■' ^ ' regarding of that section became bound up with it. In the North slavery it was unprofitable, and hence men could feel disinterest- ^°'^^^ edly about it. 2. Imbibing from the Social Environment. — In the South belief in the rightfulness of slavery became first a creed and then a tradition under which the young grew up. During the seventy years from 1790 to i860 there was a marked increase of antipathy to the negro and an exten- sion of the color line. By 1835 pro-slavery sentiment had become so militant that abolitionism was no longer al- lowed to show itself openly. The generation reared in this close atmosphere could not but be biassed. Southern opinion became first homogeneous, then imperious, finally intolerant. Southern feeling about slavery reached the pitch of fanaticism. Even the " poor whites " became pro- slavery. In the North antislavery sentiment became pre- dominant, but not intolerant. In each section there formed a psychic vortex, more and more powerful, which sucked in the neutral and indifferent and imparted to them its own motion. 3. The Initiative of the Elite. — In the South the public 6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY men, great planters, and commercial magnates moulded sectional opinion in support of the "peculiar institu- tion." In the North poets, divines, orators, philosophers, and statesmen built up the antislavery sentiment. Gar- rison, Phillips, Parker, Lovejoy, Stowe, Beecher, Lowell, Thoreau, and Whittier proclaimed the mandates of the voice within the heart. Of these three factors the first is not social at all, the second exemplifies social ascendency, and the third exem- plifies individual ascendency. Factors in Again, to drive the distinction home, let us consider the the forma- factors that determine the boundary line between Catholi- tion of reli- , ■' gious planes cism and Protestantism in Europe. I. The Affinity between the Confessions and the People. — Says Taylor :' — "The dolichocephalic Teutonic race is Protestant, the brachycephalic Celto-Slavic race is either Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox. In the first, individualism, wilful- ness, self-reliance, independence, are strongly developed; the second is submissive to authority and conservative in instincts. To the Teutonic races Latin Christianity was never congenial, and they have now converted it into some- thing very different from what it was at first, or from what it became in the hands of Latin and Greek doctors. The Teutonic peoples are averse to sacerdotalism, and have shaken off priestly guidance and developed individualism. Protestantism was a revolt against a religion imposed by the South upon the North, but which had never been con- genial to the Northern mind. The German princes, who were of purer Teutonic blood than their subjects, were the leaders of the ecclesiastical revolt. Scandinavia is more ' "The Origin of the Aryans," 247-249. NATURE AND SCOPE 7 purely Teutonic than Germany, and Scandinavia is Prot- estant to the backbone. The Lowland Scotch, who are more purely Teutonic than the English, have given the freest development to the genius of Protestantism. Those Scotch clans which have clung to the old faith have the smallest admixture of Teutonic blood. Ulster, the most Teutonic province of Ireland, is the most firmly Protes- tant. The case of the Belgians and the Dutch is very striking. The line of religious division became the line of political separation, and is conterminous with the two racial provinces. The mean cephalic index of the Dutch is 75.3, which is nearly that of the Swedes and the North Germans ; the mean index of the Belgians is 79, which is that of the Parisians. The Burgundian cantons of Swit- zerland, which possess the largest proportion of Teutonic blood, are Protestant, while the brachycephalic cantons in the East and South are the stronghold of Catholicism. South Germany, which is brachycephalic, is Catholic; North Germany, which is dolichocephalic, is Protestant. Hanover, which is Protestant, has a considerably lower index than Cologne, which is Catholic. The Thirty Years' War was a war of race as well as of religion, and the peace of Westphalia drew the line of religious demar- cation with tolerable precision along the ethnic frontier. "Wherever the Teutonic blood is purest — in North Germany, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Ulster, the Orkneys, the Lothians, Yorkshire, East Anglia — Protestantism found easy entrance, and has retained its hold, often in some exaggerated form. In Bohemia, France, Belgium, Alsace, it has been trodden out. In Galway and Kerry it has no footing. The Welsh and the Cornishmen, who became Protestants by political accident, have trans- 8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY formed Protestantism into an emotional religion, which has inner affinities with the emotional faith of Ireland and Italy. Even now Protestantism gains no converts in the South of Europe, or Catholicism in the North. Roman Catholicism, or the cognate creed of the Greek and Rus- sian Orthodox churches, is dominant in all those lands where the brachycephalic race prevails; Protestantism is confined to the dolichocephalic Teutonic region." 2. The Initiative of Religious Leaders. — The work of Huss, Luther, Knox, Calvin, was, of course, a decisive factor in the formative years of Protestantism. It is less to-day, seeing that the teachings of the earlier leaders have struck root and become a tradition. Nevertheless, even now, the frontier between the confessions is disturbed by the shifting of a Newman from one side to the other. 3. The Authority of Numbers and Tradition. — Only the very independent mind turns Catholic in Scandinavia, where all but one in a thousand are Lutheran, or Protes- tant in Portugal, where all but one in ten thousand are Catholic. In religion, moreover, parental upbringing is well-nigh decisive. Save among migrants, few converts are made by one side from the other. Every man denies that his faith is inherited or thrust upon him by cir- cumstances. On the contrary, he imagines that it is a matter of intelligent free choice. But this is an illusion. The recognized ascendency of remote historical factors in determining the religious preferences of peoples empha- sizes how non-rational and unfree are the religious adhe- sions of men. The Irish are devotedly and stubbornly Catholic because their aforetime oppressors were Protes- tants. Not present causes, but Smithfield, the Armada, Knox, and Claverhouse, make England so Protestant, NATURE AND SCOPE 9 Scotland so Presbyterian. Long-forgotten struggles with non-Christians made Spain so bigoted as she is to-day, and Russia so Orthodox. The second and third of these determinative factors are imitation social, but not the first. It is evident, then, that the great 7^""^ '^®'* ' ' o ity as estab- rival to Imitation as the key to social uniformities is Usher of Affinity. Thus it has been maintained that there is an f^^t^ „„ •' among men inner sympathy between agriculture and orthodoxy, be- tween commerce and heresy, between machine industry and scepticism, between artists and socialism. The affinities or suitabilities that govern choices present themselves more clearly in races than in peoples, in peoples than in communities, in communities than in individuals. Thus great numbers of individuals are Catholic from some form of imitation, yet the brachy- cephalic race seems to be Catholic from affinity. Innu- merable persons wear tweeds and cheviots on account of fashion, yet the ultimate reason for the vogue of these stuffs is their suitability to certain damp chill climates. Despite the mob mind in them, the Crusades display a good deal of rationality. They were expeditions for the conquest of powerful talismans. There is probably an affinity between parliamentary institutions and the Eng- lish-speaking peoples on their present plane of culture. The frequent illworking of such institutions in southern Europe and South America suggests that among the Latins they persist by imitation. SUMMARY Sodal psychology treats of the psychic planes and currents that arise in consequence of human association. It does not consider common race traits nor pyschic uniformities lo SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY produced by the direct action of the physical environment or by ex- posure to similar conditions of life. Its phenomena may be considered under the heads of Social Ascendency and Individual Ascendency. A wide uniformity in belief, practice, or institution is either the manifestation of an affinity or the outcome of imitation. EXERCISES 1. Social psychology has been defined as "the genesis of those states of consciousness produced in the individual by the presence of and contact with his fellows." How does this notion differ from that given in the text? 2. Show that the phenomena grouped under Individual Ascendency do not so lend themselves to generalization as the phenomena grouped under Social Ascendency. CHAPTER II SUGGESTIBILITY The older psychology was individualistic in its interpre- The Wghw tations. The contents of the mind were looked upon as g'owti^ im- elaborations out of personal experience. It sought to piyassocia- show how from the primary sense perceptions are built up ideas, at first simple, then more and more complex — ideas of space, time, number, cause, etc. The upper stories of personality, framed on beliefs, standards, valuations, and ideals, were comparatively neglected. The psychologist failed to note that for these highly elaborated products we are more indebted to our fellow-men than to our individual experience, that they are wrought out, as it were, collec- tively, and not by each for himself. The newer psychology in accoimting for the contents of Much of the mind gives great prominence to the social factor. It °o„tenT^"'^ insists that without interaction with other minds the psychic coines from development of the child would be arrested at a stage not far above idiocy. Such interaction arises necessarily from the suggestibility of human nature. A person can- not unswervingly follow the orbit prescribed by his hered- ity or his private experience. He does not sit serene at the centre of things and coolly decide which of the exam- ples and ideas that present themselves he shall adopt. Much of what impinges on his consciousness comes with some force. It has momentum, and if he does not yield others resonance 12 SOCIAL PSVCHOLOGY to it, it is because his mind resists with a greater force. The weak mind, like Sir James Brooke in " Middlemarch," "takes shape easily, but won't keep shape." Many a man thinks he makes up his mind, whereas, in truth, it is made up for him by some masterful associate or by the man who talked with him last. Psychic Stimuli welling up from within may be termed impulses, whereas those reaching us directly from without may be termed suggestions. The latter may be defined as " the abrupt entrance from without into consciousness of an idea or image which becomes a part of the stream of thought and tends to produce the muscular and volitional effects which ordinarily follow upon its presence." * Examples of the working of suggestion are legion. Per- sons accustomed to being put under the influence of an- aesthetics have "gone off" as soon as the familiar chloro- form mask was laid on the face, but before any chloroform had been poured on it. A professor of chemistry an- nounced to his auditors: "The bottle which you see before me contains a chemical with a strong and peculiar odor. I wish to see how rapidly the odor will be diffused through the air and will therefore ask each of you to raise the hand as soon as the odor is perceived." With face averted he then poured the Uquid over some cotton and started a stop watch. In fifteen seconds most of those in the front row had given the sign, and by the end of a minute three-fourths of the audience claimed to perceive the smell. Yet the bottle contained nothing but distilled water, and the professor had been measuring the power of suggestion and not the diffusibility of an odor ! * 'Baldwin, "Handbook of Psychology," II, 297. ' Psychological Review, VI, 407. SUGGESTIBILITY I3 Suggestions are true forces and enact themselves unless they meet resistance. The power to withstand, ignore, or throw off suggestions is one form of inhibition, i.e., will power. Suggestion and imitation are merely two aspects of the same thing, the one being cause, the other effect. Suggestibility varies according to, — 1. Species. — It appears to be more marked in grega- Suggestibii- rious than in solitary creatures. Not all simians are imi- |J^^^^" ^u tative, but the gregarious simians, the monkeys, are pro- verbially so. Sheep are so imitative that if a file of them be driven through a narrow passage and the leader be made to jump over a stick held across the passage, every one of the file will jump at that place, even if the stick be withdrawn. Only high suggestibility could produce the wonderful instantaneous concert of action seen in the herd of deer or buffalo, the band of wild horses or elephants. 2. Race. — Suggestibility is not a weakness produced The waxen by civilization. We are told that if Samoyeds be sitting JfjJt'J^°|„j„ about inside their skin tents in the evening and some one creeps up and strikes the tent with his hand, half of them are likely to fall into cataleptic fits. Recent investiga- tions show this nervous instability to be very widespread among the Siberian tribes. We are assured that among the Malays prevails Idtah, an uncanny disorder which would be expected of the high-strung nervous systems of ultra-refined Europeans rather than of artless, unsophis- ticated children of nature like the Malays. Once you have the attention of Idtah-strnck persons, "by merely looking them hard in the face, they will fall helpless into the hands of the operator, instantly lose all self-control, and go passively through any performance, whether ver- 14 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY bally imposed or merely suggested by a sign." ' The Chinaman, so phlegmatic that he is said to be able to sleep "lying across a wheelbarrow with his mouth open and a fly buzzing inside his mouth," suffers, nevertheless, from nervous instability. In the interior of China in almost every village there develop many cases of auto- suggestion, which pass for demoniac possession. "The most striking characteristic of these cases is that the subject evidences another personality, and the normal personality for the time being is partially or wholly dor- mant." ' The American Indian, far from being impassive, is an extremely susceptible type. The ghost-dance religion that spread among the Indians, 1889-1892, took pos- session of probably sixty thousand souls. Its central feature was a sacred dance, reenforced by hypnotizing operations by the medicine man upon dancers who began to show signs of ecstasy. Under the power of the emotion and of the passes employed by the medicine man, first one and then another would break from the ring, stagger, and fall down. "They kept up dancing until fully one hundred persons were lying unconscious. Then they stopped and seated themselves in a circle, and as each one recovered from his trance, he was brought to the centre of the ring to relate his experience." ' Differences Amoug the civiUzcd races the Celto-Slavs seem to be t^°m ™'" ™ore suggestive than the English or the Scandinavians. The demonstrativeness of French and Italian audiences is in high contrast to the "phlegm" of English and Ger- • Quoted from Swettenham by Keane, "Man, Past and Present," 236. 'Nevius, "Demon Possession," 144. ' Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 917. ture men SUGGESTIBILITY 15 man audiences. Nothing surpasses the fire and dash of a French cavalry charge. The EngUsh are at their best in individuahstic fighting, such as defence or retreat. The French and Irish orators hold the palm, while it is the mobs of Frenchmen and of Russians that yield the best material for crowd psychology. Mesmerism and, later, hypnotism originated in France. Politeness and the refinements of intercourse are well-nigh spontaneous with the Irish and the French, owing to their quick susceptibility to slight indications of feeling in the other person. The rudeness so often complained of in the English seems due to an in- sensitiveness to certain ranges of suggestion. 3. Age. — Suggestibility is at its maximum in young why the children, and it is said that most children above the age *^^!'^ '! _ ° "plastic" of seven are hypnotizable.' Here is the secret of child- hood's "plasticity." The adult may be progressive, i.e., open to new ideas, but he ought not to be plastic, i.e., shaped readily by whatever happens to impinge on him. Juvenile testimony is very untrustworthy, seeing that by a series of skilful leading questions a child may be led to give almost any desired story on the witness-stand. It is the suggestibility of the young that prompts us to segregate youthful offenders, institute juvenile courts, keep vicious women ofiE the street, penalize the dissemination of obscene literature, outlaw "treating," and ehminate the commercial motive from the sale of liquor. 4. Temperament. — Coe ^ finds those of the sanguine or Tempera^ the melancholic temperament decidedly more suggestible ™*"* than the choleric. Of seventeen persons who from their ' Binet, " La Suggestibility," sets forth investigations showing a marked normal suggestibility in school children. 2 "The Spiritual Life," 120. i6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Women more suggestible than men upbringing had come to expect a striking religious trans- formation and did experience it (suggestibles), twelve were predominated by sensibility, two by intellect, and three by will. For twelve persons who looked for a conversion but failed to experience it (spontaneous), the correspond- ing figures are two, nine, and one. 5. Sex. — Among the Indian ghost-dancers, " young women are usually the first to be affected, then older women, and lastly men." Coe finds that among those who definitely seek for a striking religious transformation, the proportion of those whose expectation is completely sat- isfied is decidedly greater among the women. Starbuck's figures,^ showing six times as many women as men converted at the regular church services, indicates the greater response of women to external suggestion. In conversion "men dis- play more friction against surroundings, more difficulty with points of belief, more doubt arising from educational influ- ences, more readiness to question traditional beliefs and customs, more pronounced tendency to resist conviction, to pray, to call on God, to lose sleep and appetite." For them the period of doubt and struggle is longer than for women. Ellis ^ points out that women are more hypno- tizable than men. In every hypnotic clinic women are in a great majority. One authority avers that two-thirds of hysterical women and only one-fifth of hysterical men can be hypnotized. Of 360 persons successfully treated by hypnotic therapeutics in a given time 265 were women, 45 were children, and only 50 were men. Hysteria, the mental side of which is exaggerated suggestibility, is much more common in women than in men. Women make ' American Journal of Psychology, VIII, 271. ' "Man and Woman," ch. XII. SUGGESTIBILITY 17 the best mediums. In the Middle Ages witches were estimated to be fifty times as frequent as wizards. As religious leaders women have been conspicuous in that part of religion which covers the field of hypnotic phe- nomena. In women the stirrings of the inferior nervous centres are not so firmly controlled by the supreme centre as in man. Hence they are at once more suggestible and more emotional. The mob susceptibilities in woman cause many strongly Women , , . ... dwarfed by to oppose grantmg women more power m our social or ^^- j^gj^ political organization. But women are more than a sex. in tutelage They are, in a sense, a social class shut out from many of the bracing and individualizing experiences that come to men. "Nowhere in the world," declares Professor Thomas,^ "do women as a class lead a perfectly free in- tellectual life in common with the men of the group unless it be in restricted and artificial groups like the modem revolutionary party in Russia." Hence woman is by no means synonymous with human female. Almost every- where propriety and conventionality press more mercilessly on woman than on man, thereby lessening her free- dom and range of choice and dwarfing her will. Indi- viduality develops through practice in choosing. If women are mobbish, it is largely for the same reason that monks, soldiers, peasants, moujiks, and other rigidly regulated types are mobbish. Much of woman's exag- gerated impressionability disappears once she enjoys equal access with men to such individualizing influences as higher education, travel, self-direction, professional pur- suits, participation in intellectual and public life. ' "Sex and Society," 311. l8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY In the nor- 6. Mental Condition. — In the normal mental state indirect distraction, i.e., absence of mind, is favorable to the un- suggestion critical acceptance of suggestion. The mind must be " caught napping," as it were, in order that an uncongenial suggestion may find lodgment. A number of students are hard at work in the laboratory, absent-mindedly whistling a popular air. An experimenter is able at will to lead their whistling through a medley of well-known airs without their being in the least aware of it. Owing to the absence of his hired men a well-to-do farmer is bur- dened one evening with the task of milking his sixteen cows. The conclusion of his work at midnight finds him in a "brown study" over a philosophic problem. He takes the eight pails of milk and empties them, one after another, into the swill barrel, coming to realize what he is doing only as he drains the last pail ! The "feel" of the full milk-pails had suggested "swill barrel," for one of his daily "chores" was the disposal of skim milk. An ab- sent-minded professor is directed by his wife after dinner to go upstairs and change his clothes preparatory to receiving callers. On going in search of him after the callers have left, she finds him asleep in bed. Undressing had suggested "bed," and bed had suggested "sleep." After an absorbing discussion in a group of smokers a man who finds one cigar enough discovers he has smoked four cigars. The cigars in the open box on the table virtually suggested "Take me !" By one in the normal state, then, slantwise suggestion is far more likely to be accepted than direct suggestion, on the principle that a flank movement succeeds when a frontal attack fails. The young man who has broken with his old habits and associates may be drawn into the saloon SUGGESTIBILITY 19 again by the suggestion from a chance-met former crony, "Let's sit down somewhere and talk over old times," when he would have declined the invitation, " Come and let's have a drink." Shakespeare understood the effi- cacy of indirect suggestion. The subtlety of lago con- sists in his sliding suspicion into Othello's mind without drawing attention upon himself. In Scene III of Act III Othello and lago enter, and Cassio, who has been beseech- ing Desdemona to get him forgiven for his escapade, with- draws, too shame-faced to meet his commander. At this lago exclaims as if to himself, — " Ha ! I like not that. 0th. What dost thou say? lago. Nothing, my lord : or if — I know not what. 0th. Was not that Cassio parted from my wife ? lago. Cassio, my lord ! No, sure, I cannot think it ; That he would steal away so guilty like, Seeing you coming." When they are left alone after Desdemona's successful intervention on Cassio's behalf, lago, with every appear- ance of reticence, contrives to scatter fresh seeds of sus- picion in his master's soul. " lago. My noble lord, — 0th. What dost thou say, lago? lago. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady, know of your love? 0th. He did, from first to last: why dost thou ask? lago. But for a satisfaction of my thought ; No further harm. 0th. Why of thy thought, lago ? 20 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY lago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her. 0th. O, yes, and went between us very oft. lago. Indeed ! 0th. Indeed! Ay, indeed; discern'st thou aught in that? Is he not honest? lago. Honest, my lord? 0th. Honest, ay, honest. lago. My lord, for aught I know. 0th. What dost thou think? lago. Think, my lord ! 0th. Think, my lord ! By heaven, he echoes me As if there were some monster in his thought Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something ; I heard thee say but now, thou likest not that. When Cassio left my wife : What didst not like ? And when I told thee how he was in my counsel In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst, "Indeed !" And didst contract and purse thy brow together, As if thou hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit : If thou dost love me, Show me thy thought. lago. My lord, you know I love you. 0th. I think thou dost. And for I know thou'rt full of love and honesty And weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath. Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more : For such things in a false disloyal knave Are tricks of custom ; but in a man that's just They're close dilations working from the heart, That passion cannot rule. lago. For Michael Cassio SUGGESTIBILITY 2i I dare be sworn I think that he is honest. 0th. I think so too. lago. Men should be what they seem; Or those that be not, would they might seem none ! 0th. Certain, men should be what they seem. lago. Why then I think Cassio's an honest man. 0th. Nay, yet there's more in this; I prithee, speak to me as to thy thinkings. As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts The worst of words." In like manner, by indirect suggestion, veering more and more to direct suggestion as they come under his sway, Mark Antony stirs up the Roman populace against the "honorable men" who have slain Cassar. Fasting heightens susceptibility to hallucination and Fasting suggestion. The universally recommended regimen for sugteltibil- hearing voices, experiencing ecstatic states, and "seeing ity God" is fasting. There was an ancient saying, "The stufEed prophet shall not see or know secret things." The Indian boy about the time of puberty fasts till he is vouch- safed a vision of his "Manitou." In the earlier days the negro "seekers" fasted in order to experience "conver- sion." Savage peoples employ fasting, solitude, and phys- ical exhaustion induced by watching, dancing, whirling, shouting, or flagellation, to bring on abnormal states in which suggestibility is extreme. The preternatural resonance of the half-starved human being has long been counted a sign of divine afflatus, and the full-fed healthy man of stable mentality has humbled himself before the emaciated seer of visions and dreamer of dreams. 22 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Fatigue and Overstimulation brings on fatigue and a heightening oi hystena suggestibility. Nordau accounts as follows for the preva- lence in our time of decadent schools and movements in art and literature. "The leading characteristic of the hysterical is the dis- proportionate impressionability of their psychic centres. From this primary peculiarity proceeds a second quite as remarkable and important — the exceeding ease with which they can be made to yield to suggestion. The earlier observers always mentioned the boundless men- dacity of the hysterical . . . they were mistaken. The hysterical subject does not consciously lie. He believes in the truth of his craziest inventions. The morbid mobility of his mind, the excessive excitability of his imag- ination, conveys to his consciousness all sorts of queer and senseless ideas. He suggests to himself that these ideas are founded on true perceptions, and believes in the truth of his foolish inventions until a new suggestion — perhaps his own, perhaps that of another person — has ejected the earlier one. A result of the susceptibility of the hysterical subject to sugg-=,stion is his irresistible pas- sion for imitation, and the eagerness with which he yields to all the suggestions of writers and artists. When he sees a picture, he wants to become like it in attitude and dress ; when he reads a book, he adopts its views blindly. He takes as a pattern the heroes of the novels which he has in his hand at the moment, and infuses himself into the characters moving before him on the stage." ^ "When a hysterical person is loudly and unceasingly assured that a work is beautiful, deep, pregnant with the future, he believes in it. He believes in everything sug- "Degeneration,'' 25, 26. SUGGESTIBILITY 23 gested to him with sufficient impressiveness. When a little cow girl, Bernadette, saw the vision of the Holy Virgin in the grotto of Lourdes, the woman devotees and hysterical males of the surrounding country who flocked thither did not merely believe that the hallucinant maiden had herself seen the vision, but all of them saw the Holy Virgin with their own eyes. M. E. de Goncourt relates that in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, a multitude of men, numbering tens of thousands, in and before the Bourse in Paris, were convinced that they had themselves seen — indeed, a part of them had read — a telegram announcing French victories fastened to a pillar inside the Exchange, and at which people were pointing with the fingers; but as a matter of fact it never existed. It would be feasible to cite examples by the dozen of illusions of the senses suggested to excited crowds. Thus the hysterical al- low themselves without more ado to be convinced of the magnificence of a work, and even find in it beauties of the highest kind, unthought of by the authors themselves and the appointed trumpeters of their fame.^ "The enormous increase of hysteria in our days is partly Nordau's due ... to the fatigue of the present generation. . . . ^^^°^_^l Fatigue constitutes a true temporary experimental hysteria, hysteria . . . One can change a normal into a hysterical indi- vidual by tiring him.^ . . . Now, to this cause — fatigue * Ibid., 32-33. 2 "Suggestibility from exhaustion or strain is a rather common con- dition with many of us. Probably all eager brain workers find themselves now and then in a state where they are 'too tired to stop.' The over- wrought mind loses the healthy power of casting off its burden, and seems capable of nothing but going on and on in the same painful and futile course. One may know that he is accomplishing nothing, that work done in such a state of mind is always bad work, and that 'that 24 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY — which, according to F616, changes healthy men into hysterical, the whole of civilized humanity has been ex- posed for half a century. All its conditions of life have, in this period of time, experienced a revolution unexampled in the history of the world. Humanity can point to no century in which the inventions which penetrate so deeply, so tyrannically, into the life of every individual are crowded so thick as in ours. The discovery of America, the Refor- mation, stirred men's minds powerfully, no doubt, and certainly also destroyed the equilibrium of thousands of brains which lacked staying power. But they did not change the material life of man. He got up and lay down, ate and drank, dressed, amused himself, passed his days and years as he had always been wont to do. In our times, on the contrary, steam and electricity have turned the customs of life of every member of the civilized nations upside down, even of the most obtuse and narrow-minded citizen, who is completely inaccessible to the impelling thoughts of the times. " ' " The humblest village inhabitant has to-day a wider geographical horizon, more numerous and complex intellectual interests, than the prime min- ister of a petty, or even a second-rate, state a century ago. A cook receives and sends more letters than a university professor did formerly, and a petty tradesman travels more and sees more countries and people than did the reigning prince of other times. All these activities, how- ever, even the simplest, involve an effort of the nervous way madness lies,' but yet be too weak to resist, chained to the wheel of his thought, so that he must wait till it runs down. And such a state, however induced, is the opportunity for all sorts of undisciplined impulses, perhaps some gross passion, like anger, dread, the need of drink, or the Uke." — CoOLEY, "Human Nature and the Social Order," 41. ' Ibid., 36, 37. SUGGESTIBILITY 25 system and a wearing of tissue. Every line we read or write, every human face that we see, every conversation we carry on, every scene we perceive through the window of the flying express, sets in activity our sensory nerves and our brain centres. Even the little shocks of railway travelling, not perceived by consciousness, the perpetual noises, and the various sights in the streets of a large town, our suspense pending the sequel of progressing events, the constant expectation of the newspaper, of the postman, of visitors, cost our brains wear and tear. In the last fifty years the population of Europe has not doubled, whereas the sum of its labors has increased tenfold, in part even fifty fold. Every civilized man furnishes, at the present time, from five to twenty-five times as much work as was dema,nded of him half a century ago." ' "In the last twenty years a number of new nervous diseases have been discovered and named. They are exclusively a consequence of the present conditions of civi- lized life. Many affections of the nervous system already bear a name which implies that they are a direct conse- quence of certain influences of modern civilization. The terms 'railway-spine' and 'railway-brain,' which the English and American pathologists have given to certain states of these organs, show that they recognize them as due . . . partly to the constant vibrations undergone in railway travelling. Again, the great increase in the con- sumption of narcotics and stimulants has its origin unquestionably in the exhausted systems with which the age abounds." ^ The writer doubts the soundness of Nordau's interpre- An aitema- tation. It is more likely that the literary and aesthetic tive explana- tion ^ Ibid., 39. 'Ibid., 40, 41. 26 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY crazes of our time are connected with the collapse ot time-hallowed authorities, are a part of the price we pay to ransom our souls from the spell of the past. Innumer- able minds have parted their moorings to tradition before acquiring rudder and steering-wheel. What, then, can be their fate but to drift about helplessly or founder miser- ably in the cross currents of our age ! Theory of In the hypnotic trance suggestibility is greatly en- hypnotic hauced, and direct suggestion succeeds best. Hypnotism pnenomena ' oo .' ^ has been so fully exploited that I shall not dilate here upon the marvellous obedience of the subject to the will of the operator, nor enlarge upon the significance of retro- active and post-hypnotic suggestions. Probably the most rational notion of what really takes place in hypnosis is that given by Sidis.^ "Abnormal suggestibility is a dis- aggregation of consciousness, a slit, a scar, produced in the mind, a crack that may extend wider and deeper, ending at last in the total disjunction of the waking, guiding, controlling consciousness from the reflex con- sciousness, from the rest of the stream of life." In normal suggestibility " the lesion effected in the body of conscious- ness is superficial, transitory, fleeting. In abnormal sug- gestibility, on the contrary, the slit is deep and lasting — it is a severe gash. In both cases, however, we have a removal, a dissociation of the waking from the subwaking, reflex consciousness, and suggestion being effected only through the latter. Il is the subwaking, the reflex, noi the waking, the controlling consciousness that is suggestible. Suggestibility is the attribute, the very essence of the sub- waking, reflex consciousness." » "The Psychology of Suggestion," 88, 89. SUGGESTIBILITY 27 In the normal state suggestion should be as indirect as Suggestibii- possible in order to catch the inhibitory, waking con- norma'iand sciousness "off its guard." In the abnormal state no cir- intheab- cumspection is needed ; the controlling inhibitory, waking consciousness is more or less dormant, the subwaking, reflex consciousness is exposed, and our suggestions are more effective the more direct they are. "Suggestion varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness." The primary self is the self with personality and will. The integral It is, as it were, a synthesis of all one's experience. It gut-selves^ alone embodies the results of reflection, and it alone holds life true to a personal ideal. It is the captain of the ship. When it is able to fight back the mutinous crew that swarm up from the forecastle — the appetites and passions — and to hold the ship to her course in spite of side-winds and cross currents — suggestions from without — we have a character. If, now, this primary self is overthrown or put to sleep, the subwaking self becomes master of the ship. This self has little reason, will, or conscience. It has sense, appetite, emotion, intelligence, but not char- acter. It is imitative, servile, credulous, swung hither and thither by all sorts of incoming suggestions. The life it prompts cannot be stable, self-consistent, integrated. It is low on the scale of personality, and a situation that commits to its hands the helm of the individual life is fraught with disaster. One of the most important manifestations of abnormal Suggestion suggestibility in the social field is wonderworking. Says *°'* ""'^'''^ Coe:' "Facts like those of suggestive healing have not failed to raise the question whether suggestion may not '"The Spiritual Life," 200. 28 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Suggestion in Oriental magic be the clew to the miraculous element in the lives of the saints, and even in the life of Christ, to say nothing of its bearing upon the wonderworking features of other re- ligions. On the face of the stories of saintly visions, trances, and revelations one can certainly read the im- print of auto-suggestion. Nor must we stop here. Let us consider two exclusive cases of the most strange physi- cal manifestations that have been known to accompany spiritual exaltation. Seven hundred years ago St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Order of Franciscans, after long meditation on the wounds of Christ, found upon his own person sores or 'stigmata' corresponding to the five wounds of the Saviour. Similarly, in the third quarter of this century, Louise Lateau, a devout girl, repeatedly shed blood at the same points. A committee of compe- tent investigators, after carefully examining into her case, became convinced that the phenomena were genuine, and free from intentional deception. But this very wonder has been duplicated in substance by one or more hypnotic subjects through whose skin blood has been caused to exude by suggestion. Lesser phenomena of the same class, such as the production of redness, inflammation, and swelling, have been repeatedly witnessed." Certain verified feats of Indian jugglery give color to the belief that in the art of hypnotism — as distinct from the scientific comprehension of it — the Oriental adepts are far in advance of anything yet attained in our psycho- pathic clinics. Says Bose : ^ — " Dr. Hensoldt saw ' in the centre of one of the largest squares in Agra a Yogi plant a mango — an edible tropical fruit about the size of a large pear growing on a ' "Hindu Civilization during British Rule," II, 152. SUGGESTIBILITY 29 tree which reaches a height of from forty to one hundred and twenty feet. The Yogi dug a hole in the ground about six inches deep, placed the mango in it, and covered it with earth. ... I was startled to see in the air above the spot where the mango had been buried the form of a large tree, at first rather indistinctly, presenting as it were mere hazy outlines, but becoming visibly more dis- tinct, until at length there stood out as natural a tree as ever I had seen in my life — a mango tree about fifty feet high and in full foliage, with mangoes on it. All this happened within five minutes of the burying of the fruit . . . And yet there was something strange about this tree, a weird rigidness, not one leaf moving in the breeze. . . . Another curious feature I noticed — the leaves seemed to obscure the sun's rays. ... It was a tree without a shadow.' "As he approached it it faded, but grew clear again as he receded to his original position; but on his retreating beyond that point it again faded. 'Each individual saw the tree only from the place where he stood.' The English officers not present from the commencement saw nothing at all. Then the Yogi preached — so absorbingly that Dr. Hensoldt 'seemed to forget time and space.' He con- sequently did not notice the disappearance of the tree. When .the Yogi ceased speaking the tree had gone. Then he dug up the mango he had buried. This mango feat he ■saw five times. Before the palace of the Guikwar of Baroda 'in the open air and in broad daylight,' Dr. Hensoldt declares he saw for the first time — he saw it thrice subsequently — the celebrated rope trick. A Yogi, after preaching a most impressive sermon, 'took a rope about fifteen feet long and perhaps an inch thick. One 30 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY end of this rope he held in his left hand, while with the right he threw the other end up in the air. The rope in- stead of coming down again remained suspended, even after the Yogi had removed his other hand, and it seemed to have become as rigid as a pillar. Then the Yogi seized it with both hands, and to my utter amazement, climbed up this rope suspended all the time, in defiance of gravity, with the lower end at least five feet from the ground. And in proportion as he climbed up it seemed as if the rope was lengthening out indefinitely above him and disappearing beneath him, for he kept on climbing until he was fairly out of sight, and the last I could dis- tinguish was his white turban and a piece of this never ending rope. Then my eyes could endure the glare of the sky no longer, and when I looked again he was gone.' As an Oriental traveller and student, Dr. Hensoldt con- cludes that Hindu adepts have ' brought hypnotism to such a degree of perfection that, while under its influence our senses are no longer a criterion of the reality around us, but can be made to deceive us in a manner which is perfectly amazing.' " Prestige is ?. Source of Suggestion. — One is most susceptible to coiJerred by suggestions from Certain quarters or from certain people — • power from those clothed with prestige. Prestige is that which excites such wonder or admiration as to pajralyze the critical faculty. It is not the same at all stages. The boy, trying constantly to do things, admires most those who can do things better than he can or things he cannot do at all. Says Cooley : ' "His father sitting at his desk probably seems an inert and unattractive phenomenon, but the man who can make shavings or dig a deep hole • "Human Nature and the Sodal Order," 290-293. SUGGESTIBILITY 31 is a hero ; and the seemingly perverse admiration which children at a later age show for circus men and for the pirates and desperadoes they read about, is to be explained in a similar manner. What they want is evident power." " The idea of power and the types of personality which, as standing for that idea, have ascendency over us, are a function of our own changing character. At one stage of their growth nearly all imaginative boys look upon some famous soldier as the ideal man. He holds this place as symbol and focus for the aggressive, contending, dominating impulses of vigorous boyhood; to admire and sympathize with him is to gratify, imaginatively, these impulses. In this country some notable speaker and party leader often succeeds the soldier as the boyish ideal; his career is almost equally dominating and splendid, and, in time of peace, not quite so remote from reasonable aspira- tions." " The simpler and more dramatic or visually imaginable Kinds and kinds of power have a permanent advantage as regards p°^e^^°^ general ascendency. Only a few can appreciate the power of Darwin, and those few only when the higher faculties of their minds are fully awake; there is nothing dramatic, nothing appealing to the visual imagination, in his secluded career. But we can all see Grant or Nelson or Moltke at the headquarters of their armies, or on the decks of their ships, and hear the roar of their cannons. They hold one by the eye and by the swelling of an emo- tion felt to be common to a vast multitude of people." "This need of a dramatic or visually imaginable pre- Hero-»tufi sentation of power is no doubt more imperative in the childlike peoples of southern Europe than it is in the sedater and more abstractly imaginative Teutons; but it born leader 32 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY is strong in every people, and is shared by the most intel- lectual classes in their emotional moods. Consequently these heroes of the popular imagination, especially those of war, are enabled to serve as the instigators of a common emotion in great masses of people, and thus to produce in large groups a sense of comradeship and solidarity. The admiration and worship of such heroes is probably the chief feeling that people have in common in all early stages of civilization, and the main bond of social groups." Traits of the The born leader is one whose superiority seems bound- less. If it is only relative, if we can measure it, if we can fathom the secret of it and can see how we can finally attain to it ourselves, he is no longer our hero. In every crisis he must appear to be master of the situation, not perplexed, dubious, or vacillating. His faith in himself and in his undertaking must appear tremorless. He must bear up when others despair, remain serene when they are agitated. His intelligence must overarch and reach be- yond that of his followers. Not unbroken success, not measurable excellence, but the gift of striking and stirring the imagination of others is, perhaps, the essential thing in natural leadership. Cooley ^ remarks: "A sense of power in others seems to involve a sense of their inscruta- bility; and, on the other hand, so soon as a person be- comes plain he ceases to stimulate the imagination; we have seen all around him, so that he no longer appears an open door to new life." " The power of mere inscruta- bility arises from the fact that it gives a vague stimulus to thought and then leaves it to work out the details to suit itself." 1 ■" Human Nature and the Social Order," 313-315- SUGGESTIBILITY 33 "A strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix the eye and fascinate the mind. Such a countenance as that of Savonarola may have counted for much toward the effect he produced. Another instance of the prestige of the inscrutable is the fascination of silence, when power is imagined to lie be- hind it. The very name of William the Silent gives one a sort of thrill, whether he knows anything of that dis- tinguished character or not. One seems to see a man darkly potent, mysteriously dispensing with the ordinary channel of self-assertion, and attaining his ends without evident means. It is the same with Von Moltke, ' silent in seven languages,' whose genius humbled France and Austria in two brief campaigns. And General Grant's taciturnity undoubtedly fascinated the imagination of the people — after his earlier successes had shown that there was really something in him — and helped to secure to him a trust and authority much beyond that of any other of the Federal generals. It is the same with a personal reserve in every form : one who always appears to be his own master and does not too readily reveal his deeper feelings, is so much the more likely to create an impression of power. He is formidable because incalculable." Acquired prestige is that due to proximity, place, office. Prestige the etc. The ascendency of the parent in moulding the char- ^^^/"J^"^' acter of a child is due not alone to the long term of asso- ity" elation, but also to the fact that the parent, as the first adult in the child's ken, seems to him limitless in powers and wisdom. This gives the father a long lead over others and procures him obedience after he is no longer able to punish. Prestige of this kind explains the " natural 34 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Force vs. prestige as inspirer of political obedience authority" of teacher over pupil, squire over tenant, priest over flock, officer over men. In France a dashing "man on horseback" like General Boulanger has prestige. In the East the hermit, or yogi, is admired and obeyed. A government not founded on common consent must base its authority on fear or on prestige. The latter is cheaper, and more satisfactory both to rulers and ruled. This is why authoritative governments always surround themselves with prestige-conferring pomp. Thus Dill ' observes : — "The imperial government at all times displayed the politic or instinctive love of monarchy for splendor and magnificence. . . . After great fires and desolating wars, the first thought of the most frugal or the most lavish prince was to restore in greater grandeur what had been destroyed. After the great conflagration of 64 a.d., which laid in ashes ten out of the fourteen regions of Rome, Nero immediately set to work to rebuild the city in a more orderly fashion, with broader streets and open spaces. Vespasian, on his accession, found the treasury loaded with a debt of more than a billion and a half dol- lars. Yet the frugal emperor did not hesitate to begin at once the restoration of the Capitol, and all the other ruins left by the great struggle of 69 a.d. from which his dynasty arose. . . . Titus completed the Colosseum, and erected the famous baths. Domitian once more restored the Capitol, and added many new buildings." Only popular governments dare to dispense with splen- dor and be "simple." A reappearance of state and magnificence in a government is good evidence that it no longer expresses the real will of the people. ' "Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius," 227. SUGGESTIBILITY 35 8. Duration of Suggestion. — Reiteration of the same The efficacy of recurrent suggestion idea in various forms is essential to the production of an ° '^^'^^'^'^^ effect upon people in a normal state of mind. It takes time for the orator to weave his spell. It is in the closing weeks of the legislative session that the tireless lobbyist registers his triumph over the scruples of the legislators. Advertising, to bring in returns, must be persevered in; it may be months after heavy advertising is begun before the sales swell noticeably. The insurance solicitor knows the efScacy of "follow up" letters and conversations. The reiterated phrases of a church liturgy gradually in- spire in the hearer the mood of worship. It is a trick of balladists to call up a certain emotional tone by a recurring phrase at the close of each stanza. Rossetti uses it in "Sister Helen," "Eden Bower," and "Troy Town." Villon's "Ballad of Dead Ladies" owes its effect to the refrain, "But where are the snows of yester year?" Aged couples exhibit sometimes a startling mental and moral resemblance due to the reciprocal influencing of each other for many years. It is a proverb that if you keep on throw- ing mud some of it will stick. The reform school, or re- formatory, requires several years to turn out the "trusty." The educator estimates his power to mould the youth by the time allotted him. Says Mott ' of the Presbyterian College at Teng-chou Fu, China: "For over thirty years. Dr. Calvin Mateer and his wife devoted the best energies of their lives to the comparatively small number of young men admitted to the college. They made much of personal contact with the students, and estimated that they could personally and deeply influ- • "The Evangelization of the World in this Generation," 93. 36 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY ence but about sixty at a time. The students were care- fully selected and were kept as a rule for several years." Moral re- The officer demands four or five years to convert the crystaiuza- gutter-snipe recruit into the finished soldier.^ The Ameri- tion requires o ■'^ time canization of the immigrant is not a matter of weeks and months merely. The missionary finds that it is the first batch of converts that costs. Says Mott : ^ — "In 1882, five years after the missionaries reached Uganda, they had their first baptisms. Up to the end of the seventh year less than a hundred had been baptized. In 1890 the tide began to rise more rapidly. Bishop had meetings in 1891 which were so largely attended that the crush reminded him of Exeter Hall. When the cathedral was dedicated the following year, the audience numbered nearly four thousand. In 1893, during the great revival led by Pilkington, hundreds were converted. The in- fluence of this revival extended far and wide in different directions. At the beginning of 1894 there were only twenty country chapels, but by the end of that year the number had increased to two hundred." This snowball- avalanche effect neatly illustrates the laws of suggestibility. "The wonderful Telugu revival in the Lone Star Mission after nearly a generation of quiet work still serves to lift the faith of the Church." ^ " After many years of deep preparatory work in Fukien Province, the past few years have witnessed the greatest ingathering in the history of missions in China." * 'Kipling in his barrack-room ballad "The 'Eathen" describes the steps in the process of building up soldierly character, and the result. "Seven Seas," 191. ' " The Evangelization of the World in this Genera,tion," 88. ' Ibid., 99. « Ibid., 100. suggestion SUGGESTIBILITY 37 9. Volume of Suggestion. — What strikes us from all Effect of a directions at almost the same instant has a tremendous JZt^2;Z.° effect. Says Bagehot : * — "In 'Eothen' there is a capital description of how every sort of European resident in the East, even the shrewd merchant and 'the post-captain,' with his bright, wakeful eyes of commerce, comes soon to believe in witchcraft,^ and to assure you, in confidence, that there 'really is something in it.' He has never seen anything convincing himself, but he has seen those who have seen those who have seen those who have seen. In fact, he has lived in an atmosphere of infectious belief, and he has inhaled it. Scarcely any one can help yielding to the current infatua- tions of his sect or party. For a short time — say some fortnight — he is resolute ; he argues and objects ; but, day by day, the poison thrives, and reason wanes. What he hears from his friends, what he reads in the party organ, ' "Physics and Politics," 93. ^StoU ("Suggestion und Hypnotismus," Zweite Auflage, 416), in commenting on the atrocious witch trial at Zug, Switzerland, in 1737, points out how completely the learned judges stood under the spell of the universal witchcraft beUef of their times. Their judgment was so thoroughly warped that they could not detect in the testimony of the accused the convincing note of truth, nor recognize how perfectly the account of themselves the poor women gave tallied with their circum- stances. Among the effects of Kathri Gilli was a small bag of white powder. Her accuser declared it was a poison used for the malicious destruction of cattle whereas Kathri explained that it was oat flour. Some of it was given to a dog without ill effects. Kathri offered to prove the harmlessness of this powder by partaking of it herself. Neverthe- less, the experienced judges were so obsessed by the witchcraft super- stition that they saw no convincing proof in the experiment with the dog, failed to draw a rational conclusion from the agreement between the assertion of Kathri and the outcome of the experiment, and deemed the rack a likelier means of eliciting the truth of the matter than testing the powder on Kathri herself ! 38 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY produces its effect. The plain, palpable conclusion which every one around him believes has an influence greater and yet more subtle; that conclusion seems so solid and unmistakable; his own good arguments get daily more and more like a dream. Soon the gravest sage shares the folly of the party with which he acts and the sect with which he worships." The secret of Men who easily throw off the thousand successive pubUcop'in- suggestions of everyday life are carried off their feet ion by the volume of suggestion that emanates from great numbers. This is the secret of the power of public opinion. Bryce ^ has set forth with great clearness the effect upon the individual of the deliquescence of small primitive groups and communities and their merging into a larger society. Individuality "In Small and rude communities, every free man, or at sodetv' ^^&5i every head of a household, feels his own significance and realizes his own independence. He relies on himself, he is little interfered with by neighbors or rulers. His will and his action count for something in the conduct of the affairs of the community he belongs to, yet common affairs are few compared to those in which he must de- pend on his own exertions. The most striking pictures of individualism that literature has preserved for us are those of the Homeric heroes, and of the even more terrible and self-reliant warriors of the Scandinavian Sagas, men like Ragnar Lodbrog and Egil, son of Skallagrim, who did not regard even the gods, but trusted to their own might and main. In more developed states of society organized on an oligarchic basis, such as were the feudal kingdoms of the Middle Ages, or in socially aristocratic ' "The American Commonwealth," II, ch. LXXXIV. SUGGESTIBILITY 39 countries such as most parts of Europe have remained down to our own time, the bulk of the people are no doubt in a dependent condition, but each person derives a certain sense of personal consequence from the strength of his group and of the person or family at the head of it. Moreover, the upper class, being the class which thinks and writes, as well as leads in action, impresses its own type upon the character of the whole nation, and that type is still individualistic, with a strong consciousness of personal free will, and a tendency for each man, if not to think for himself, at least to value and to rely on his own opinion. "Let us suppose, however, that the aristocratic structure The rise of of society has been dissolved, that the old groups have f;^^^™''^'^" disappeared, that men have come to feel themselves mem- bers rather of the nation than of classes, or groups, or communities within the nation, that a levelling process has destroyed the ascendency of birth and rank, that large landed estates no longer exist, and that many persons in what was previously the humbler class are found possessed of property. Under such conditions of social equality the habit of intellectual command and individual self-confi- dence will have vanished from the leading class, which creates the type of national character, and will exist no- where in the nation. "Let us suppose, further, that political equality has And of gone hand in hand with the levelling down of social emi- democracy nence." So that each feels that " his vote or voice counts for no more than that of his neighbor, that he can pre- vail, if at all, only by keeping himself on a level with his neighbor and recognizing the latter's personality as being every whit equal to his own. 40 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY "Suppose further that all this takes place in an enor- mously large and populous country, where the governing voters are counted by so many millions that each indi- vidual feels himself a mere drop in the ocean, the in- fluence which he can fexert privately, whether by his personal gifts or by his wealth, being confined to the small circle of his town or neighborhood. On all sides there stretches around him an illimitable horizon ; and beneath the blue vault which covers that horizon there is every- where the same busy multitude with its clamor of mingled voices which he hears close by. In this multitude his own being seems lost. He has the sense of insignificance which overwhelms us when at night we survey the host of heaven and know that from even the nearest star this planet of ours is invisible. "When the scene of action is a small commonwealth, the individual voters are many of them personally known to one another, and the causes which determine their votes are understood and discounted. When it is a moderately sized country, the towns or districts which compose it are not too numerous for reckoning to over- take and imagination to picture them, and in many cases their action can be explained by well-known reasons which may be represented as transitory. But when the theatre stretches itself to a continent, when the number of voters is counted by many millions, the wings of imagina- tion droop, and the huge voting mass ceases to be thought of as merely so many individual human beings no wiser or better than one's own neighbors. The phenomena seem to pass into the category of the phenomena of nature. . . . They inspire a sort of awe, a sense of individual impotence, like that which man feels when he contem- and numbers SUGGESTIBILITY 41 plates the majestic and eternal forces of the inanimate world." It is perhaps the dwarfing pressure of numbers that individuality explains why vast and populous societies seem to produce small individualities, whereas little societies permit great men to arise. Compare great homogeneous aggregations, such as Egypt, China, Persia, Babylonia, India, with the diminutive communities of Judea, the Greek city-states, the Italian cities of the Middle Ages, the free towns of mediaeval Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Switzerland. SUMMARY All persons are more or less amenable to the force of suggestion. Suggestibility seems quite as pronounced among nature men as among culture men. Experience and reflection in time build up a self with a certain momentum of its own. The marked suggestibility of woman is partly due to her nervous organization, partly to her subjection to social pressure. In the normal mental state, indirect suggestion succeeds best ; in the abnormal state, direct suggestions may be obeyed. Hypnosis and kindred states are probably a temporary abeyance of the higher controlling centers, leaving exposed to alien control the less organized and integrated psychoses of the lower centres. That which produces bedazzlement and obedience is prestige. It is not the same for all stages of personal or racial development. Training or drill involves the building up of stable habits by means of reiterated suggestions. EXERCISES 1. Explain the deadliness of the innuendo. 2. How is it that with faint praise one can damn a rival more than with downright depreciation ? 42 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 3. Show why, in exchange or diplomacy, the one who best dis- sembles his estimate of the thing he has and of the thing the other man has is likely to get the better of the bargain. 4. Account for the fact that the best way to get the offer of the coveted position is to affect an indifference to it. 5. Explain why, in coping with men, boldness is so often justi- fied by the outcome. Is it so in coping with nature ? 6. Why is it safer, on meeting a formidable animal, to stand than to run ? 7. What is the point of the saying, " He doth protest too much " ? 8. Justify by psychology the advice in " Joseph Vance " (p. 48) : "When a chap thinks you know he believes in your solvency, don't ondeceive him by orfering him cash. Then he'll know you think he believes you insolvent and never give you a brass farden o' credit." 9. Explain the good moral influence of certain teachers and the utter lack of influence of other teachers. 10. Does the succession of hero types in the development of the boy into the man correspond to the succession of folk heroes in the rise of a people from barbarism to civilization ? CHAPTER III THE CROWD The strength of multiplied suggestion is at its maximum individuality when the individual is in the midst of a throng, helpless ^ndvoiun- °' '^ tary move- to control his position or movements. The same press- ment ure on the body that prevents voluntary movement con- veys^romptly to him all the electrifying swayings and tremors that betray the emotions of the mass. This squeeze of the crowd tends to depress the self-sense. Says James : * — "In a sense, then, . . . the 'Self of selves,' when care- fully examined, is found to consist mainly of the collec- tion of these peculiar motions in the head and between the head and the throat. I do not for a moment say that this is all it consists of . . . but I feel quite sure that these cephalic motions are the portions of my innermost activity of which I am most distinctly aware. If the dim portions which I cannot yet define should prove to be like unto these distinct portions in me, and I like other men, it would follow that our entire feeling of spiritual activity, or what commonly passes by that name, is really a feeling of bodily activities, whose exact nature is by most men overlooked." Sidis ^ goes further in declaring: "If anything gives us a strong sense of our individuality, it is surely our volun- tary movements. We may say that the individual self » "The Principles of Psychology," I, 301. * "The Psychology of Suggestion," 299. 43 44 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Depression of the self sense in the throng Fixation of attention grows and expands with the increase of variety and in- tensity of its voluntary activity; and conversely, the life of the individual self sinks, shrinks with the decrease of variety and intensity of voluntary movements." Often a furious naughty child will suddenly become meek and obedient after being held a moment as in a vise. On the playground a saucy boy will abruptly surrender and "take it back" when held firmly on the ground without power to move hand or foot. The cause is not fear, but deflation of the ego. Here, perhaps, is the reason why individuality is so wilted in a dense throng, and why persons of a highly developed but somewhat fragile personality have a horror of getting nipped in a crowd. It is said that in the French theatre of the old regime the standing portion of the audi- ence (pit) was always more emotional and violent in its demonstrations than the sitting portion (parquet), and that the providing of seats for the pit spectators greatly quieted their demeanor. The experienced orator knows that a standing open-air crowd is very different in response from a seated indoor audience, and changes his style accordingly. Nevertheless, a holiday jam in a railroad station or at a race-course is no mob. A crowd self will not arise unless there is an orientation of attention, expectancy, a narrowing of the field of consciousness that excludes dis- turbing impressions. When a crowd is entering the critical state, we hear of "strained attention," "sea of up- turned faces," "bated breath," "ominous hush," "a silence such that you can hear a fly buzz or a pin drop." The following newspaper account ^ of a Paderewski matinde shows the r61e of expectancy and inhibition: 'See Sidis, "The Psychology of Suggestion," 301. THE CROWD 45 "There is a chatter, a rusthng of programmes, a waving of fans, a nodding of feathers, a general air of expectancy, and the lights are lowered. A hush. All eyes are turned to a small door leading on to the stage; it is opened. Paderewski enters. ... A storm of applause greets him, . . . but after it comes a tremulous hush and a prolonged sigh, . . . created by the long, deep inhalation of upward of three thousand women. . . . Paderewski is at the piano. . . . Thousands of eyes watch every common- place movement [of his] through opera-glasses with an intensity painful to observe. He the idol, they the idola- ters. . . . Toward the end of the performance the most decorous women seem to abandon themselves to the in- fluence. . . . There are sighs, sobs, the tight clinching of the palms, the bowing of the head. Fervid exclama- tions : 'He is my master !' are heard in the feminine mob." An excited throng easily turns mob because excitement Excitement weakens the reasoning power and predisposes to sugges- tions in line with the master emotion. Thus, frightened persons are peculiarly susceptible to warnings, angry per- sons to denunciations, expectant persons to promises, anxious persons to rumors. An agitated gathering is tinder, and the throngs that form in times of public ten- sion are very liable to become mobs. Although crowding, fixation of attention, and excite- Elements in ment exalt suggestibility, all members of the crowd do J^^f'^™o£t not experience this in the same degree. There are at by the least two descriptions of people who, in the give-and-take gu'Lltibiiity of the throng, are more likely to impose suggestions than to accept them. The intelligent are able to criticise and appraise the suggestions that impinge upon them. They are quick to react if a suggestion clashes with their in- 46 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Emotion- alism of the crowd Arrest of thought in the crowd terests or their convictions, whereas the ignorant are at the mercy of the leader or the claque, and may be stam- peded into a course of action quite at variance with their real desires. The fanatical and impassioned are little responsive to impressions from without, because of their inner tension. Being determined from within, they emit powerful suggestions, but are hard to influence. There is thus a tendency for the warped and inflamed members to impart their passion to the rest and to sweep along with them the neutral and indifferent. This is why, as the crowd comes under the hypnotic spell, the extremists gain the upper hand of the moderates. Feelings, having more means of vivid expression, run through the crowd more readily than ideas. Masked by their anonymity, people feel free to give rein to the expres- sion of their feelings. To be heard, one does not speak; one shouts. To be seen, one does not simply show one's self ; one gesticulates. Boisterous laughter, frenzied objurgations, frantic cheers, are needed to express the merriment or wrath or enthusiasm of the crowd. Such exaggerated signs of emotion cannot but produce in sug- gestible beholders exaggerated states of mind. The mental temperature rises, so that what seemed hot now seems lukewarm, what felt tepid now feels cold. The intensifying of the feelings in consequence of reciprocal suggestion will be most rapid when the crowd meets under agitating circumstances. In this case the unbridled mani- festation of feeling prevails from the first, and the psychic fermentation proceeds at a great rate. To the degree that feeling is intensified, reason is para- lyzed. In general, strong emotion inhibits the intellectual processes. In a sudden crisis we expect the sane act THE CROWD 47 from the man who is "cool," who has not "lost his head." Now, the very hurly-burly of the crowd tends to distrac- tion. Then, the high pitch of feeling to which the crowd gradually works up checks thinking and results in a temporary imbecility. There is no question that, taken herdwise, people are less sane and sensible than they are dispersed. In a real deliberative assembly there is a possibility The crowd that the best thought, the soundest opinion, the shrewdest ^^^"^^ plan advanced from any quarter will prevail. Where there is cool discussion and leisurely reflection, ideas struggle with one another, and the fittest are accepted by all. In the fugitive, structureless crowd, however, there can be no fruitful debate. Under a wise leader the crowd may act sagaciously. But there is no guarantee that the master of the crowd shall be wiser than his followers. The man of biggest voice or wildest language, the aggres- sive person who first leaps upon a table, raises aloft a symbol, or utters a catching phrase, is likely to become the bell-wether. Under these conditions — heightened suggestibility and The psychic emotion, arrested thinking — three things will happen ^^"^^^^^'^ when an impulse, whether emanating from a spectacle, an event, or a leader, runs through the crowd. I . Extension. — By sheer contagion it extends to unsym- pathetic persons. Thus by-standing scoffers have been drawn into a revival maelstrom,^ law-abiding persons ' Davenport tells of a young man who happened to be standing as a spectator on the fringe of a Southern camp-meeting of two thousand people. "He had had no religious experience and at that time did not wish any. The crowd was laboring under great religious excitement, and reflex phenomena were abundantly in evidence. Suddenly my friend found himself with his hands pressed against his lungs, shouting, 48 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY have been sucked into the vortex of a brutal lynching bee, hard-headed workingmen with dependent families have been stampeded into a sympathetic strike. In his story "On the City Wall," Kipling introduces a young native just back to Madras from Oxford. He is a typical prod- uct of Western culture, polished, sceptical, utterly aloof from his people, and contemptuous of the foolish religious riots between Hindu and Mohammedan fanatics. He shows us this same scoffer, a few hours later fighting furiously in the thick of the riot on behalf of his Moham- medan coreligionists for whose faith he cares not a straw. Sidis ^ cites an incident of the riots of certain military colonists in Russia in 183 1 : "While Sokolov was fighting hard for his life, I saw a corporal lying on the piazza and crying bitterly. On my question, 'Why do you cry?' he pointed in the direction of the mob and exclaimed, 'Oh, they do not kill a commander, but a father!' I told him that instead of it he should rather go to Sokolov's aid. He rose at once and ran to the help of his commander. A little later when I came with a few soldiers to Sokolov's help, I found the same corporal striking Sokolov with a club. 'Wretch, what are you 'Hallelujah 1 ' at the top of his voice." In a Southern congregation brought to the revival point by the preaching of Dr. Alexander, "the sympathetic wave spread from the centre to the circumference, and the vfhole audience was swayed like a forest in a mighty wind. Dr. Alex- ander himself is on record as having found it necessary to put forth a conscious effort of resistance in order to hold himself steady in the vio- lence of the storm, and he testified that the old tobacco planters in the rear, who had not listened to one word of the sermon, displayed tremulous emotion in every muscle of their brawny faces, while the tears coursed down their wrinkled cheeks." — " Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals," 226, 227. ' "The Psychology of Suggestion," 305. THE CROWD 49 doing? Have you not told me he was to you like a father ? ' To which he answered, ' It is such a time, your honor; all the people strike him; why should I keep quiet?'" An English prison matron confesses that sometimes when she hears the women under her care "break out" and commence smashing and destroying everything they can get hold of, it is as much as she can do to restrain herself from joining in. 2. Intensification. — Each individual impressed feels more intensely the moment he perceives that so many others share his feeling. Hence, a secondary wave, a reverberation, runs through the crowd that is becoming aware of itself. 3. Predisposition. — The perceived unison begets a sym- pathy that makes like response easier the next time. Since each fulfilled suggestion increases the emotion of Time needed the mob in volume and pitch, the passing of the crov/d *°''*e^mer- ir T sr ^ gence of a into the mob is more or less gradual. A mob is a forma- crowd seU lion that takes time. The revivalist expects little response during his first half-hour. No matter how brilliant his work in the earlier scenes, an actor will not elict the wildest demonstrations from his audience until the closing acts. There are always several steps in the decline of an orderly crowd into a riotous mob. It is not a single blow, but a quick succession of shocks, that throws an army into a panic. In all these cases, with the growing fascination of the mass for the individual, his consciousness con- tracts to the pin-point of the immediate moment, and the volume of suggestion needed to start an impulse on its conquering career becomes less and less. He becomes automatic, in a way unconscious. The end is a tranced impressionable condition akin to hypnosis. so SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The Ken- There is no assignable limit to the mastery of the *^'^^y , crowd self over the selves of the members. McMaster ' Revival thus describes a famous Kentucky revival, 1 799-1800. " One of the brothers was irresistibly impelled to speak. . . . The words which then fell from his lips roused the people before him 'to a pungent sense of sin.' Again and again the woman shouted, and would not be silent. He started to go to her. The crowd begged him to turn back. Some- thing within him urged him on, and he went through the house shouting and exhorting and praising God. In a moment the floor, to use his own words, 'was covered with the slain.' Their cries for mercy were terrible to hear. Some found forgiveness, but many went away 'spiritually wounded' and suffering unutterable agony of soul. Nothing could allay the excitement. Every settlement along the Green River and the Cumberland was full of religious fervor. Men fitted their wagons with beds and provisions, and travelled fifty miles to camp upon the ground and hear him preach. The idea was new; hundreds adopted it, and camp-meetings began. "At no time was the ' falling exercise ' so prevalent as at night. Nothing was then wanting that could strike terror into minds weak, timid, and harassed. The red glare of the camp-fires reflected from hundreds of tents and wagons ; the dense blackness of the flickering shadows, the darkness of the surrounding forest, made still more terrible by the groans and screams of the 'spiritually wounded,' who had fled to it for comfort; the entreaty of the preachers; the sobs and shrieks of the downcast still walking through the dark valley of the Shadow of Death ; the shouts and songs of praise of the happy ones ' "History of the People of the United States," II, 578-582. THE CROWD 51 who had crossed the Delectable Mountains, had gone on through the fogs of the Enchanted Ground, and en- tered the Land of Beulah, were too much for those over whose minds and bodies lively imaginations held full sway. The heart swelled, the nerves gave way, the hands and feet grew cold, and, motionless and speechless, they fell headlong to the ground. In a moment crowds gathered about them to pray and shout. Some lay still as death. Some passed through frightful twitchings of face and limb. At Cabin Creek so many fell that, lest the multitude should tread on them, they were carried to the meeting-house and laid in rows on the floor. At Cane Ridge the number was three thousand." "The excitement surpassed anything that had been known. Men who came to scoff remained to preach. All day and all night the crowd swarmed to and fro from preacher to preacher, singing, shouting, laughing, now rushing off to listen to some new exhorter who had climbed upon a stump, now gathering around some unfortunate who, in their peculiar language, was 'spiritually slain.' Soon men and women fell in such numbers that it became impossible to move about without trampling them, and they were hurried to the meeting-house. At no time was the floor less than half covered. Some lay quiet, unable to move or speak. Some talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with their heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over for hours at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then plunged, shouting Lost ! Lost ! into the forest. " As the meetings grew more and more frequent, this 52 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY nervous excitement assumed new and more terrible forms. One was known as jerking; another, as the barking ex- ercise; a third, as the Holy Laugh. 'The jerks' began in the head and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made to snap. When the body was affected, the sufferer was hurled over hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground to bounce about like a ball. At camp- meetings in the far South, saplings were cut off breast- high and left 'for the people to jerk by.' One who visited such a camp-ground declares that about the roots of from fifty to one hundred saplings the earth was kicked up 'as by a horse stamping flies.'" "From the nerves and muscles the disorder passed to the mind. Men dreamed dreams and saw visions, nay, fancied themselves dogs, went down on all fours, and barked till they grew hoarse. It was no uncommon sight to be- hold numbers of them gathered about a tree, barking, yelping, 'treeing the devil.' Two years later, when much of the excitement of the great revival had gone down, falling and jerking gave way to hysterics. During the most earnest preaching and exhorting, even sincere pro- fessors of religion would, on a sudden, burst into loud laughter ; others, unable to resist, would follow, and soon the assembled multitude would join in. This was the 'Holy Laugh,' and became, after 1803, a recognized part of worship." Psychology Coe ' thus accounts for the extraordinary phenomena of the re- often manifested in religious assemblies. "The striking psychic manifestations which reach their climax among • " The Spiritual Life," 141-143, 146. THE CROWD 53 us in emotional revivals, camp-meetings, and negro ser- vices have a direct relation to certain states of an essentially- hypnotic and hallucinatory kind. In various forms such states have appeared and reappeared throughout the history of religion. Examples of what is here re- ferred to are found in the sacred frenzy of the Bacchantes, the trance of the Sibyls, the ecstasy of the Neo-Platonists, the enlightenment that came to Gautama Buddha under the sacred Bo-tree, the visions of the canonized saints, the absorption into God experienced by various mystics, and the religious epidemics of the Middle Ages, such as tarantism and St. Vitus's dance. All these and a multi- tude of similar phenomena were produced by processes easily recognized by any modern psychologist as auto- matic and suggestive. Similarly, the phenomenon in Methodist history known as the 'power' was induced by hypnotic processes now well understood, though hidden until long after the days of the Wesleys." "The expla- nation of the 'power' and similar outbreaks is simple. Under the pressure of religious excitement there occurs a sporadic case of hallucination, or of motor automatism, or of auto-hypnotism, taking the form of trance, visions, voices, or catalepsy. The onlookers naturally conceive a more or less distressing fear lest the mysterious power attack their own persons. Fear acts as a suggestion, and the more suggestible soon realize their expectation. In accordance with the law of suggestion, every new case adds power to the real cause and presently the conditions are right for an epidemic of such experiences." "Sug- gestion works in proportion as it secures a monopoly of attention. Let us ask what, according to this law, will happen to passably suggestible persons who submit them- 54 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The crowd I is unstable selves to certain well-known revival practices. Let us suppose that the notion of a striking transformation has been held before the subject's mind for days, weeks, or even years ; let us suppose that the subject has finally been induced to go to the penitent form; here, we will suppose, prayers full of sympathy and emotional earnest- ness are offered for him, and that everything has been so arranged as to produce a climax in which he will finally believe that the connection between himself and God is now accomplished. The leader says to him : ' Do you now believe ? Then you are saved.' Is it not evident that this whole process favors the production of a profound emo- tional transformation directly through suggestion?" The crowd self is ephemeral. Not for long can it supersede the individual self. The straining of attention leads to fatigue, lessened power of response to further suggestions. Then, stimuli from within help to break the spell. Sensations of hunger, cold, and weariness become so insistent as to distract the attention. Pres- ently the bond dissolves, and the crowd scatters. Mobs have been broken up by a downpour of rain or an alarm of fire. The little Corsican disperses a turbulent crowd with grape; the humane philosopher turns a fixe hose on it. It is easy to tell whether a riot is a collective aber- ration or a work of intent by noticing whether the crowd returns the next day. If it does, there is more behind it than mass psychology. Whether its members be saints or knaves, sages or hodmen, the self of the crowd exhibits certain character- istics. It is unstable, as the word "mob" (mobile) in- dicates. Its hero one moment may be its victim the next. It may pass abruptly from reckless courage to THE CROWD 55 dastard fear. Little things turn its purpose. Taine * tells of a street mob bent on hanging a supposed monopo- lizer. By some words uttered on his behalf it was brought to embrace him, drink with him, and make him join them in a mad dance about a liberty pole. At the close of the Paris Commune, a crowd, irritated by the defiant air of one of the communist women, howls, " Death to her !" An old gentleman cries, "No cruelty, after all it is a woman ! " In a moment the wrath of the crowd is turned on him. "He is a communist, an incendiary !" But in this critical moment the shrill voice of a gamin is heard, " Don't hurt him, she's his girl !" Thereupon a great burst of laughter about the old gentleman, and he is saved.^ The crowd self is credulous. The "holding-off" at- The crowd titude is a kind of inhibition, for we tend to believe what J^ratlonal"^ we hear reiterated with fire. Now, in a psychological and simple- crowd, individuals are "out of themselves." For them the past does not exist. Rational analysis and test are out of the question. The faculties we doubt with are asleep. Again, the crowd self is irrational. It cannot dissect, weigh, and compare, cannot apply remembered teachings. Under the sway of vivid impressions through eye or ear the man in the crowd cannot relate his present problem to his previous experiences. His actions are near to reflexes. The crowd self shows simplicity. Like children and savages, it cannot embrace in a single judg- ment several factors and details. It sees only one aspect of a thing at a time.' It may face about completely when ' "Revolution Franjaise," II, 145. ^Tarde, "Essais et melanges sociologiques," 22. ' In Cincinnati, in 1884, a mob, outraged by the acquittal of a brutal murderer, burned the Court House when balked of their lynching purpose. minded 56 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The crowd lacks virtue The crowd is the lowest form of association some other aspect is thrown into the focus of its attention. Unable to think things in their actual complexity, the crowd trusts to impressions or prejudices, if it is hetero- geneous ; to glittering generalities or abstract principles if it is a political or legislative assembly. Finally, the crowd self is immoral. To be sure, it is capable of courage and generosity, even of honesty. The perpetrators of the September massacres in the French Revolution faithfully turned in the money and valuables found on their victims, while the mob that invaded the Tuileries in 1848 refrained from carrying away any of the priceless objects they saw. The crowd is emotional, and some of its emotions may be moral. On the whole, however, the virtues grow on an intellectual stalk. Right conduct is thought-out conduct. Conscience is a way of thinking things. Now, thronging paralyzes thought, and while the crowd may be sentimental and heroic, it will lack the virtues born of self-control — veracity, prudence, thrift, perseverance, respect for another's rights, obedience to law. It is safe to conclude that amorphous, heterogeneous gatherings are morally and intellectually below the average of their members. This manner of coming together deteriorates. The crowd may generate moral fervor, but it never sheds light. If at times it has furthered progress, it is because the mob serves as a battering-ram to raze some mouldering, bat-infested institution and clean Their idea was to rebuke tricky, dishonest lawyers by destroying a build- ing which had become a den of corruption rather than a temple of justice. A moment's cool reflection would have shown them that by burning the records of a century regarding wills, marriages, property transfers, mortgages, etc., they would produce enough litigation to fatten the hated lawyers for a generation, THE CROWD 57 the ground for something better. This better will be the creation of gifted individuals or of deliberative bodies, never of anonympus crowds. It is easier for masses to agree on a Nay than on a Yea. Hence crowds destroy despotisms, but never build free states ; abolish evils, but never found works of beneficence. Essentially atavistic and sterile, the crowd ranks as the lowest of the forms of human association. A free people is obliged to settle matters of common Howdeiib- concem in a deliberative assembly. But the big assembly ^'■^*'™ ■' o J assemblies skirts ever the slippery incline that leads down to mob escape the madness, and guard-rails in the form of fixed modes of "°'^ ^oitez procedure are necessary to save it a misstep. Its chief protection is the Parliamentary Rules of Order, wrought out in the venerable House of Commons and certainly not the least among England's gifts to the world. The rules requiring that a meeting shall have a chairman, that the chairman shall not take part in debate, that no one shall speak without recognition, that the speaker shall address the chair and not the assembly, that remarks shall pertain to a pending motion, that personalities shall be taboo, and that members shall not be referred to by name — what are they but so many devices to keep the honey-tongued or brazen-throated crowd leader from springing to the centre of the stage and weaving his baleful spells ! The rules that the hearers be in order, that they remain seated, that they forbear to inter- rupt, that they patiently listen to all speakers regularly recognized, and that their signs of approval or dis- approval be decorous — are not these so many guard- rails to help the assembly get safely by certain vertigi- nous moments? 58 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Mob mind It has long been recognized that the behavior of city dweU^rs populations under excitement shows the familiar char- acteristics of the mob, quite apart from any thronging. Here we get unanimity, impulsiveness, exaggeration of feeling, excessive credulity, fickleness, inability to reason, and sudden alternations of boldness and cowardice. Here, indeed, are the chief counts in the indictment which . historians have drawn against the city democracies of old Greece and mediaeval Italy. The city These faults are due in part to the nervous strain of inter-sugges- great citics. The bombardment of the senses by in- ''0° numerable impressions tends to produce neurasthenia, the peculiar affliction of the city dweller. Moreover, in the sheltered life of the city live many degenerates that would be unsparingly eliminated by the sterner conditions of existence in the country. In the main, however, the behavior of city dwellers under excitement can best be understood as the result of mental contacts made possible by easy communication. Even in the crowd, the main thing is the contact of minds. Let this be given and the three consequences above pointed out must fol- low. An expectant or excited man learns that thousands of his fellow-townsmen have been seized by a certain strong feeling and meets with their expression of this feeling. Each of these townsmen learns how many others are feeling as he does. Each stage in the subsequent growth of this feeling in extent and in intensity is perceived, and so fosters sympathy and a will to "go along." Will we not inevitably, by this series of interactions, get that "out"- look which characterizes the human atom in the mob ? Says Jones :^ "Inasmuch as the prevailing economic • " Economic Crises," 204-205. THE CROWD 59 system enforces intimate association in a sense in which Bearing of no previous system ever did, this class of influences tend- ™^°tai in- timaqr on mg to vitiate the economic reasoning of those who are ^ booms and subject to market influences may well demand serious ^^""^ attention. Businesses are being increasingly concen- trated in large cities, and especially are those who con- trol them being closely compacted together in the busi- ness sections of great cities. It has been asserted that these conditions originate the influences which breed crises, and the case of Australia, where the population is un- usually concentrated in cities, has been cited as evidence. 'A large city is characterized by an intensity of internal imitation in proportion to the density of population, and a multiform multiplicity of the relations of its inhabit- ants. Thus there is an epidemic and contagious char- acter given not only to its diseases, but to its styles and views.' The so-called 'booms' of American towns illus- trate in acute form the occasional economic effect of these influences. The power of mental contagion is increased by such facilities for assemblage and com- munication as the railway, telegraph, and telephone. It is obviously enhanced by the practice of transacting business in industrial assemblages such as stock and produce exchanges. Attention may be called to the fact that in periods of unusual business success or de- pression, this physical concentration of traders in large markets is greatly increased." But the propinquity of city people may be more than Crowd counteracted by their mental and moral heterogeneity. Pl'^"""^^'^* Says Professor Giddings : ' " The increasing density of in country ^ Forum, 35, pp. 251-252. 6o SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Obstacles to impulsive cooperation among city dwellers modern populations is seemingly favorable to popular tumult, which might easily become insurrection or rev- olution. In the literature of political science there is perhaps no more familiar assumption than the one which associates all the dangers of the mob spirit with the democratic organization of great cities." Yet "a systematic grouping of observations from many parts of the world would demonstrate that the phenomena of lawless popular action, as in insurrections, lynchings, and riotous outbreaks in connection with labor strikes, are, on the whole, phenomena of rural rather than of urban population. There have been scenes of wild violence in Paris and in London; there have been draft and other riots in New York City; but the collective violence in all the great cities of Europe and America for two hundred years would not make a great showing by comparison with the epidemics of emotion — accom- panied by dancing and other manias — that surged through rural communities in connection with the great revival movements under the Wesleyans, the later revivals of 1837 and 1857, the insurrections like Shays's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, the Ku Klux Klan outrages, the Vigilance Committee activities, the conflicts between Gentiles and Mormons, the White Cap outrages, and the lynchings in our Western and Southern states. " The reason for this curious fact is undoubtedly to be found in the restraining effect of ethnic and mental dif- ference. The rural community is relatively homogeneous. The 'neighbors' for miles in every direction are nearly all of one blood. They are practically of one economic condition. For the most part they are of one religious confession or of two or three confessions not very unlike THE CROWD 6i in creeds and practices. All are acquainted with one another. An exciting event or suggestion that moves one will, almost certainly, move the others. Emotion among them is highly contagious. They respond to like stimuli because they are alike. The city population is composite and differentiated. In a mixed crowd of hundreds that gathers on the street no one man of them all recognizes a dozen others. They are of all sorts and conditions, the well-to-do and the poor, and often of many nationalities. Danger arises only when discontent and inflammatory suggestion find homogeneous material to work upon in a quarter whose denizens are of one na- tionality and of the same economic condition, and among whom may be found, here and there, small gangs of toughs who are already disciplined in associating for lawless purposes. Only an extraordinary influence can combine the impulsive tendencies among unlike classes, differing nationalities, unacquainted neighborhoods, in one great outbreak. Such things have happened, and doubtless will happen again; but the normal influence of heterogeneity and differentiation in a population is unfavorable to collective action." SUMMARY In the dense throng individuality wilts and droops. A common orientation of attention and a state of excitement predispose to the mob mood. The heightened suggestibility of people under such conditions exaggerates the influence of the fanatical and impassioned. Crowd conditions facilitate the circulation of feelings, hinder the circulation of ideas. Under these conditions the dominant emotional note reaches an extreme pitch. 62 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY In the crowd rational or accurate thinking is arrested. Every impulse that traverses the crowd smooths the way for its successor. The merging of many individual selves into a single crowd self therefore takes time. The crowd self is unstable, credulous, irrational, and immoral. The Rules of Order save the deliberative assembly from degen- erating into a crowd. EXERCISE Show that each of these arts of the popular orator finds its warrant in some psychological characteristic of the crowd. If possible read Le Bon's "The Crowd," Bk. I, ch. Ill; Bk. II, ch. II, sec. I, ch. III. 1. At the outset seem to agree with it. 2. Vigorously affirm and reiterate with fire and passion. 3. Make each imagine you address him. By eye, voice, attitude, and action rivet attention and keep the spell unbroken. 4. Cut out facts, statistics, valid proof, and evidence. 5. Never argue or follow out painstakingly the links of a logical chain. 6. Use demonstration, ocular evidence, histrionism. 7. Use figures of speech, metaphors, emblems (flag, group symbol, totem), and shibboleths (" family," " home,'' " the Church," "the Fathers," " Our Country," "our Cause," " the Right "). 8. Address passions (including, of course, cupidity), but not rational interests. CHAPTER IV MOB MIND Presence is not essential to mass suggestion. Mental Mob mind touch is no longer bound up with physical proximity. ■«'"'i°"'*^ With the telegraph to collect and transmit the expressions and signs of the ruling mood, and the fast mail to hurry to the eager clutch of waiting thousands the still damp sheets of the morning daily, remote people are brought, as it were, into one another's presence. Through its organs the excited public is able to assail the individual with a mass of suggestion almost as vivid as if he actually stood in the midst of an immense crowd. Formerly, within a day, a shock might throw into a The public fever all within a hundred miles. The next day it might agitate the zone beyond, but meanwhile the first body of people would have cooled down and become ready to listen to reason. And so, while a wave of excitement passed slowly over the country, the entire folk was at no moment in a state of agitation. Now, however, our space-annihilating devices make a shock well-nigh si- multaneous. A vast public shares the same rage, alarm, enthusiasm, or horror. Then, as each part of the mass becomes acquainted with the sentiment of all the rest, the feeling is generalized and intensified. In the end the public swallows up the individuality of the ordinary man in much the same way the crowd swallows up the individuality of its members. 63 64 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Differences between crowd and public The psy- chology of the public more nor- mal Ours is the era of publics Nevertheless, public and crowd are not identical in their characteristics. If by the aid of a telephonic news service — as in Budapest — people were brought into immediate touch, there would still be lacking certain conditions of the mob state. The hurly-burly, the press and heave of the crowd are avoided when contact is purely mental. As we have seen, in the throng the means of expressing feeling are much more effective than the facilities for expressing thought. But in a dispersed group feeling enjoys no such advantage. Both are confined to the same vehicle — the printed word — and so ideas and opinions run as rapidly through the public as emotions. One is member of but one crowd at a time, but by reading a number of newspapers, one can belong to sev- eral publics with, perhaps, different planes of vibration. So far as these various unanimities cross and neutralize one another, the suction of the public will be weakened. The crowd may be stampeded into folly or crime by accidental leaders. The public can receive suggestions only through the columns of its journal, the editor of which is like the chairman of a mass-meeting, for no one can be heard without his recognition. For all these reasons the psychology of the public, though similar to that of the crowd, is more normal. Ours is not the era of hereditary rulers, oligarchies, hierarchies, or close corporations. But neither is it, as some insist, "the era of crowds." It is, in fact, the era of publics. Those who perceive that to-day imder the influence of universal discussion the old fixed groupings which held their members so tenaciously — sects, parties, castes, and the like — are liquefying, that allegiances sit lightly, and that men are endlessly passing into new MOB MIND 65 combinations, seek to stigmatize these loose associations as "crowds." The true crowd is, however, in a dechn- ing r61e. Universal contact by means of print ushers in "the rule of public opinion," which is a totally different thing from "government by the mob." The principal manifestations of mob mind in vast Craze and bodies of dispersed individuals are the craze and ih.t fad. /j^ptoms These may be defined as that irrational unanimity of of mob mind interest, feeling, opinion, or deed in a body of communicat- ing individuals, which results from suggestion and imita- tion. In the chorus of execration over a sensational crime, in the clamor for the blood of an assassin, in waves of national feeling, in political " land-slides," in passionate " sympathetic " strikes, in cholera scares, in popular delusions, in religious crazes, in migration manias, in " booms " and panics, in agitations and insurrections, we witness contagion on a gigantic scale, favored in some cases by popular hysteria. As there must be in the typical mob a centre which radi- Theory of ates impulses by fascination till they have subdued enough ^^^ ""^ people to continue their course by sheer intimidation, so for the craze there must be an excitant, overcoming so many people that these can affect the rest by mere volume of suggestion. This first orientation may be produced, by some striking event or incident. The murder of a leader, an insult to an ambassador, the predictions of a crazy fanatic, the words of a " Messiah," a sensational proclamation, the arrest of an agitator, a coup d'etat, the advent of a new railroad, the collapse of a prominent bank, a number of deaths by an epidemic, a series of mysterious murders, an inexplicable occurrence, such as a comet, an eclipse, a star shower, or an earthquake, — 66 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY each of these has been the starting-point of some fever, mania, crusade, uprising, boom, panic, delusion, or fright. The more expectant or overwrought the pubHc mind, the easier it is to set up a great perturbation. After a series of public calamities, a train of startling events, a pestilence, an earthquake, or a war, the anchor of reason finds no holding ground, and minds are blown about by every gust of passion or sentiment. Socio-psy- The early years of Christianity were marked by ex- chic phe- traordinary signs of exalted suggestibility. Harnack ' cites nomena in jo do j the early the following phenomena — regarded as tokens "of the Spirit and of Power" — in the primitive Christian church, "i. God speaks to the missionaries in visions, dreams, and ecstasy, revealing to them affairs of moment and also trifles, controlling their plans, and pointing out the roads on which they are to travel, the cities where they are to stay, and the persons whom they are to visit. Visions emerge especially after martyrdom, the dead mar- tyr appearing to his friends during the weeks that imme- diately follow his death, as in the case of Potamiasna, or of Cyprian, or of many others. "2. At the missionary addresses of the apostles or evan- gelists, or at the services of the churches which they founded, sudden movements of rapture are experienced, many of them being simultaneous seizures; these are either full of terror and dismay, convulsing the whole spiritual life, or exultant outbursts of a joy that sees heaven opened to its eyes. The simple question, 'What must I do to be saved ? ' also bursts upon the mind with an elemental force.^ '"Expansion of Christianity," I, 251-252. 'How like all this to certain modern experiences! Says Evans, speaking of the conclusive manifestations among the Shakers: "Some- times, after sitting avfhile in silent meditation, they were seized with a MOB MIND 67 " 3. Some are inspired, who have power to clothe their experience in words — prophets to explain the past, to interpret and to fathom the present, and to foretell the future. Their prophecies relate to the general course of history, but also to the fortunes of individuals, to what individuals are to do or leave undone. " 4. Brethren are inspired with the impulse to improvise prayers and hymns and psalms. " 5. Others are so filled with the Spirit that they lose consciousness and break out in stammering speech and cries, in unintelligible utterances which can be interpreted, however, by those who have the gift. " 6. Into the hands of others, again, the Spirit slips a pen, either in an ecstasy or in exalted moments of spiritual tension; they not merely speak, but write as they are bidden. " 7. Sick persons are brought to be healed by the mis- sionaries, or by brethren who have been but recently awakened; wild paroxysms of terror in God's presence are also soothed, and in the name of Jesus demons are cast out. "8. The Spirit impels men to an immense variety of extraordinary actions — • to symbolic actions which are meant to reveal some mystery or to give some directions for life, as well as to deeds of heroism. mighty trembling, under which they would often express the indignation of God against all sin, at other times, they were exercised with singing, shouting, and leaping for joy, at the near prospect of salvation. They were often exercised with great agitation of body and limbs, shaking, running, and walking the floor, with a variety of other operations and signs, swiftly passing and repassing each other, like clouds agitated with a mighty wind. These exercises, so strange in the eyes of the beholders, brought upon them the appellation of Shakers." — " Shakers," 21. 68 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY " 9. Some perceive the presence of the Spirit with every sense ; they see its brilliant light, they hear its voice, they smell the fragrance of immortality and taste its sweetness. Nay, more ; they see celestial persons with their own eyes, see them and also hear them ; they peer into what is hidden or distant or to come ; they are even rapt into the world to come, into heaven itself, where they listen to 'words that cannot be uttered.' " 10. But although the Spirit manifests itself through marvels like these, it is no less effective in heightening the religious and the moral powers, which operate with such purity and power in certain individuals that they bear palpably the stamp of their divine origin." Institution- Evidently there are two main sources of these extraor- "'the's^rt" ^i^^'^y n^ental phenomena — the subconscious and the social environment. It is only the latter that involves social psychology. Harnack significantly adds:' "It was in the primitive days of Christianity during the first sixty years of its course that their effects were most con- spicuous, but they continued to exist all through the second century, although in diminished volume. . . . The Montanist movement certainly gave new life to ' the Spirit' which had begun to wane; but after the open- ing of the third century the phenomena dwindled rapidly and instead of being the hall-mark of the church at large, or of every individual community, they became merely the equipment of a few favored individuals." ^ ' " Expansion of Christianity," I, 254-256. ^ Precisely this taming and institutionalizing of an elemental impulse is seen in the history of the Society of Friends. They obtained the name of Quakers from the violent tremblings which overcame the wor- shippers in the early days, and which they regarded as manifestations of divine power in them. It is hard to see in the sedate and quiet Friend MOB MIND 69 The abnormal suggestibility of mediaeval society re- TheChU- vealed itself in the Crusades/ especially the crusades of ^^^^ ™° children. About 12 12 Stephen, a shepherd boy, preached among the pilgrims at St. Denys a crusade of children to recover the Holy Sepulchre. Presently everywhere there arose children of ten years, and some even so young as eight, who claimed to be prophets also. They went about collecting followers and marching in solemn pro- cession through towns and villages. Some noble youths joined these processions, and many girls. The efforts of parents to hold back their children were futile. "Bolts and bars would not hold the children. If shut up, they broke through doors and windows, and rushed, deaf to appeals of mothers and fathers, to take their places in the processions, which they saw passing by, whose crosses and banners, whose censers, songs, and shouts, and paraphernalia seemed, like the winds of torrid climates, to bear resistless infection. If the children were forcibly held and confined, so that escape was impossible, they wept and mourned, and at last pined, as if the receding sounds carried away their hearts and their strength. It was necessary to release them, and, forgetting to say farewell, . . . they ran to enlist in those deluded throngs that knev/ not whither they went." ^ In the neighborhood of Cologne, Nicholas, a boy of ten, gathered together not less than twenty thousand children. " Parents, friends, and pastors sought to restrain them by force or appeal, but they whose hearts were set upon the of to-day the spiritual descendant of exaltes whose convulsions are said to have been so violent as to shake the house of meeting ! 'See Von Sybel, "Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges," 185-203. 2 Gray, "The Children's Crusade," 52. 70 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Mental epidemics in America Millerism enterprise mourned and pined so that we are told their lives were frequently endangered as by disease, and it was necessary to allow them to depart." ^ Ultimately nearly one hundred thousand children were drawn into the maelstrom, of whom at least a third never saw their homes again. The child pilgrimages, the flagellant epidemic, the dancing mania, tarantism, the witchcraft delusion, and the anti- Jewish outbreaks down to the Russian pogroms of to-day all show the spirit of the hive. Of religious and moral epidemics America has had its full share. The Great Awakening in colonial days, the great revivals of 1800, 1830, and 1858, however fruitful in their results, were certainly extended by social suggestion. How else can we explain the wild-fire sweep of the movement after it had slowly won a certain headway and momentum ? In 1840 William Miller went about predicting the com- ing of the Lord and the end of all things somewhere between the equinoxes of 1843-1844. By upwards of three thousand addresses he was able to win about fifty thousand followers, and these by interstimulation wrought one another up to a high pitch of fanaticism. As the great day approached, they forsook their callings, gave away their goods, prepared their ascension robes, and re- paired to the fields. When the appointed time rolled by, instead of losing confidence in their leader, as an indi- vidual would have done, the Millerites, as if to illustrate the abeyance of reason in all collectivities, clung to their delusion and accepted the new date of October 22, 1844. During the interval converts multiplied, and the fanaticism was, if anything, more intense than before. When proph- ' Gray, " The Children's Crusade," 66. MOB MIND 71 ecy a second time failed, the growth of the sect was checked, although it survives to the present day. The Women's Crusade ' began in Hillsborough, Ohio, The Wom- on Christmas morning, 1873. After a lecture by Dr. «'>'sCru- Dio Lewis on the Potency of Woman's Prayer in the Grog- shop, a meeting for prayer and organization was held, and thereupon the ladies, led by the wife of a distin- guished general, sallied forth to the drug stores, hotels, and saloons. "The movement spread into adjacent towns, the women visiting saloons, singing, praying, and pleading with those engaged in the traffic to desist. In many places the ladies suffered severe privations, were oftentimes kept standing in the cold and rain, and were sometimes the subjects of severe remarks and direct per- secution. The churches were crowded day and night, and touching incidents of recovery from ruin interested immense audiences." In spite of seeming success, the crusade soon died out and has never been repeated. Too much at variance with feminine nature to last, its sudden wide vogue can be explained only by mental contagion. In 1901 Mrs. Nation of Wichita, Kansas, went about Mrs. Na- Kansas towns destroying saloon furnishings with an axe. ^^°^^^ """ At once there was great agitation, and tens of thousands of women held prayer-meetings and meditated following her example. A number of imitators sprang up, but law and public opinion quickly intervened to check the spread of the movement. In modern times financial crazes are a close second to Financial religious crazes. The tulip mania is perhaps the strangest, tuifp^malit^ "About the year 1634 the Dutch became suddenly pos- sessed with a mania for tulips. The ordinary industry 'See "Cyclopsedia of Methodism." 72 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY of the country was neglected, and the population, even to its lowest dregs, embarked in the tulip trade. The tulip rose rapidly in value, and when the mania was in full swing some daring speculators invested as much as one hundred thousand florins in the purchase of forty roots. The bulbs were as precious as diamonds; they were sold by their weight in ferits, a weight less than a grain." " Regular marts for the sale of roots were estab- lished in all the large towns of Holland — in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, Alkmaar. The stock job- bers dealt largely in tulips, and their profits were enormous. Many speculators grew suddenly rich. The epidemic of tulipomania raged with intense fury, the enthusiasm of speculation filled every heart, and confidence was at its height. A golden bait hung temptingly out before the people, and one after the other they rushed to the tulip marts like flies around a honey-pot. Every one imagined that the passion for tulips would last forever, and that the wealthy from every part of the world would send to Hol- land and pay whatever prices were asked for them. The riches of Europe would be concentrated on the shores of the Zuyder Zee. Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, seamen, footmen, maid-servants, chimney-sweeps, and old-clothes women dabbled in tulips. Houses and lands were offered for sale at ruinously low prices, or assigned in payment of bargains made at the tulip market. So contagious was the epidemic that foreigners became smit- ten with the same frenzy, and money poured into Holland from all directions. " This speculative mania did not last long ; social sug- gestion began to work in the opposite direction, and a uni- versal panic suddenly seized on the minds of the Dutch- MOB MIND 73 Instead of buying, every one was trying to sell. Tulips fell below their normal value. Thousands of merchants were utterly ruined, and a cry of lamentation rose in the land." ' In the same class may be placed the Mississippi Bubble, stampedes the South Sea Bubble, and the railway manias, real estate booms, and financial panics so frequent in the last century. Often movements to fields of opportunity show something of the stampede. The "Ho for Texas!" movement, the California gold fever, the negro exodus of 1879, the Klondike Rush, and the frequent mass migrations at the rumor of a rich "strike" in the mining country, rational as they are at bottom, owe something to the contagion of example. When, in the spring, the first boat down the Yu- kon brings news of so many millions of gold dust washed out, a certain number resolve for the Klondike. When, now, the sceptic learns in quick succession that his partner, his brother, his grocer, his dentist, and his neighbor are off to seek their fortunes, he becomes restless. The "fever" is in his blood. Something is puUing him, and the pull becomes stronger with every new recruit he hears of. When at length he joins the army of gold seekers, his example helps break down the resistance of some one else ; and so there is a rush. The "Great Fear" in France in 1789 illustrates the The "Great craze. Says Stephens: "■ "The months of July and Au- ^^"" gust may be called the months of the 'great fear.' Men were afraid, both in town and country, of they knew not what. How this universal feeling of terror arose cannot be proved, but it was actually deemed necessary in some districts for a distinct denial to be published to the report iSidis, "The Psychology of Suggestion," 343-345- 2 "History of the French Revolution," I, 178-179. 74 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY that the king had paid brigands to rob the people." " This 'great fear' was generally expressed in the words 'The brigands are coming.' Who the brigands were, whence they came, or whither they were going, nobody knew ; but that the brigands were coming, nobody doubted." " It was in the towns that this strange terror was most keenly felt. In the town of Gueret, July 29, 1789, was known for years after as the day of the ' great fear.' Suddenly, at about five in the afternoon of that day, a rumor arose that the brig- ands were coming. The women rushed out of the town and hid themselves in the thickets and ditches ; while the men assembled at the Hotel de Ville, and hastily formed themselves into an armed force to assist the town militia. Several notables of the town took their seats with the municipal officers and formed a committee, which sent despatches to all the neighboring towns and villages for • aid. . . . These allies, to the number of 8000 to 10,000, flocked into the town, and were regaled at its expense; and when it was found that the brigands did not come, they all went home again. At Chiteau-Thierry news arrived, on July 28, that 2500 'carabots,' or brigands, were marching along the Soissons road ; the tocsin rang, and the bourgeois marched out to meet them. On their way a miller told them that the brigands had just sacked Bouresches, which was in flames ; but when the partisans of order arrived there, the flames were foimd to be only the reflection of the sun upon the roofs of the houses. Then the brigands were descried in the act of crossing the Marne at Essommes ; but when the tired pursuers came up, they found that these new brigands were the women of Es- sommes, who had been scared at their appearance and who believed them to be the real brigands." MOB MIND 75 In the present agitated, overwrought state of the Rus- sian people there are occurring, no doubt, among the ignorant, superstitious masses mob-mind phenomena that will stupefy us with amazement once the veil is with- drawn and the facts become known. The tendency of the plane to extend and complete itself The war as the emotional temperature rises is seen in the sweep- ^P'"' ° ' ing of the war spirit over North and South after the firing on Fort Sumter. In the two sections psychic vortexes had gradually formed, rotating in opposite directions. With the sudden access of emotion after the shock of the first clash of arms, these vortexes rotated at a much higher speed and sucked into themselves many who hitherto had been indifferent or hostile. All but a vanishing remnant were affected with the emotion of their section. Say Nicolay and Hay: ' "The guns of the Sumter bombard- ment woke the country from the political nightmare which had so long tormented and paralyzed it. The lion of the North was fully roused. Betrayed, insulted, out- raged, the free States arose as with a cry of pain and ven- geance. War sermons from pulpits; war speeches in every assemblage; tenders of troops; offers of money; military proclamations and orders in every newspaper; every city radiant with bunting; every village green a mustering ground ; war appropriations in every legislature and in every city or town council; war preparations in every public or private workshop; gun casting in the great foundries; cartridge making in the principal towns; camps and drills in the fields ; parades, drums, flags, and bayonets in the streets ; knitting, bandage rolling, and lint scraping in nearly every household. Before the lapse of » " Abraham Lincoln, A History," IV, 85-87. 76 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY forty-eight hours a Massachusetts regiment, armed and equipped, was on its way to Washington ; within the space of a month the energy and intelligence of the country were almost completely turned from the industries of peace to the activities of war. The very children abandoned their old-time school games, and played only at soldiering." " ' Ten days ago we had two parties in this State ; to-day we have but one, and that one is for the Constitution and the Union unconditionally,' said Iowa. The war spirit rose above all anticipation, and the offer of volunteers went far beyond the call." "In the Gulf States the revolutionary excitement rose to a similar height, but with contrary sentiment. All Union feeling and utterance vanished ; and, overawed by a terrorism which now found its culmination, no one dared breathe a thought or scarcely entertain a hope for the old flag." The laws of The laws of crazes may be formulated as follows : — 1. The Craze takes Time to develop to its Height. — The panic of 1893 began in April and reached its height in August, but socic -psychic phenomena began to manifest themselves only in 1894 in the form of the great sympa- thetic railway strike, labor riots, and the departure for the national capital of ten bodies of penniless unemployed "commonwealers" to petition Congress for vrork. The susceptibility of the public continued through 1896, and was responsible for the strong emotional currents in the presidential campaign of that year. 2. The More Extensive its Ravages, the Stronger the Type of Intellect that falls a Prey to It. — In the acute stages of a boom or a revival, even the educated, experi- enced, and hard-headed succumb. Perhaps no better ciazes MOB MIND 77 instance can be cited than the progress of a Messianic craze among the Jews. In 1666 a Jew named Sabbathai Zevi declared himself publicly as the long-expected Messiah. A maniacal ecstasy took possession of the Jewish mind. Men, women, and children fell into fits of hysterics. Busi- ness men left their occupations, workmen their trades, and devoted themselves to prayer and penitence. The synagogues resounded with sighs, cries, and sobs for days and nights together. All the rabbis who opposed the mania had to flee for their lives. The fame of Sabbathai spread throughout the world. In Poland, in Germany, in Holland, and in England, the course of business was interrupted on the Exchange by the gravest Jews breaking off to discuss this wonderful event. In Amsterdam the Jews marched through the streets, carrying with them rolls of the Torah, singing, leaping, and dancing, as if pos- sessed. Scenes still more turbulent and wild occurred in Hamburg, Venice, Leghorn, Avignon, and many other cities. Learned men began to give in their adhesion. Everywhere prophets and prophetesses appeared, thus realizing the Jewish belief in the inspired nature of Mes- sianic times. Men and women, boys and girls, in hysteri- cal convulsions screamed praises to the new Messiah. At last, from all sides rich men came to Sabbathai, putting their wealth at his disposal. Many sold all they pos- sessed and set out for Palestine. Traffic in the greatest commercial centres came to a complete standstill; most of the Jewish merchants and bankers liquidated their affairs. The belief in the divine mission of Sabbathai was made into a religious dogma of equal rank with that of the unity of God.' 'Sidis, "The Psychology of Suggestion," 327-329. 78 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 3. The Greater its Height, the More Absurd the Propo- sitions that will he believed or the Actions that will be done. — At the zenith of the South Sea craze companies formed "to make deal boards out of sawdust," "for extracting silver from lead," "for a wheel of perpetual motion," "for furnishing funerals to any part of Great Britain," could sell stock. Finally one bold speculator started "a com- pany for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is !" 4. The Higher the Craze, the Sharper the Reaction from It. — The prostration of a "busted boom" town is so ex- treme that its unboomed rivals forge ahead of it. The reaction from a purely emotional religious revival often leaves the cause of real religion worse off than it was at first. This perhaps is why experienced churches like the Roman Catholic have no use for revivals. 5. One Craze is frequently succeeded by Another exciting Emotions of a Different Character. — Says Jones : * "It is interesting to note that the emotions which have been generated by speculative excitement and intensified by panic depressions have been frequently transferred to religious subjects and have, in the United States at certain times, given rise to remarkable revivals of religion follow- ing close upon the heels of panics." " A contemporary ac- count of the extraordinary revival movement of 1857 says: 'It was in October of this year (1857) that Mr. Lamphier, a missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church, thought, in his own heart, that an hour of daily prayer would bring consolation to afflicted business men.' In a few weeks those holding the meetings were astonished to find the crowds growing too large for the buildings. The Method- ' "Economic Crises," 209, 210. MOB MIND 79 ist Church on John Street and the Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street were opened daily. Next, Burton's Theatre was hired, and throughout the winter noonday prayer-meetings were held at numerous places in the city." " Even the firemen and policemen held their prayer-meetings, so that we may feel perfectly assured of the truth of what the writer says when he adds, ' It is doubtful whether under heaven was seen such a sight as went on in the city of New York in the winter and spring of the year 1857-1858.' ' From New York as a centre, the mysterious influence spread abroad till it penetrated all New England in the East, southward as far as Virginia, and even beyond, westward to Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis.'" 6. A Dynamic Society is more Craze-ridden than One moving along the Ruts of Custom. — In a dynamic society so many readjustments are necessary, such far-reaching transformations are experienced in half a lifetime, that the past is discredited. One forms a habit of breaking habits. Ancestral wisdom, the teachings of social experi- ence are refuted and discarded at so many points that they lose their steadying power. The result is that in- stead of aping their forefathers, people ape the multitude. It is a delusion to suppose that one who has broken the yoke of custom is emancipated. The lanes of custom are narrow, the hedge-rows are high, and view to right or left there is none. But there is as much freedom and self-direction in him who trudges along this lane as in the "emancipated" person, who finds himself in the open country free to pick a course of his own, but who, never- theless, stampedes aimlessly with the herd. A dynamic society may, therefore, foster individuality no more than 8o SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY a static society. But it does progress, and that, perhaps, ought to reconcile us to the mental epidemics that afflict us. 7. Ethnic or Mental Homogeneity is Favorable to the Craze. — The remarks of Giddings regarding like-minded- ness and the crowd apply equally well here. Caste lines break the sweep of the craze. The English are proof against mob mind chiefly because they stand on such different levels. Americans are on a prairie. The Eng- lish are on terraces. The gentleman, the shopkeeper, or the clerk looks with disdain upon an agitation spreading among workingmen, and instead of feeling drawn by the rush of numbers, is, in fact, repelled. Caste makes a society immune to craze, even if the remedy is worse than the disease. Theory of The fad Originates in the surprise or interest excited by novelty. Roller skating, blue glass, the planchette, a forty days' fast, tiddledy-winks, faith healing, the "13-14-15" puzzle, baseball, telepathy, or the sexual novel attract those restless folk who are always running hither and thither after some new thing. This creates a swirl which rapidly sucks into its vortex the soft-headed and weak- minded, and at last, grown bigger, involves even the saner kind. As no department of life is safe from the invasion of novelty, we have all kinds of fads : philosophic fads, like pessimism or anarchism; literary fads, like the Impressionists or the Decadents; religious fads, like spiritualism or theosophy; hygienic fads, like water-cure or breakfast foods; medical fads, like lymph or tuber- culin; personal fads, like pet lizards or face enamel. And of these orders of fads each has a clientele of its own. In many cases we can explain vogue entirely in terms MOB MIND 8l of novelty fascination, and mass suggestion. But, even Faddismor when the new thing can make its way by sheer merit, it P^s^ss does not escape becoming a fad. It still will have its penumbral ring of rapt imitators. So there is something of the fad even in bicycling, motoring, massage, anti- sepsis, and physical culture. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to distinguish faddism from the enthusiastic welcome and prompt acceptance accorded to a real improvement. For the undiscerning the only touchstone is time. Here, as elsewhere, "persistence in consciousness" is the test of reality. The mere novelty, soon ceasing to be novel, bores people, and must yield to a fresh sensation; a genuine improvement, on the other hand, meets a real need and therefore lasts. Unlike the craze, the fad does not spread in a medium Why fads especially prepared for it by excitement. It cannot rely ji°^^ays on the heightened suggestibility of people. Its conquests, therefore, imply something above mere volume of sugges- tion. They imply prestige. The fad owes half its power over minds to the prestige that in this age attaches to the new. SUMMARY With the new facilities for intercommunication the pressure of suggestion upon the mind of the individual may be greatly intensified. From the interaction of innumerable minds results a qiMsi-\mit known as " the public." The psychic plane into which the public draws its members is nearer their average than is the plane that forms in the crowd. In the public the manifestations which most resemble those of the mob are the craze and the fad. The craze takes time to develop its full power, is followed by a corresponding reaction, and frequently leaves minds susceptible to other types of craze. G 82 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Custom and caste are unfavorable to the craze. The fad is the sudden brief focussing of general attention and in- terest upon the new. It occurs only in tinjes or societies in which the new enjoys prestige. EXERCISES 1. Trace the psychological history of a real estate " boom " in an infant but promising town. 2. Discriminate between open-mindedness and suggestibility. 3. May not a craze bring about a sympathy which may last after the craze has been forgotten ? If so, is not the craze a socializing agent? 4. Which presents the greater obstacle to the social sweep of an idea or emotion — cultural difference (religion, education, etc.) or class difference? Why? 5. Why is it that a financial craze may bring in its train a re- ligious craze, whereas the reverse is not true? 6. Compare in susceptibility to craze a hopeful, prosperous people with a hopeless, miserable people. 7. Show that the proverbial individualism of the farmer is not necessarily the same as individuality. CHAPTER V PROPHYLACTICS AGAINST MOB MIND In his "Ninety-Three" Victor Hugo describes a Mob folk mounted cannon broken loose in the hold of a vessel on <^^=^™y social sta- the high seas. With every lurch the huge gun rolls help- biUty lessly about, wrecking the interior, and threatening to send the ship to the bottom with a hole through her side. This pictures the situation of the society with a large number of mob folk in it, making a wild lunge, now here, now there, as events call up this feeling or that. In a community the prevalence of such a type leads to all manner of folly — Millerism, "holy rolling," vegetarian- ism, wonderworking shrines, divine healers, table-tipping seances, frenzied religious revivals, land booms, specula- tions and panics, the Belgian hare mania, and the walking craze, ending in people crowding to watch rival female pedestrians try to walk one thousand quarter miles in one thousand consecutive quarter hours ! In a nation it leads to political "tidal waves" producing a dangerous rhythm in the conduct of public affairs, to a costly wavering in dealing with money or tariff, to a fickle sentimental for- eign poUcy, and to war fevers tending, perhaps, to national humiliation and loss of prestige. Since it is the concern of organized society to lessen its burden of mob folk, let us consider the various condi- tions that favor the growth of strong, robust individuali- ties proof against mental contagion. 83 84 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Edueation for criticism How to be- come crank proof 1. Higher Education. — Up to a certain point educa- tion fosters mob mind by opening the mind to novel ideas before the critical faculty has been strengthened. The power to value ideas lagging far behind the power to absorb them, the individual, left rudderless, is obliged to drift with the current. Now, a college education is not simply four more high-school years. It ought to equip the student with standards and tests of objective truth. It ought to require him to dig down past the walls of some science to the bed-rock it rests on, so that he may learn in what mortar and by what plumb-line the stones of that science have been laid. Once he has been obliged to lay one little stone in the top course of a single turret of his science, he will ever after appreciate the dif- ference between science and humbug, truth and opinion, scholarship and quackery, faddism and progress. When there is, in every community, a handful of well-ballasted college men and women, how often will be stayed the sweep of the popular delusion — rain making. Second Coming, spiritualism, absent treatment, and the like ! 2. Sound Knowledge of Body, Mind, and Society. — Hygiene, psychology, and sociology can ward off more folly than astronomy, physics, or geology. For body, mind, and society are the storm-centres of faddism, the breeding grounds of manias. To be folly-proof here is to be fortified against nine-tenths of the higher foolishness. The reason why cranks haunt these three topics is that they are of supreme human interest. The prizes that can be held out for the adoption of the Kneipp cure, theosophy, or some social Utopia are the most-desired things in the world — immunity from disease, from sin, and from poverty. PROPHYLACTICS AGAINST MOB MIND 85 3. Familiarity with that which is Classic. — One ought steadying to know the intellectual kings of the human race — Job, J^e ciasTi"^ Solomon, ^schylus, Plato, Cervantes, Bacon, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Swift, Goethe, Burns. The first-rank minds that for centuries have been able to impress the genera- tions with their universal appeal are all choice, sane spirits, able to rescue one from the sway of the sensational and ephemeral. Excellent are the winnowings of time. "Whenever I am urged to read a new book," says the sage, "I re-read an old one." Moreover, acquaintance with the very best in thought and literature helps one justly to rate the things that people run after, and to ignore the "Lo here !" "Lo there!" of the false prophets. 4. The Influence of Sane Teachers. — A university is Ozone from not, as some insist, "a collection of books." Books are * ^p^^ * of all dates and values, and hence indiscriminate, omniv- orous reading is no furnisher of sound ideas. Guidance by the specialist is needful. President Garfield's ideal of a college, "Mark Hopkins on the other end of a log," recognizes the educative value of contact with a master- mind. The greatest teachers — Hopkins, Agassiz, Mc- Cosh, Jowett, Thomas Hill Green — are just those who, by throwing the student on his own resources, bring to ripeness his individuality. The genuine teacher wants fellows, not disciples, and his happiest hour is when he finds that the cub he has trained is now able to hold him at bay. ■;. Avoidance of the Sensational Newspaper. — The Shun the howling dervishes of journalism propagate crazes and pres^^™ "^ fads by distorting the significance of the moment. The valuable new is, in fact, but a slender fringe along the vast expanse of the valuable old. It is a hundred to one 86 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY that the old classic is worth more than "the book of th« month." Old wit, condensed into homely maxims about cleanliness, avoiding draughts, keeping the feet warm and the head cool, save a thousand lives where the new wrinkles in medicine or surgery — which make newspaper "copy" — save a dozen. Now, this static side of life is ignored by the yellow press. By exaggerating the news it pre- sents things in a false perspective. It can capture the public's pennies by exploiting the unique, the startling, even the imaginary. Therefore, to keep readers on the tiptoe of expectation, it promises something extraordinary which is always just on the eve of happening, — but doesn't happen ! The Czar is about to be blown up, the Kaiser is just going mad, a cure for consumption is ready to be given to humanity, the flying machine is soon to displace the bicycle, or the manufacture of weather is about to begin ! So the jaded nerves are kept on the perpetual thrill, and, looking always for some- thing wonderful to turn up, the deluded reader goes on and on like a donkey reaching for the sheaf of oats tied to the end of his wagon pole. Moreover, the constant flitting from topic to topic brings upon the confirmed newspaper reader what we may call faragraphesis, i.e., inability to hold the mind on a subject for any length of time. Reading so inimical to poise, self-control, and mental concentration as the sensational newspaper should be cut down to a minimum. Sport trains 6. Sports. — ■ Physical health in itself makes for intel- to inhibition lectual self-possession. Frequently sickness heightens suggestibility, which may in part account for the "cures" at wonderworking shrines, and the successes of magnetic healers. The will made on a sick-bed lies under the just PROPHYLACTICS AGAINST MOB MIND 87 suspicion of "undue influence," in case it favors those who had access to the testator at the time. There is a peculiar value, however, in participation in sports and athletic contests, for these produce moral as well as physical tone. The effort not to "break training," the overruling of the impulse to give up at moments of weariness or discouragement, the subordination of one's playing to the team work that gives another man the showy plays that win applause, the keeping of one's temper under hard knocks, modest self-restraint in vic- tory, and, above all, the "game" spirit in defeat, i.e., the mastery of the impulse to whine or cry "unfair," or show chagrin, — these triumphs of the will over impulse un- doubtedly conduce to the triumph of the will over sug- gestion. If "the battle-fields of England are won on the football fields of Eton and Rugby," it is because the coolness of the British officer in a Dervish charge or an Afghan rush is the same imperturbability that the seasoned football player attains when, amid the cheers of excited thousands, he thinks quickly and decides unerringly what is to be done. 7. Country Life. — The city overwhelms the mind with stability oS a myriad of impressions which fray the nerves and weaken ^gj°"°''^^ the power of concentration. One comes at last not to hear the din or see the street signs but, nevertheless, the subconscious is noting them and the store of nervous energy is being depleted. City-bred populations are liable to be hysterical, and to be hysterical is to be sug- gestible. Well does Emerson ^ remark, " A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a ' Essay on Self-reliance. 88 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls." In cities, with cuts and fills and asphalt, the human will visibly dominates the physical environ- ment, and men come readily to the cardinal assumption of the mob, that nothing can stand against numbers. In the country painful contact with the unyielding laws of nature inspires reasonableness and caution. The mob's sense of invincibility can hardly spring up among people under the unremitting necessity of adapting their efforts to huge implacable forces. In the city some ways of living foster suggestibility, while others check it. It is bad for people to be crowded into barrack-like tenement- houses, for such massing inspires the cheese-mite con- sciousness, makes the self count for nothing. The best correctives for urban propinquity are broad streets, numer- ous parks, and the individual domicile with a little space about it; for these preserve the selfhood of the family group and of the individual. Fireside or 8. FamUism. — Close relations to a few people — as "^^ in the well-knit family — joined to a vivid sense of obliga- tion to the community, seem to be more favorable to stable character than the loose touch-and-go associations of general intercourse. The Northern peoples, obliged by climate to centre their lives in the circle about the fire- side, are more resistant to popular currents than the Southern peoples, passing their leisure in the buzz of the street, the plaza, and \he foyer. Worshippers of the spirit of the hearth, they are more aloof from their fellows, slower therefore to merge with them or be swept from their moorings by them. It seems to be communion by PROPHYLACTICS AGAINST MOB MIND 89 the fireside rather than communion in the pubhc resort that gives.;, individuality long bracing roots. The with- drawn social-. self, although it lacks breadth, gains in depth, and there is nothing to show that the talkative, sociable, impressionable Latin will sacrifice himself more readily for the public weal than the hedged, reserved Englishman. 9. Ownership of Property. — The protection and care Property is i of a piece of property makes for thoughtfulness and steadi- J^^.*" P^ ness, individualizes. One recipe for building character in stampede a boy is to give him a plot and let him keep what he can raise on it, give him a colt and let him have its growth in value. This property, so responsive to care or to neglect, is a standing challenge to his self-control. It admonishes him to look ahead, to plan, to sacrifice, to overrule his im- pulses to idle, procrastinate, or day-dream. The city parent, having nothing of this sort he can make over to his boy, is puzzled how he shall make a man of him. A wide diffusion of land ownership has long been recognized as fostering a stable and conservative political habit. "The magic of property turns sand into gold," said Arthur Young. It also turns hinds into men. An industrial or mining population, unsteadied by ownership, is altogether more easily drawn into impulsive mass action than a proprietary farming population. The man owns his home, but in a sense his home owns him, checking his rash impulses, holding him out of the human whirlpool, ever saying inaudibly, " Heed me, care for me, or you lose me !" With the growth of great corporation-held proper- ties in which the individual has only a fractional owner- ship, property ceases to contribute much to the indi- viduaUzing of persons. Its r61e is probably on the wane. 90 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Voluntary association disciplines the impulses Let stability be honored Pride vs. love as moral mainspring 10. Participation in Voluntary Association. — The ac- knowledged political capacity of the English has been attributed to the experience of the masses in their popu- lar religious organizations, i.e., the dissenting churches. Participation in the management of a society develops acquaintance with the rules of discussion, tolerance of opponents, love of order, and readiness to abide by the will of the majority. Above all, it teaches people to rate the windbag, the ranter, or the sophist at his true worth, and to value the less showy qualities of the man of judg- ment and reason. None have a greater contempt for mob mind and for the wild and whirling words of the stampeder than those who have long worked in voluntary associa- tions. Town-meetings, religious societies, fraternal organi- zations, labor-unions, granges, women's clubs, and similar societies, by diffusing the qualities for deliberative asso- ciation, diminish the amount of inflammable material in the community. 11. Intellectual Self-possession as an Ideal. — The types of character held up to youth as models should be strong in point of self-control. Self-consistency, tran- quillity, balance, robust independence, should be recog- nized as rare and precious qualities worthy of all honor and praise. Let fad and craze be made ridiculous. Honor virile will more than the commoner excellences of heart and head. Writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman make intellectual individualism attractive by showing that "Bear ye one another's burdens" does not mean "Share ye one another's delusions." 12. Prideful Morality. — There are two bases of spon- taneous right doing, neighbor love and self-respect. Right conduct prompted by the sense of self-respect and PROPHYLACTICS AGAINST MOB MIND 91 honor seems to preserve selfhood more than if it springs from the sense of a common hfe with one's fellows. Power- ful individualities are more apt to be inspired to goodness by self-respect than by brotherly affection. Haughty nobles develop among themselves a morality that has its mainspring in honor, and there is no question that the basis of morality in modern society is more akin to the pride of the mediaeval castle than to the humility of the mediaeval monastery.^ Sympathy and fraternalism must, of course, constitute the emotional background to the moral life; but in the advance of individualization the true line is to awaken a sense of worth and dignity in the common man, and to hinge his social and civic duties on self-respect rather than on the spirit of the hive. 13. Vital Religion. — A religion for life and work is Flee yellow more individualizing than a contemplative devotional one, ^^ '^'°" and a religion that means the domination of one's life by some principle of responsibility or some ideal of character braces the soul more than an emotional religion that charms the heart to goodness by appeals and examples. Introspective devotionalism is enervating. The remarks of Coe ^ help us realize that there is a yellow religion to contend with as well as a yellow journalism. "To take feeling out of religion would be as absurd as to take parental or conjugal fondness out of the family. Yet it is not possible to maintain the family solely, or even chiefly, by reliance upon feelings. . . . Religion ought to rest upon and call into exercise all the faculties of the mind, and no superior sanctity should be ascribed to per- sons whose temperamental make-up is sentimental rather 'See Ross, " Social Control," 236-242- ' "The Spiritual Life," 215-217. 92 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY than choleric. . . . Preserve the equilibrium between sensibility and will. When this equilibrium is lost, in rushes a tide of religious vagaries. At a camp-meeting in western New York a number of years ago a brother testified somewhat as follows : ' Brethren, I feel — I feel — I feel — I feel that I feel — I can't tell you how I feel, but 1 feel! I feel!' "Says a prominent pastor: 'There are in my church two distinct classes of members. On the one hand, there is a group of substantial persons of high character and agreeable conduct who support the enterprises of the church with their money, but are rarely or never seen at prayer-meeting. One never sees them prostrated before God in earnest prayer. If a sinner should come weep- ing to the altar, they would not gather around to pray for him. If he should rise shouting, they would shake hands with him and tell him they were glad he had started, but that is all. On the other hand, there is a class of mem- bers who can be relied upon to be present at the prayer- meeting, who would rush to the altar to pray with the siimer, and who, if he should rise shouting, would scarcely know whether they were in the body or out of the body. Nevertheless, these persons are without influence in spite of their unction. They are flighty and changeable in their moods, lack organization, and their judgment is not to be trusted. If I were to go on a long journey, I would not choose them for companions, but rather persons of the former description. And if I were to go sailing in a small boat, I would not take one of these prayer-meeting members with me, lest he should have a spell of some sort and capsize the boat.'" PROPHYLACTICS AGAINST MOB MIND 93 SUMMARY No education is complete that fails to provide one with truth- filters. Against the folly of craze and fad one is forearmed who pos- sesses exact knowledge of the matter in question. No work becomes an acknowledged classic which is not whole- some in tone and universal in appeal. The foundations of one'£ culture should therefore be laid in the classics. By exaggerating everything in the foreground, the sensational newspaper predisposes the reader to craze and fad. A reasonable participation in wholesome competitive sports in- volving team work strengthens self-control. It is difficult to build a stable individuality in the city-bred. Self-sufficing home-life, although it narrows the sympathies, favors depth of character. The responsibilities of ownership are steadying. The appeal to self-respect and honor individualizes. A purely emotional religion leads to flabbiness. EXERCISES 1. Distinguish between suggestibility and sociality. 2. How does the experience of responsibility affect one's respon- siveness to mental contagion ? Why? 3. Compare manual training with literary studies as a developer of objectivity and self-control. 4. What are the reactions upon character of boys' clubs, play- ground self-government, the George Junior Republic, etc. ? 5. Compare business with industry in its effect on one's power to resist suggestion. 6. What special reason is there why in the United States mental epidemic has shown itself more in the rural than in the urban population? 7. Study the religious currents of the Reformation epoch, and find by what means certain sects were able to escape the follies, fanaticisms, and crazes of the time and become the parents of the great Protestant denominations. CHAPTER VI FASHION Fashion is FASHION is a scries of recurring changes in the choices gressiTC °^ ^ gro^P of people which, though they may be accom- panied by utility, are not determined by it. The fact that the new departure is not made because it is better differen- tiates the changes that constitute progress from those which constitute fashion. Fashion is marked by rhythmic imi- tation and innovation, by alternate uniformity and change, but neither of these phases obeys the principle of utility. The prevalence of fountain-pens or alarm-clocks is due to utility. The telephone and the cash register are uni- versal, but not fashionable. The ornamental tiles of a fireplace may be a fashion, but not the tiles of a bath- room floor. Progress follows the line of advantage, sub- stituting always the better adapted; it never returns on itself, never substitutes fish-oil for kerosene, horse-cars for trolley cars. Fashion, on the other hand, moves in cycles. Could we run the successive fashions of woman's hat or sleeve or skirt during a century through a biograph rapidly, what a systole and diastole we should see, an al- ternating dilation and contraction like the panting of some queer animal ! A style is a uniformity of practice, but it may or may not imply a psychic uniformity, i.e., an agreement of belief or feeling. So far as the hoop-skirt is believed to be the best possible garment, or is felt to be becoming and 94 FASHION 95 feminine, its vogue concerns social psychology. But so Outward far as women without illusions about it wear the hideous '^°"f°J'™'*y usually be- thing to avoid being conspicuous, or to get the prestige tokens an of "stylish," the practice has no psychic plane behind it, Jq^L*^™' and it does not interest the social psychologist. In general, Veblen is right when he says: "So long as it is a novelty, people very generally find the new style attractive. The prevailing fashion is felt to be beautiful. This is due partly to the relief it affords in being different from what went before it, partly to its being reputable. . . . The canon of reputability to some extent shapes our tastes, so that under its guidance anything will be accepted as becoming until its novelty wears off, or until the warrant of reputability is transferred to a new and novel structure serving the same general purpose. That the alleged beauty, or 'loveliness,' of the styles in vogue at any given time is transient and spurious only is attested by the fact that none of the many shifting fashions will bear the test of time. When seen in the perspective of half a dozen years or more, the best of our fashions strike us as grotesque if not unsightly." ^ " A fancy bonnet of this year's model unquestionably appeals to our sensibilities to-day much more forcibly than an equally fancy bonnet of the model of last year. . . . The high gloss of a gentleman's hat or of a patent-leather shoe has no more of intrinsic beauty than a similarly high gloss on a threadbare sleeve ; and yet there is no question but that all well-bred people (in the Occidental civilized communities) instinctively and unaffectedly cleave to the one as a phenomenon of great beauty, and eschew the other as offensive to every sense to which it can appeal. It is extremely doubtful ii any ' "The Theory of the Leisure Class," 177. 96 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY one could be induced to wear such a contrivance as the high hat of civilized society, except for some urgent reason based on other than aesthetic grounds." ' Fashion Whatever the illusions it may create, the ultimate springs from ^^j^^^ d'Hre of fashion is the passion for self-individualiza- the passion ^ for self- tion. It is eagerness to distinguish one's self from one's zatiOTi^"^''' fellows that makes even savages so fond of ornament. This is one secret of the enormous profits of trade with unsophisticated peoples. If their vanity is shrewdly played upon, they will strip themselves of everything valuable they possess in return for small quantities of bright beads, tinsel, gaudy ribbons, and prints, which may serve them as means of sfilf-individualization. On some of the South Sea Islands early travellers found that while no one would give anything for new kinds of fowls, do- mestic animals, or useful devices, "a few red feathers would buy the whole island." At first the mark of dis- tinction most preferred is a trophy of the chase or war — head-dress of eagle's feathers, necklace of bear's teeth or claws, girdle of scalps, bracelets of the jawbone or clavicle of one's foes. These document one's prowess. The trophy, to have any virtue, must be genuine — an evidence of the wearer's prowess, and not of the prowess of another. Hence trophies bought or inherited confer no honor. Eventually the idea of embellishment arises, and with it a host of objects which are not trophies come to be worn. These artificial ornaments are at first at- tached to the body, and hence evidence how much pain the wearer has consented to endure. Labrets and nose- rings, like the honorable face-scars the German student duellist is so proud of, show one's grit. With the growth ' " The Theory of the Leisure Class," 131. FASHION 97 of dress, ornament attached to the person gradually yields to ornament attached to the dress, the more painful ornament-carrying mutilations being abandoned first. This shows that man is not, after all, quite an irrational being; occasionally he evinces a scintilla of common sense. The greater conservatism of woman makes her persist in ornament, even mutilation (ear piercing, waist pinching), after man has totally abandoned such folly. But in such conservative relations as warrior, officer, or courtier, man still wears ornaments. Starr finds that "ornament dwindles with progress toward a true civiliza- tion," that " there is no place for ornament in a true de- mocracy," and that "a revival of ornament indicates a retardation of democratic ideas." The passion for inequality lies very deep in human The self- nature, and we Americans have our share. Brooks says : ' differentiat- ■^ ing impulse "The lack of sympathy with heroic and unselfish at- u still pow- tempts to realize equality is itself evidence of the com- mon dislike of equality. One of the later experiments, at Ruskin, Tennessee, for which great hopes had been felt, has met disaster. I have gathered many opinions from the press, but among them all no kindly note of apprecia- tion. Has the world at heart a fixed, unconscious hatred of equality? " "Heraldry now is a charmed word for multitudes of very humble people. Librarians are suddenly plagued by the importunity for genealogical evidence of distin- guished ancestry. Daughters of this and daughters of that; clubs, coteries, everywhere springing into life, bound to discover proof that they are not quite like other people. I saw a Colonial Dame flushed with delight be- '"The Social Unrest," 233-236. erful 98 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY cause on a great occasion in another city her badge had given her showy precedence over certain of the Daughters of the Revolution, who at home never failed to let her feel her social inferiority. She said, 'In all my life no minute ever gave me a joy like that.' ^ The women need have no shame, they cannot outdo the men in this pur- suit. Scarcely a town that is not gay with embellished orders stamped with every display of royal and knightly nomenclature. Read the list of officers from the Sublime Grand Master down, and ask what aristocracy in history ever went farther in its hunt for feathers. Two or three years ago there was a gathering of three or four orders in Boston. From a single copy of the Herald I take the following modest titles, — Grand Dictator, Grand Chan- cellor, Supreme President, Grand Vice Dictator, Supreme Warden. This outbreak is a droll commentary upon a society that has found so much to ridicule in the ' haughty infirmities' of the Old World. It has sprung, however, straight from human nature.^ We have won wealth and some leisure that have brought us into contact with foreign sources of distinction that we lack. No people ever displayed the passion for inequality more greedily than we. One builds a yacht, and if he can dine an English prince at the Cowes races, or entice the German emperor on board at Kiel, this single breath of royal atmosphere at once endows the enterprising host with 'She calls to mind the lady who assured Herbert Spencer that the consciousness of being perfectly well dressed gave her "a peace such as religion cannot give." ^"When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats, he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoa wear red feathers." — Chesterton, " Heretics," 143. FASHION 99 the rarest social privileges at home. Every circle breaks at the touch of the king's hand. "This craving to index one's self off from others, by any mark that can be hit upon, is not very vicious, perhaps not always bad, but it is the essence of inequality and shows how rooted an instinct it is within us. I asked the head of a fashionable city school about the parents that brought their daughters to her. 'It is,' she said, 'so unusual as to surprise me when a parent shows any other real anxiety than to secure for her child certain social connections. Education has no meaning except as it furthers this end.' If this is snobbish, what is it for working-girls' clubs to exclude household domestics? I have known Boston shop-girls at their dances to put up a placard marked 'No servants admitted.' No social group that can be named is free from this itching." The healthy democratic spirit does not deny that there Democracy are important worth-differences among people, nor does ^ertfinHnds it frown upon the passion for self-individualization. Its of inequality point of insistence is that the worth-degrees recognized by society ought to relate primarily to intellect, character, and achievement, rather than to apparel and equipage. The idea is that the attributes taken as the basis of social distinction should be deep-lying rather than superficial, important rather than trivial. Fashion consists of (i) imitation, (2) differentiation. In The fashion imitation, the inferior asserts his equality with the supe- ['^"'^^^''t^ rior by copying him in externals. But this endeavor of ments the inferiors to assimilate themselves upward is countered by the effort of the superiors to differentiate themselves afresh from their inferiors by changing the style. The prompter the imitation of the inferior, the more frequently lOO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY must a new fashion be launched. The death of a fashion is seen when feather boas go out as soon as the domestics have come to adopt them; when ladies renounce the bi- cycle because the servant girl has one. The terms " gentle- man" and "lady" are abandoned as soon as common people employ them profusely.' Then it is remarked how "noble" are the ancient terms "man" and "woman" ! When the barber and the fortune-teller call themselves "Professor," the members of the college faculty discover the "simple dignity" that lies in the appellation "Mr." The impulse to differentiate has been stimulated by the disappearance of class costume and the coming in of democratic competition. The fountains of the great deep have broken forth, and the artisan's wife on the frontier of civilization follows closely the Paris fashions. Thus Bryce^ observes: "I remember to have been dawdling in a bookstore in a small town in Oregon, when a lady entered to inquire if a monthly magazine, whose name was unknown to me, had yet arrived. When she was gone I asked the salesman who she was and what was the periodical she wanted. He answered that she was the wife of a railway workman, that the magazine was a journal of fashions, and that the demand for such journals was large and constant among women of the wage-earning class in the town. This set me to observ- ing female dress more closely, and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in these little towns were ' To a Baltimore hospital was brought a. negress with a bad bite on the back of her neck. While dressing it the surgeon remarked: "I C3.n't imagine what animal made this wound. It is too large for the bite of a cat or dog and too small for the bite of a. horse." " 'Deed, suh," exclaimed the patient, "it wa'n't no animal at all. It wuz anudder lady ! " '"The American Commonwealth," II, ch. CIV. FASHION loi following the Parisian fashions very closely and were, in fact, ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to the professional and mercantile classes." There have existed societies in which the inferior were The sup- not allowed presumptuously to vie with the superior, p'^^s^'™"^ ^ r J r competitive "In old Japan," says Hearn,' "sumptuary laws probably consumption exceeded in multitude and minuteness anything of which Western legal history yields record." " Every class of Japanese society was under sumptuary regulation." " The nature of them is best indicated by the regulations apply- ing to the peasantry. Every detail of the farmer's exist- ence was prescribed for by law, — from the size, form, and cost of his dwelling, down even to such trifling matters as the number and the quality of the dishes to be served to him at meal- times. " "A farmer with a property assessed at twenty koku (of rice) was not allowed to build a house more than thirty-six feet long, or to use in building it such superior qualities of wood as keyaki or hinoki. The roof of his house was to be made of bamboo thatch or straw ; and he was strictly forbidden the comfort of floor mats. On the occasion of the wedding of his daughter he was forbidden to have fish or any roasted food served at the wedding feast. The women of his family were not allowed to wear leather sandals: they might wear only straw sandals or wooden clogs; and the thongs of the sandals or the clogs were to be made of cotton. Women were further forbidden to wear hair bindings of silk, or hair ornaments of tortoise-shells; but they might wear wooden combs and combs of bone — not ivory. The men were forbidden to wear stockings, and their sandals were to be made of bamboo. They were also forbidden ' "Japan: An Interpretation," 182, 184, 186. I02 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The dis- appearance of sumptu- ary laws Caste inhibits com- petitive con- sumption to use sunshades, or paper umbrellas." " In Izumo I found that, prior to Meiji, there were sumptuary laws prescribing not only the material of the dresses to be worn by the various classes, but even the colors of them, and the designs of the patterns. The size of rooms, as well as the size of houses, was fixed there by law, ^ — also the height of buildings and of fences, the number of win- dows, the material of construction." Certain restrictions on the consumption of the lower classes prevailed in Europe during the later Middle Ages. Long since, however, these bulwarks to upper-class pride have been swept away, and there is now no station in life from which a person may not aspire to resemble those of a higher station. In immobile caste societies the inferior does not think of aping the superior, and hence the superior is not obliged to devise new styles. Says Veblen:' "Certain relatively stable styles and types of costume have been worked out in various parts of the world ; as, for instance, among the Japanese, Chinese, and other Oriental nations; likewise among the Greeks, Romans, and other Eastern peoples of antiquity; so also, in later times, among the peasants of nearly every country of Europe. These national or popular costumes are in most cases adjudged by com- petent critics to be more becoming, more artistic, than the fluctuating styles of modern civilized apparel. At the same time they are also, at least usually, less obviously wasteful; . . . They belong in countries and localities and times where the population, or at least the class to which the costume in question belongs, is relatively homo- geneous, stable, and immobile. That is to say, stable ' "The Theory of the Leisure Class," 175. FASHION 103 costumes which will bear the test of time and perspective are worked out under circumstances where the norm of conspicuous waste asserts itself less imperatively than it does in the large modern civilized cities, whose relatively mobile, wealthy population to-day sets the pace in matters of fashion." In our society acquired social values prevail over hered- Acceleration itary social values. The phrase "in the swim" gives a p^^^f^^''- ^ ^ o ion process hint of the unstable medium in which one must support in a com- one's self. The style of living, therefore, quickly affects Xemllacy^ social standing, and we have no reason to marvel that so much rivalry is centred in this sphere. In feudal society one did not enhance his good repute so much by profuse expenditure as by scrupulous abstinence from all pro- ductive employment — "the performance of leisure," as Veblen aptly terms it. But when, with the prosperity of the towns, the principal incomes come from city commerce rather than from country estates, the basis of social grad- ing comes to be conspicuous consumption rather than con- spicuous leisure; for merchant princes and bankers, unlike rent receivers, must attend to business. They cannot delegate their affairs. Hence commercial aristoc- racies — such as those of Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Antwerp — are distinguished for a sumptuous manner of life, far more splendid than that of the feudal lords. It was they, in fact, who taught the feudal lords to dismiss their useless retainers and surround themselves with luxury. Now, ours is a hustle civilization, in which osten- tatious idling enjoys no such social consideration as it did in the decadence of feudal society. Hence, a cut-throat competition for distinction is concentrated on style of living. Social racing, the endeavor of the inferior to ape I04 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY the superior and of the superior to elude him by side- stepping or setting a hotter pace, becomes ever more frantic and taxing.^ Whyfashions Fashions, consequently, are becoming less and less tni^s"^' Stable. Once fashion changed slowly. "Patching" stable stayed in a century, so also did the pointed shoes of Rich- ard II. But, owing to the great abundance and cheap- ness of textile materials, the imitative power of the inferior has been greatly augmented. The wealth of society is great enough to permit the waste of fashion. A larger and larger share of its resources may be squandered in vying for social distinction. Formerly, garments were handed down from parents to children, and putting them aside in obedience to fashion would have been quite too prodigal; even now fashion staggers at fine lace, cashmere shawls, Persian rugs, etc. Again, the technique of imitation has improved. Says Sombart:^ "It is one of the master tricks of our manufacturers for making their wares more salable to give them the appearance of those objects which enter into the consumption of a higher social stratum. It is the greatest pride of the clerk to wear the same shirts as the capitalist, of a servant girl to put on the same jacket as my lady, of Mrs. Butcher to own the same plush fur- niture as Mrs. Privy Councillor. This striving is as old as social differentiation, but never could it be so gratified as in our time when there are no longer limits to clever imitation, when, whatever the costliness of the material ' When more than half of San Francisco was wiped out, it was noticed that many did not feel their losses as much as might have been antici- pated. One reason was that the losses were so universal that the losers suffered in creature comforts but not in social consideration. All were in the same boat, so there was no place for envy. ' " Das moderne Kapitalismus," II, 343-344. FASHION lOS or the elaborateness of the form, a counterfeit can soon be put on the market at a tenth of the original price. " Again, note the promptness — thanks to newspapers, fashion journals, travel, etc. — with which a new style becomes known to everybody.' When, a few years ago, the drummer unpacked his sample case in some out-of- the-way town, a circle of gaping spectators formed, and one exclamation of admiration after another escaped their lips. Now it is, 'Excuse me, but I recently read in my paper of such and such a style, you don't seem to have it here at all, my dear sir!' So, scarcely has the long ladies' paletot (cost $20) penetrated to the knowledge of the belles of a provincial town, before the local merchants will be offering 'the same thing exactly' at $7.50. When with much trouble is devised a summer-shirt style that not every young fellow can afford, — the unstarched col- ored shirt with the attached cuffs, ^ the next summer 'Says Miss Moss {Atlantic, 94, p. 263): "Addison's Spectator tells how ' a fashion makes its progress much slower into Cumberland than Cornwall. I have heard that the Steenkirk (a miUtary cravat dating from the battle nineteen years before) arrived but two months ago at Newcastle.' In sober truth, it took longer for Edinburgh to hear the news of Waterloo than it now does for Freeland, Pennsylvania, to learn that white was worn at the Grand Prix. After that Freeland also wore white until an English duchess came out in scarlet, upon which, by some magic tour deforce in the dry-goods trade, Freeland immediately turned geranium color. Formerly, even in great cities, a fashion required some time to permeate the masses; now a fresh mode strikes the whole con- tinent broadside, reaching all classes simultaneously. The Plaza, Madison Avenue, the Tenderloin, and Rivington Street all wear the same costume at Easter, varying only in fineness of material, not a whit in general effect. The cunningest Heloise or Annette in her Fifth Avenue 'Petit Paris,' strive as she may, cannot keep her one-hundred-and-fifty-doUar 'confection' one little move ahead of apparel marked 'Four ninety- eight' in Fourteenth Street, and 'One ninety-eight' on the Bowery." io6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Distinctive features of modern fashion every shop will carry fancy shirts of just the' same pattern at 25 cents apiece. One who, in the possession of a walking-stick with silver-mounted handle, feels at last secure from the rivalry of the vulgar sees the next day the same thing with a cheap pewter handle offered at a quarter. Thus springs up a veritable steeplechase after new patterns and materials. This rapid vulgarization of every novelty forces those who take a proper pride in themselves to think constantly on devising new styles. This mad hunt for novelties becomes wilder and wilder with every advance in the technique of production and distribution." The characteristics of modern fashion as distinguished from earlier fashion are : — 1. The Immense Number of Objects to which it Extends. — It touches cravats, umbrellas, walking-sticks, visiting- cards, note-paper, toilet articles, docking horses' tails, the high check-rein, the pug, the exaggerated bulldog, the German poodle " raised under a bureau," " a dog-and-a- half long and half-a-dog high !" 2. The Uniformity of Fashion. — In the Renaissance period fashion was limited to a single city or class. Now it knows no territorial or class limits. There is only one fashion at a time. The women look to Paris, the men look to London. If the Prince of Wales forgets his watch and shows himself in his opera box with no chain, every watch chain in the house disappears by the close of the first act. 3. The Maddening Tempo of the Changes of Fashion. — A wave of fashion passes downward through all ranks and outward to the rim of the Occident with ever greater speed. Hence the waves must be more frequent if the superiors are to differentiate themselves successfully, and FASHION 107 so the pulsations are ever swifter. In ladies' fashions there are sometimes four or five changes in a season. But there are influences undermining this tyrarmy. The rebel- People may conform to a fashion to assimilate themselves 1'°" against ^ fashion to the superior, or in order not to be conspicuous. The latter class change as tardily as they dare and as little as they can. Their influence, therefore, is against extrava- gances of style and against frequent changes. They are always on the rear slope of the wave dragging it down. Since the number of such people of independent judgment, good taste, and appreciation of health and comfort is in- creasing, they will in time outnumber the pace setters, con- formists, and fashionables. Already we have dropped such irrational badges of social standing as feet pinching, nose-rings, labrets, cheek slits, flattened crania, and other mutilations. Choking collars, high heels, trains, and face painting ^ will hkewise go. The plane of intelligence and good sense is rising. From 1855 to 1865 all the women, including as sweet women as ever lived, wore the crinoline. Twice since then its return has been decreed, and twice the monstrosity has been beaten back into limbo. Not that we are to look for any immediate let-up in social com- petition ; but the growing body of independent people will reduce the instability, tyranny, extravagance, hideousness, ' After all, we have come some distance from what Mrs. Bent saw in Arabia. "I never saw such dreadful objects as the women make of themselves by painting their faces. When they lift their veils one would hardly think them human. I saw eyes painted to resemble blue and red fish, with their heads pointing to the girl's nose. The upper part of the face was yellow, the lower green with small black spots, a green stripe down the nose, the nostrils like two red cherries, the paint being shiny. Three red stripes were on the forehead, and there was a red mustache, there being also green stripes on the yellow cheeks." — "Southern Arabia," 123. io8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Liberaliza- tion of costume and irrationality of fashion, and thus cause social distinc- tion to be sought and won in other ways. A growing loath- ing for allotting social esteem according to purely facti- tious and superficial tests and an increasing respect for achievement and inner worth will blunt the keenness of the struggle for external conformity. It is not to be for- gotten that up to the nineteenth century men were more slaves of fashion than women. They were emancipated by the democratic movement, which broke the back of male fashionableness by inducing the upper classes to accept the plain frock-coat of the bourgeoisie. Much can be done by association in dress reform. By cooperating radicals can keep one another in courage and countenance. The growing resort to athletics by women accustoms to unconventional and comfortable costume for gymnasium, tennis, rowing, cycling, and bathing, and thereby narrows the sway of fashion. The male compe- tition that must be sustained by business and professional women also compels the rationalizing of dress. Reform will probably come, not by the general adoption of some costume in flat contrast to fashionable apparel, but by adding to the number of occasions on which rational cos- tumes already devised may be worn. SUMMARY Fashion springs from the desire to individualize one's self from one's fellows. It consists of a succession of planes in respect to some feature or features of consumption. It embraces two distinct processes — imitation and differentiation. Fashion does not appear in a caste society and may be restrained by sumptuary regulations. Democracy, when it is materialistic in spirit, stimulates competi- tion along the line of fashion. FASHION 109 Conformity to the fashionable style is more prompt and general than formerly, and the changes of fashion are more frequent. The growth of intelligence causes the desire for self -individualiza- tion to seek satisfaction in other ways than fashion. EXERCISES 1. Trace in detail the route by which a Parisian style reaches your neighbors. 2. Why do all fashions tend to the extreme? 3. Who are more responsible for fashion absurdities — the women who wear them or the men who are pleased by them ? 4. Why is it that among the animals it is the male that exhibits the iridescent plumage, comb, wattles, antlers, ruff, crest, or peacock tail, while among us it is the female that displays the gorgeous feathers? 5. Show that the fashions, far from refining taste, actually debase it. 6. Why is rivalry in consumption less pronounced among farmers than among people of corresponding means in the city? 7. Is a religious leader to be commended for requiring his fol- lowers to renounce the extravagances of fashion and to dress simply ? 8. Show that the imitating of superiors instead of ancestors in point of costume tends to the equalizing of social classes. CHAPTER VII THE NATURE OF CONVENTIONALITY Convention- ality reaches to the very framework of our lives By "conventionality" is meant a psychic plane resulting from the deliberate, non-competitive, non-rational imitation of contemporaries. The qualifying terms "deliberate," "non-competitive," "non-rational," "of contemporaries," differentiate it respectively from the psychic planes laid by mob mind, fashion, rational imitation, and custom. Conventionality imitation is far more radical, essential, and controlling in our lives than mob mind or fashion. It is not a passing flare-up like mob mind. It does not play over the mere surface of life like fashion. Often it sup- plies the governing beliefs, world-views, and ideals which determine our attitude toward the world and toward our fellow-man. We flatter ourselves that these are a faithful expression of our truest individuality, an outgrowth from our inmost selves; but this is nearly always an illusion. Says James:' "As a matter of fact we find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why. Mr. Balfour gives the name of 'authority' to all those influences, born of the intellectual climate, that make hypotheses possible or impossible for us, alive or dead. Here in this room, we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of en- ergy, in democracy and necessary progress, in Protes- tant Christianity and the beauty of fighting for 'the doc- ' "The Will to Believe," 9. no THE NATURE OF CONVENTIONALITY iii trine of the immortal Monroe,' all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see into these matters with no more inner clearness, and probably with much less, than any disbeliever in them might possess. His unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclu- sions ; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opin- ions, is what makes the spark shoot from them and light up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else. Our faith is some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case." It is not easy for us to realize how nearly to the very imitation core of our lives conventionality sends its influence. To ^"^"1*6= many of the drive home the truth, let us dissect a number of deep-seated postulates of beliefs that, despite their air of validity, can be shown to be """^ thinking of illegitimate origin, and — for most people — of purely conventional acceptance. That Manual Labor is Degrading. — This, though rarely avowed, is widely acted upon. Says Miss Addams : ' "To get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line. A working-man's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the bright- est daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are superior to factory or even office work. 'Teacher' in the vocabulary of many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, ' "Democracy and Social Ethics,'' 195-196. 112 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Laborers accept the upper-class stigma on manual labor and the name is indiscriminately applied to women of a certain dress and manner. The same desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano, or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand. The overcrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much the same source, and from the conviction that ' an education ' is wasted if a boy goes into a factory or shop." In the Philippines manual labor is so despised that the ilustrados, i.e., the learned, "will engage in industrial occupations that do not soil the hands, but they are careful not to prejudice their social position by any lapse, no matter how trivial or transient, toward the supposed lower vocation of the manual worker." Now, it is natural that the shamefulness of manual labor should become an article of faith among the small minority who are exempt from it. Not only is the notion congenial to them, but the more people they can persuade to adopt it, the more they are looked up to and envied. It is strange, however, that the great working masses uncriti- cally accept a notion that sets them at odds with the basis of their livelihood and depresses their social status. Acqui- escence in it is like the man's sawing off the limb he is sitting on. Why, then, do they fall in with the idea? Simply because it comes to them with the prestige of upper-class approval. That Pecuniary Success is the Only Success. — Miss Addams' observes that "a certain kindly contempt for her abilities which often puzzles the charity visitor may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the visited families hold. Success does not ordi- narily go, in the minds of the poor, with charity and kind- I " Democracy and Social Ethics," 24-25. THE NATURE OF CONVENTIONALITY 113 heartedness, but rather with the opposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still admiration, because he is rich and suc- cessful. The good-natured landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is seldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to accumulate little. He commands the genuine love and devotion of many a poor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. In one sense he is a failure. The charity visitor, just because she is a person who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amovint of this good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little genuine respect." Manifestly, these poor people do not reach this money Laborers standard of success through their own experience. Isolated ^^'^T'the from other social classes, the workers would probably commercial appraise one another by a composite standard, the chief ^uman^ ° elements of which would be efficiency and character. The worth cash yardstick they so naively apply has been borrowed from the commercial class which they look up to as their superiors. It is quite natural for business men to measure one another's pith by the amoimt of money "made," because the volume of profit reaped, under the rules of the game, is a fairly adequate measure of business efSciency, the only practical measure, in fact. But outside the world of business their cash standard is a gross misfit. Artists, thinkers, writers, scholars, engineers, army and navy offi- cers, and the members of the learned professions stead- fastly refuse to rate one another by it and resent its appli- 114 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY cation to themselves. Industrial workers, too, have their own means of testing one another's prowess, and they would never have taken up the business man's criterion but for the great prestige the commercial class has in their eyes. Laborers be- That Civic Worth is measured by Pecuniary Success. — Twn 'nt*^ Again we draw upon Miss Addams' limnings of the plain ests through people of Chicago. "During one of the campaigns a bourea>%ti^ clever cartoonist drew a poster representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking champagne at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by other revelers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a brick- layer, who sat upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a working-man's dinner-pail, and the passerby was asked which type of representative he preferred, the presumption being that at least in a working-man's district the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the chagrin of the reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in the popular mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly so desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a diamond in his shirt-front. The district wished its representative 'to stand up with the best of them,' and certainly some of the constituents would have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer." ' In this case the industrial masses apply an alien worth-standard which clashes not only with their experience and common sense, but with their interests as well. To the comrade who can fitly represent and champion them they prefer the mis- representative who measures up to the standard of the business man. They borrow a standard which makes all workers zeros when they might just as well have a ' " Democracy and Social Ethics," 257-258. THE NATURE OF CONVENTIONALITY 115 touchstone (say efficiency) which would make some of them integers. Here we come on one secret of Labor's via dolorosa. In the struggle of interests in society no class can get its dues so long as it is infatuated with the standards, aims, and leaders of a rival class. The lot of labor can hardly be improved until working-men renounce "bourgeois" thinking and "bourgeois" valuations. It remains to be seen whether their true policy is to work out valuations all their own — as the "class conscious" laborites declare — or to press on to universally valid standards of human achievement and worth. That Conservatism is Good Form, whereas Radicalism is We adopt Vulgar. —Yehlen^ points out that conservatism "has o^-^n"^^^ acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has touching con- become prescriptive to such an extent that an adherence ^^'^*'^™ to conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in our notions of respectability." " Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and con- versely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. The first and most unreflected element in that instinctive revulsion and reprobation with which we turn from all social innovators is this sense of the essential vulgarity of the thing. So that even in cases where one recognizes the substantial merits of the case for which the innovator is spokesman, still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be associated, and from whose social contact one must shrink. Innovation is bad form." With most of us a blind attachment to the past savors of the gentle, the scholarly, the superior; whereas a critical attitude toward the traditional coupled with an enthusiasm > "The Theory of the Leisure Class," 199. ii6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Certain standards of beauty originate in leisure-class snobbery for what might he is felt to be crude and low-class. This perverse conservatism is inexplicable save as a downward percolation from the leisure class which, by reason of its exemption from those economic stresses which urge to change and its dependence on vested interests and privi- leges for its exalted position, is instinctively hostile to innovation. That Things are Beautiful in Proportion as they are Costly. — Says Veblen:^ "While men may have set out with disapproving an inexpensive manner of living because it indicated inability to spend much, and so indicated a lack of pecuniary success, they end by falling into the habit of disapproving cheap things as being intrinsically dis- honorable or unworthy because they are cheap." " So thoroughly has this habit of approving the expensive and disapproving the inexpensive been ingrained into our thinking that we instinctively insist upon at least some meas- ure of wasteful expensiveness in all our consumption, even in the case of goods which are consumed in strict privacy and without the slightest thought of display." " We find things beautiful, as well as serviceable, somewhat in pro- portion as they are costly. With few and inconsequential exceptions, we all find a costly hand-wrought article of apparel much preferable, in point of beauty and of ser- viceability, to a less expensive imitation of it, however cleverly the spurious article may imitate the costly original ; and what offends our sensibilities in the spurious article is not that it falls short in form or color, or, indeed, in visual effect in any way. The offensive object may be so close an imitation as to defy any but the closest scrutiny ; and yet so soon as the counterfeit is detected, its aesthetic » " The Theory of the Leisure Class," 155. THE NATURE OF CONVENTIONALITY 117 value, and its commercial value as well, declines precipi- tately." ' That the Consumption of Stimulants or Narcotics by Women find Women is Unwomanly. — Veblen ' argues that " the greater ^^""^^^ abstinence of women is in some part due to an imperative their lords conventionality, and that this conventionality is, in a '^'^^pp'^°^^ general way, strongest where the patriarchal tradition — the tradition that the woman is a chattel — has retained its hold in greatest vigor." " This tradition says that the woman, being a chattel, should consume only what is necessary to her sustenance, — except so far as her further consumption contributes to the comfort or the good repute of her master. The consumption of luxuries, in the true sense, is a consumption directed to the comfort of the con- sumer himself, and is, therefore, a mark of the master. Any such consumption by others can take place only on the basis of sufferance. In communities where the popular habits of thought have been profoundly shaped by the patriarchal tradition, we may accordingly look for survivals of the tabu on luxuries, at least to the extent of a conven- tional deprecation of their use by the unfree and dependent class. This is more particularly true as regards certain luxuries, the use of which by the dependent class would detract sensibly from the comfort or pleasure of their masters, or which are held to be of doubtful legitimacy on other grounds. In the apprehension of the great con- ■ servative middle class of Western civilization the use of these various stimulants is obnoxious to at least one, if not both, of these objections; and it is a fact too significant to be passed over that it is precisely among these middle classes of the Germanic culture, with their strong surviving ^Ibid., 169. 'Ibid., 71. ii8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY sense of the patriarchal proprieties, that the women are to the greatest extent subject to a qualified tabu on nar- cotics and alcoholic beverages." No contrast between the male and female nervous systems that should cause the one to benefit by stimulants and sedatives and not the other has ever been brought to light. Among the American pioneers the women smoked as freely as the men. The same is to be observed among people, like the negroes of the South, too spontaneous and easy-going to accept the burden of conventionality. On the other hand, in circles relatively emancipated from patriarchal ideas the like practice occurs. It is amusing to witness the horror of a convivial Southerner at the use of the mint julep and the cigar among women of the "swagger set." The subtleties of the conventional view are edifying. A lady of the old school, known to the writer, feels that "it doesn't look right," is in fact "shocking," for a lady unattended to enter a restaurant, seat herself at a table, and order a cocktail. The lady who drinks the cocktail a gentleman has ordered for her is blameless, as is also the unaccompanied lady who orders a "soft" drink; but to order a cocktail is "unladylike" ! "Thespirit "The Spirit of the age" reigns because of unconscious of the age" imitation. It took men a long time to discover the atmos- is a plane " established phere, because everything is seen through that medium. by imitation Likewise, it has taken long to realize that "the spirit of the age" is a conventionality, because it is a spiritual atmosphere in which all minds are bathed and through which everything is viewed. Well says Chesterton:' "We see nothing 'dogmatic' in the inspiring, but certainly most startling, theory of physical science, that we should '"Heretics," 302-303. THE NATURE OF CONVENTIONALITY 119 collect facts for the sake of facts, even though they seem as useless as sticks and straws. This is a great and sug- gestive idea, and its utility may, if you will, be proving itself, but its utility is, in the abstract, quite as disputable as the utility of that calling on oracles or consulting shrines which is also said to prove itself. Thus, because we are not in a civilization which believes strongly in oracles or sacred places, we see the full frenzy of those who killed themselves to find the sepulchre of Christ. But being in a civilization which does believe in this dogma of fact for fact's sake, we do not see the full frenzy of those who kill themselves to find the North Pole. I am not speaking of a tenable ultimate utility which is true both of the Crusades and the polar explorations. I mean merely that we do see the superficial and aesthetic singularity, the startling quality, about the idea of men crossing a continent with armies to conquer the place where a man died. But we do not see the aesthetic singularity and startling quality of men dying in agonies to find a place where no man can live — a place only interesting because it is supposed to be the meeting place of some lines that do not exist." To be sure, the intellectual elite — perhaps one per cent of one per cent — will have what seem to them good and sufficient grounds for their manner of thinking. But when their way of thinking comes to be "the spirit of the age," these grounds are quite left out of sight, and all but the one in ten thousand will give you flimsy excuses rather than solid reasons for believing as he does. "The thing is in the air" — that is enough to make the vogue of any- thing that is congenial to the current way of thinking of people. I20 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SUMMARY Much of our thinking proceeds from assumptions which have been accepted uncritically because they are "in the air." The judgments of the leisure class are adopted by the classes below them as superior and authoritative. In many matters the leisure class is competent to lead; but in respect to social progress, human worth, efficiency, labor, etc., its judgments are so warped by its peculiar situation that they are valueless. The acceptance of leisure-class views on such matters sets the active classes at odds with their work and their interests. Working-men defer unduly to business men, and borrow from them standards which mislead them as to their true line of effort. Women, instead of finding for themselves the right adjustment to life, follow male opinion as to what is proper and womanly. EXERCISES 1. Why are we blind to the extent of our indebtedness to our own society and our own time, and therefore apt to imagine our individu- ality much more pronounced than it actually is? 2. Why is it that such generally admired beauties of person or costume as the bandaged foot, the high heel, the wasp waist, the full skirt, and the long train are such as incapacitate from all useful work? [See Veblen, 170-172.] 3. What is the root of the conventionality that the fast horse is more beautiful than the draught horse? 4. What is the genesis of the notion that a divinity or saint is honored by a periodical abstention from productive labor on the part of the votary? [See Veblen, 309-310.] 5. In what respects do the standards of morality and propriety current among women reflect the male attitude? [See Thomas, "Sex and Society," 168-172.] movements CHAPTER VIII THE LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION The primary generalization it is safe to make regard- ing conventionality imitation is : — Mental states differ in ease of propagation. Motor impulses appear to diffuse themselves with great Bodily facility. Instance the Flagellants who, in 1260, appeared ™°^^' in Italy and thence spread over Europe. Processions of readily penitents stripped to the waist and scourging themselves with leather thongs appeared in the streets of cities. Their The example worked so contagiously upon the minds of curious ^^^seUants spectators that great numbers joined the brotherhood of the Flagellants and swelled the processions. Women and children, always the most suggestible elements, formed groups of their own for public self-flagellation. In Spires two hundred boys under twelve united for this purpose. When at last the Pope prohibited such exhibitions and ordered penitents to scourge themselves only in private, the practice, no longer supported by the reciprocal sug- gestion of example, died away in less than six months. About the year 1370 the dancing mania spread through The dancing European cities, and here again the example of the dancers ""^"'^ worked suggestively until the bystanders, no longer able to resist the infection, threw aside their garments and joined the wild revel. About 1740 in Welsh revivals religious frenzy in some The persons happened to assume the form of jumping. Their !"'"?«''= of convul- 122 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY " example infected onlookers, and finally jumping became in that district the characteristic expression of religious ecstasy/ Similarly the hysterical laughter of penitents in the great Kentucky revival of 17 99- 1800 gave to religious emotion a specific vent that worked contagiously until the "Holy Laugh" became "a recognized part of worship." The Shakers, "Holy Rollers," and "Holy Jumpers" of our own day illustrate religious emotion under the con- tagion of example following a particular narrow channel. Epidemics In 1670 Certain convulsive seizures appeared in the orphanage at Hoorn in Holland and started among the orphans a veritable epidemic. The children were usually seized when they saw others lying in the paroxysm or when from the screaming they learned that another had been attacked. On such an occasion even those who took to flight would be seized unless they happened to be very near the door of exit. Often so many children succumbed through seeing and hearing others that not enough re- mained on their feet to take care of the afflicted. When, after vain resort to public prayer, some one had the good sense to isolate the poor children, by placing them tem- porarily in private homes, the seizures became rarer and finally ceased. Says Fry:^ "In a French convent a nun began to mew like a cat; other nuns began to mew like- wise. The infection spread till all the nuns in the very ' Wesley describes the exercise as follows : "After the preaching was over any one who pleased gave out a verse of a hymn, and this they sung over and over again, with all their might and main, thirty or forty times, till some of them worked themselves into a sort of drunkenness or mad- ness; they were then violently agitated, and leaped up and down in all manner of postures for hours together." — Southey, "Life of Wesley," n, 390. ' " Imitation as a Factor in Human Progress," Contemporary Review, 5S. P- 661 ■ LAWS OF CONVENTIONA1.ITY IMITATION 123 large convent began to mew every day at a certain hour, and continued mewing for several hours together, till their folly was checked by the threat of castigation from a company of soldiers placed for the purpose at the entrance of the nunnery. ... In a German convent a nun began to bite her companions, who all took to the same habit, which is said to have spread through the greater part of Germany, and even to have extended to the nunneries of Holland and Rome. Something like this, though in a very much smaller degree, is said often to happen to girls' schools in England : one girl faints in church, and several follow suit; the whole attention of the girls is drawn to their interesting comrade, and the service of the church or the periods of the sermon afford no adequate coimter- irritant for the interest, and off they go. In 1787 a girl at a cotton factory in Lancashire went into convulsions at a mouse put into her bosom by another girl, and the con- vulsions spread amongst the girls till the factory had to be shut up." Marching rhythm is infectious, as we see from the National swinging pace of the small boys following a company gestures of soldiers. Indeed, in such a case, unless one puts his mind to it, one cannot but keep step. Yawning is epi- demic, as many learn to their mortification. Gestures spread so easily that particular gestures become national. There is the French shrug, the gesticulation of the Italians, the lifting and spreading of the hands, palms upward, so characteristic of the Jews. Thanks to imitation, whittling was once the sure mark of the preoccupied Yankee. Surrounded by smokers, a man who has been obliged to leave off or limit his smoking is impelled to hold an unlighted cigar between his lips, the "dry smoke." 124 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Manner of speech Onomato- pceia At a given time very young people find irresistible a certain manner of walk or a certain signal, e.g., waggling the hand over the shoulder. We are most imitative in things that are not the object of conscious attention. We are unconscious of our manner of speech because we are usually intent on the ideas we are trying to convey. This is why stuttering, stammer- ing, and lisping are so infectious. A determination not to stammer is no sure protection against catching the trick if we associate much with a stammerer. A friend confesses that after a little association with one who lisps, lisping seems to him charming and he cannot avoid it. The writer found a few weeks in the South brought him to the "Southern drawl." Says Fry: ' "An Englishman goes to reside in America or in Ireland, and after a few years, or even months, acquires the peculiarities of expression, the delicate dif- ferences of utterance, which separate the speech of his place of residence from that of his place of birth. In this case there is no question of volition; he probably desires to retain his national pronunciation; there is no consciousness, for he is generally surprised, if not annoyed, at being told by his English friends that he has acquired a new dialect or brogue. But he has given some attention to the pronunciation around him, and by a purely reflex action he comes to pronounce as he hears." Language has some roots in the imitation of natural sounds. Says Fry ■.'' " Our first articulate forefathers listened to the noises of the wind in their pine woods, ... or heard > " Imitation as a Factor in Human Progress," Contemporary Review, 55. P- 663. 2 Ibid., 668. LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 125 the rapid flight of wild birds disturbed in their haunts; and by imitation they produce words like the sough, and the sigh, and the whir, and the whiz, of our own speech. They stood by the . . . moorland stream, and splash, and dash, and gurgle may recall the noises they heard." Such, no doubt, is the origin of words like slap, rap, or crack; of thud or dab or whack; of purr, buzz, hum, boom, and quack; of cough or hiccough or giggle or chuckle. Primitive man in his festivities imitated the animals. The Kamtschadales acloiowledge the bears as their danc- ing masters; for the bear dance with them is an exact counterpart of every attitude and gesture peculiar to this animal, through its various functions. The emu dance and the kangaroo dance of the Australian are likewise derived by imitation of animals. The appetites differ in infectiousness. Were it not The spread that the taking of stimulants is everywhere more of a ° ."^ P, ° ■' and drinks social act than the taking of food, one might conclude that thirst spreads more rapidly than hunger. Certainly alcoholism makes more rapid headway among people of simple habits who have migrated to the city than gour- mandism. Particular dishes spread, but they rarely reach more than a provincial or sectional vogue. One thinks of the "corn pone" of the South, the baked beans and mince pie of New England, the "haggis" of Scotland, the risotto of Lombardy, the fagioli at Florence, the minestra and vermicelli at Rome, the macaroni at Naples, the sausages that take their name from Bologna. On the other hand, drinks often become national. There is beer in Germany, ale in England, absinthe in boulevard France, the whiskey of Ireland, the brandy-and-soda that marks the travelling Englishman wherever he goes. 126 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The sex ap- petite is tinder to the suggestive spark FeeKngs are easily in- duced by suggestion because in- dependent of bodily state It is certain that American cocktails and mint juleps will find favor with the Filipinos long before American batter cakes, though one could not be sure what would happen if thirst quenching were not a ceremony of soci- ability. In any case the sex appetite is more vibrant and sug- gestible than either of the others. Truly appalling is the swiftness with which sensuality and lewdness may infect a people. In a mushroom mining camp debauchery is swifter than drink in breaking down steady habits. This is why no society can afford to let its members say or publish or exhibit what they please. Lust is a monster that can be lulled to sleep only with infinite difficulty, whereas a pin prick, a single staccato note is enough to arouse. The ordered sex relation is, perhaps, man's greatest achievement in self-domestication. Common sense forbids that the greed of purveyors of "suggestive" plays, pictures, or literature be suffered to disturb it. Moreover, if, as experience seems to show, the social evil cannot be utterly stamped out in cities, it is better to sweep it aside into some "tenderloin" or "levee" than to let it flaunt in the frequented streets. The public owes little thanks to the mistaken zealots who assault segregated vice so energetically as to drive it forth into the tenements where its virus finds sound material to work on. The feelings are more contagious than the appetites, probably because they depend less upon the condition of the body at the moment. The rapid spread of hope and terror is seen in "booms" and panics; and the greater acuteness of the latter seems to show that terror is the more catching. Laziness is catching, but so is ambition. How often we see a single officer put life and LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 127 zeal into a demoralized command, a new energetic head communicate a thrill and a stir to a run-down admin- istrative department! In warfare the great infectious- ness of courage gives immense value to the brave and resolute man. The most striking instances of this occur when Oriental troops are led by European officers. Even with ignorant Tommy Atkins the example of his officer is everything, and hence a British officer must die rather than retreat unbidden. On the other hand, among the far better educated soldiers of America and Germany, the example of the officers is less important than the individual quality of the troops. What lends hero value to the "man of action" is not The man of his practical wisdom so much as his ability to kindle in f-"^"™ """?' '■ •' be a moral others steadfastness and courage. This power of radiat- dynamo ing emotion is not at all the same thing as the thinker's power of communicating his thought. It is, however, akin to the power of the prophet or apostle to inspire in his hearers energy of conviction, i.e., to win disciples. If we inquire why Cortez, Ney, Skobeloff, Stonewall Jackson, Stanley, and Nansen were accounted so precious, we find it was not that they made always the right decisions, but that at the darkest hour they could always infuse hope and courage into their followers. Says Le Bon of De Lesseps: "He succeeded in his enterprise owing to his immense strength of will, but also owing to the fascina- tion he exercised on those surrounding him. To over- come the universal opposition he met with, he had only to show himself. He would speak briefly, and in the face of the charm he exerted his opponents became his friends. The English in particular strenuously opposed his scheme ; he had only to put in an appearance in England to rally 128 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY all suffrages. In later years, when he passed Southampton the bells were rung on his passage." The itch of Curiosity is extremely infectious. The story is told of curiosity is ^^^ ^^^ Strolling along a bustling street and discussing communi- o o o >j cable the art of drawing a crowd. One offered to bet that then and there he could in five minutes, without making a motion or a sound, assemble a hundred people. His offer being taken, he stepped to the curb and, shading his eyes with his hand, gazed intently at the masons work- ing oh a tall building just opposite. In three minutes the curb was lined with a hundred persons straining their eyes to see what the man was so interested in. The contagion of curiosity among vacuous urban masses is brought out by a writer in the Independent} "The average Londoner is a pitiful type of mankind. He is densely ignorant and knows little else than to say 'God save the King' on every occasion that offers any excuse or no excuse at all. If a man's hat blows off in the street, a crowd of hundreds of people will collect and hoot and laugh at the unfortunate person until something equally as trivial attracts their attention elsewhere. If a person drops any article in a public place, they will rush toward the direction of the sound, and if the article has broken, they will stand and look on with keen enjoyment as the pieces are being picked up. . . . They have some of the same characteristics and resemble in certain respects the poorer class of negroes in the United States. All that is necessary to collect a multitude is to beat a bass drum. Hundreds of people will speedily assemble and follow as long as the drum is beating, dispersing reluctantly only when it has ceased to sound." ' Vol. S4, p. 2930. LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 129 The r61e of curiosity in forming crowds is emphasized Curiosity by Tarde ' who plainly has his Parisians in mind. "All ^^^''s' * cause of those throngs of people which end in bringing on revolu- many social tions in religion, government, art, and industry begin to <=""^"'^ collect under the sway of this sentiment.^ When a person is seen to be curious about what once may have appeared to be the merest trifle, we immediately desire to know about it. This movement spreads very quickly, and, through the effect of mutual reaction, the intensity of everybody's desire increases in proportion to its spread. Whenever any novelty whatsoever, a sermon, a political platform, a philosophic idea, a commercial article, a poem, a novel, a drama, or an opera, appears in some notable place, i.e., in a capital city, it is only necessary for the attention of ten persons to become ostensibly fixed upon this thing in order that one hundred, one thousand, or ten thousand persons may quickly take an interest in it and enthuse about it. At times, this phenomenon takes on the character of hysteria. In the fifteenth century when Bohm, the German piper, began to preach his evangel of fraternal equality and community of goods, an epidemical exodus set in. 'The journeymen hastened from their workshops, the farm maids ran with their sickles in their hands,' reports a chronicler, and in a few hours more than thirty thousand people had assembled in a waste place without food. Once general curiosity has been excited, the mob is irresistibly predisposed to be carried away by all the different kinds of ideas and desires which the preacher, the orator, the dramatist, and the novelist of the hour may seek to popularize." ' "Laws of Imitations,'' 196-197. ^This statement is far too sweeping. 13° SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Emotions are more nimble than ideas Emotions spread more rapidly than ideas and opinions. We have means of sifting the latter, of parting chafE from wheat. Finding a proposition absurd or self-con- tradictory or contrary to fact helps us to reject it, no matter how insistent mass suggestion may be. But there are no such logical tests we can apply to sympathies, antipathies, moral sentiments, or religious emotions. This is why feelings run faster and farther than philosophical, scientific, political, or juristic ideas. Rarely does a nation have a creed or a philosophy, but often the whole nation shares the same love, hatred, ambition, or fanaticism. It is hard to get a national unity of opinion on "Who wrote the Letters of Jimius?" "Was Dreyfus guilty?" "Is the negro fit to vote?" Yet Germany experiences alter- nately anti-English and pro-English feelings, Italy anti- French and pro-French feelings. Since sentiment is more electric than opinion, we can coin the maxim. To unify men touch the chord of feeling. This is why at the close of bitter debates over points of doctrine the members of a church convention, in order to recover solidarity, join hands and sing — " Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love." Unity comes more readily through feel- ings than through beliefs In 1893 at the Congress of Religions in Chicago the delegates of all colors and all lands could be welded by religious and ethical feelings, but not through intellectual assent to any theological doctrine whatsoever. The reason why sentiment, not argument, should be the staple of the after-dinner speaker is that usually a banquet is at bottom an endeavor for harmony. The more heterogeneous his audience, the more the orator must rely on feelings LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 131 rather than arguments to win them over. The man accustomed to address members of his special group — bankers, coal-miners, cotton growers — tries to bring them into line by reasoning; but the propagandist who labors with masses having few beliefs in common develops a fiery, emotional style of oratory because he can unite his hearers only by means of feeling. If the labor agitator of to-day utters more claptrap than the leaders of the earlier agitation, it is not because he is less sensible, but because, thanks to immigration, the element he is trying to unite is far less homogeneous now than it was sixty years ago. Admiration for a type of character is more communi- An ideal is cable than a theological dogma, and hence the successful f. .^"""^ 'f' o o ) ligious nu- apostle preaches "Christ and Him crucified." The cieusthana burden of the revivalist's preaching is not "Believe and °^™^ thou shalt be saved," but "Come to Jesus." Creed is losing its power to unite people into churches, but the growth of young people's societies formed on the basis of a common love of and loyalty to Jesus fills the world with amazement. We may think out our opinions, but our personal ideals are mostly borrowed, often long before the intellect has become active.^ ' The overwhelming majority of people, bad as well as good, respond to some ideal or other. Chesterton is not far wrong when he says: "Every man is idealistic; only it so often happens that he has the wrong ideal. Every man is incurably sentimental; but, unfortunately, it is so often a false sentiment. When we talk, for instance, of some unscrupu- lous commercial figure, and say that he would do anything for money, ... we slander him very much. He would not do anything for money. He would do some things for money; he would sell his soul for money, for instance; and, as Mirabeau humorously said, he would be quite wise 'to take money for muck.' He would oppress humanity for money; but then it happens that humanity and the soul are not 132 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Imaginary characters radiate moral con- tagion The respon- sibility of the Artist exceeds that of the Thinker Says Fry:' "The anxiety of Don Quixote, under all the strange circumstances of his strange career, to act in exact imitation of the heroes of his heart, under the most similar circumstances in their careers, is one of the strokes of nature in the immortal work of Cervantes. . . . How often the youthful culprit has been led to the com- mission of crime by the reading of some novel or story, in which Dick Turpin, . . . has been depicted in a way which has fired his imagination, and produced a strong desire to emulate his deeds of violence or of robbery. Surely the moral responsibility of the novelist is not a light one." "Nothing perhaps more impresses the mind with the solidarity of the human race than the thought of the enduring influence, through all succeeding generations, of the great men of old, of the love that is wakened anew in each wave of human life for the mighty creations of the mighty masters of song and of romance, and of the force of imitation which goes with and is intensified by this love. Imitation, said Sir John Eliot, is 'the moral mistress of our lives.'" The masters of literature by inventing and portraying to the world imaginary characters produce through imita- tion very noticeable currents in moral history. Julie, Werther, Manfred, Rochester, Jane Eyre, Tom Brown, etc., have been the pattern of tens of thousands. Since things that he believes in; they are not his ideals. But he has his own dim and delicate ideals; and he would not violate these for money. He would not drink out of the soup tureen, for money. He would not wear his coat tails in front, for money. He would not spread a report that he had softening of the brain, for money.'' — "Heretics," 250-251. ' " Imitation as a Factor in Human Progress," Contemporary Review, ss. P' 674. LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 133 ; this is so the disseminator of wrong ideals is altogether j more dangerous to society than the disseminator of wrong 1 opinions. Investigators and thinkers, working in the j sphere of opinion, may safely be left free to speak and print, because their errors will spread slowly and will likely be overtaken by the truth before they get very far. Moreover, opinion does not shape conduct so much as is ; generally supposed. But artists, working in the sphere of peisonal ideals, may not be left entirely uncensored, seeing that any poison they emit circulates so rapidly. The men society allows to succeed and to be honored The men ' are taken as models by the rising generation. Few of the ^°^^^^^^^ j, young compare personal ideals and then choose the one wiUbeimi- " which squares with some philosophy of life. Most of them *^'^ mould themselves upon the type that is for the moment prominent and admired. Here is where society receives its just punishment in case it allows bad men to float to the top in business, finance, or politics. Being imitated by ! the young, they spread their virus throughout the social body. Not the crook in the alley is the greater menace, but the crook in office, in the place of trust, the crook who rides at the head of the procession, hands out the diplomas j to the high-school graduates, heads the state delegation or '. delivers the Fourth of July oration. j Probably a simple idea, e.g., that Friday is unlucky, or Personal { a simple feeling, e.g., dislike of the negro, diffuses itself less ^'If^^iy.f,'"^^ j readily than a complex thing like a personal ideal. Each criticism } of us out of his own experience can in a measure test and rightly judge the simple ideas or feelings that saturate his community. But it is harder to criticise and withstand the ideal of life that dominates our community or our time. In such a complex, some of the elements are sure 134 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY to have real worth, and these prepossess us in favor of the ideal, however false it may be. Sex charm There is good ground for believing that even so elemental convrntionai ^ thing as sex charm is the sport of conventional standards female type of beauty. Often the prevailing ideal of female form has been quite strange to the natural taste of men, a grotesque ideal which grows up among the leisure class and afterwards vitiates the taste of the people. Veblen observes : ' — "It is more or less a rule that in communities which are at the stage of economic development at which women are valued by the upper class for their service, the ideal of female beauty is a robust, large-limbed woman. The ground of appreciation is the physique, while the confor- mation of the face is of secondary weight only. A well- known instance of this ideal of the early predatory culture is that of the maidens of the Homeric poems. The pre- " This ideal suffers a change in the succeeding develop- erre emae jj^gjj* when, in the conventional scheme, the office of the type IS an ' ' ' incident of high-class wife comes to be a vicarious leisure simply. emijaation '^^^ ^^^^^ then includes the characteristics which are sup- posed to result from or to go with a life of leisure con- sistently enforced. The ideal accepted under these cir- cumstances may be gathered from descriptions of beautiful women by poets and writers of the chivalric times. In the conventional scheme of those days ladies of high degree were conceived to be in perpetual tutelage, and to be scrupulously exempt from all useful work. The resulting chivalric or romantic ideal of beauty takes cognizance chiefly of the face, and dwells on its delicacy, and on the delicacy of the hands and feet, the slender figure, and especially the slender waist. In the pictorial representa- ' "The Theory of the Leisure Class," 146. LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 135 tions of the women of that time, and in modern romantic imitators of the chivalric thought and feeling, the waist is attenuated to a degree that implies extreme debility. The same ideal is still extant among a considerable portion of the population of modern industrial communities ; but it is to be said that it has retained its hold most tenaciously in those modern communities which are least advanced in point of economic and civil development, and which show the most considerable survivals of status and of predatory institutions." Because under the high efficiency of modern industry the wife's exemption from productive labor has become too general to serve as a mark of the highest pecuniary grade, "the ideal of feminine beauty is beginning to change back again from the infirmly delicate, translucent, and hazardously slender, to a woman of the archaic type that does not disown her hands and feet, nor, indeed, the other gross material facts of her person. In the course of economic development the ideal of beauty among the peoples of the Western culture has shifted from the woman of physical presence to the lady, and it is beginning to shift back again to the woman; and all in obedience to the changing conditions of pecuniary emulation." Another illustration of the docility with which sex How a con- attraction will flow in a conventional channel is the process y°^!°°/' of conjugal selection which some anthropologists have beauty be- invoked in order to account for the genesis of a facial type <^°™^s ef'^"^- "^ _ -"^ nalized in an in an isolated population. According to Ripley:' "It is isolated pop- easy to conceive of artificial selection in an isolated so- "1^''°'^ ciety whereby choice should be exercised in accordance with certain standards of beauty which had become ' " The Races of Europe," 202. 136 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The radia- tion of will Obedience draws other imita- tions in its wake generally accepted in that locality. We have but to sup- pose a fashion (in faces) arising by chance, or perhaps suggested by some casual variation in a local hero or a prominent family. This fashion we may conceive to crystallize into customary observance, until finally through generations it becomes veritably bred in the bone and part of the flesh of an entire community. A primary requisite is isolation — material, social, political, linguistic, and at last ethnic." In this way is supposed to have originated the peculiar facial type common to the Basques, to the Jews, and to the Armenians. It is significant that the females of these pseudo-Ta,ce.s are truer to the type than the males. Have the men by choosing mates in conformity to a certain standard of beauty at last externalized and fixed the preferred type of face ? Volitions are extremely communicable, the accepting of another's volition being obedience. Men differ greatly in their power to command such acceptance. There are born masters who impose their will on others as there are bom apostles who impose their convictions. "Mutiny Acts," says G. B. Shaw, "are needed only by officers who command without authority. Divine Right needs no whip." Obedience is the tap root of other subordinations and servilities. The slave or ex-slave apes his master in gait, port, dress, expletives, vices. Says Tarde:' "The common people have always been inclined to copy kings and courts and upper classes according to the measure in which they have submitted to their rule. During the years preceding the French Revolution, Paris no longer copied court fashions, and no longer applauded the plays ' "Laws of Imitations," ig8. LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 137 in favor at Versailles, because the spirit of insubordination had already made rapid strides." Conversely, whoever is imitated is likely to acquire power. It is safe to say that the Roman master could not hold down in abject bond- age the Greek slave from whom he was learning phi- losophy and literature and appreciation of the fine arts. Who is capable of being at once a disciple of Epictetus and his master? The Prankish barbarians held the whip hand over the Gallo-Romans, yet they drove with a slack rein. The secret was that they were spiritually mastered by these subjects of theirs, and could not at the same mo- ment imitate them and oppress them. Tarde has formulated the following law of convention- The Tar- ality imitation. ^^^ ^"^ Imitation proceeds from within outward, from internals to externals} Tarde thus illustrates his thesis : "In the sixteenth cen- tury fashions in dress came into France from Spain. This was because Spanish literature had already been imposed upon us [the French] at the time of Spain's preeminence. In the seventeenth century, when the preponderance of France was established, French literature ruled over Eu- rope, and subsequently French arts and French fashions made the tour of the world. When Italy, overcome and downtrodden as she was, invaded us in the fifteenth cen- tury, with her arts and fashions, but, first of all, with her marvellous poetry, it was because the prestige of her higher civilization and of the Roman Empire that she had un- earthed and transfigured had subjugated her conquerors." On the same principle, the ascendency of British capital Power brings and enterprise in Chili causes British ways to be imitated '"^"^""^^ 'See "Laws of Imitations," 199-213. 138 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY and creates a demand for British goods. The party or nation that has the power is likely to get imitated in ex- ternals. This is one reason why "Trade follows the flag." The capture of lucrative markets hinges some- times on the outcome of the struggle of rival nations for "influence." Recall the rivalry of the English and the French to impress the Egyptians, the struggle between England and Russia for prestige in the eyes of the Af- ghans. Alexander's conquests would not have been fol- lowed by rapid Hellenization of the East were it not that the acceptance of the Greek sway drew naturally in its wake the acceptance of Greek culture. The invasions of the Germanic tribes would have been much more disas- trous to civilization had not their successes been preceded by several centuries of defeat by Roman arms and conse- quently of borrowing from Roman culture. By the time they became masters they had learned a deep respect for the civilitas that had so long held them at bay. The aforetime rage of the Japanese for European dress, lan- guage, schools, manners, and entertainment was a conse- quence of the impression of superiority made upon them by European warfare, science, industry, and adminis- tration. The ascendency of American arms and govern- ment in Porto Rico brought about a furore of Americani- zation. Says a writer in The Outlook : ' — Spontaneous "Three years is a short time in which to work visible ffiition oT"' changes in the life of a people, but that changes have Porto Ricans taken place during that time in the dress, manners, and since 1900 customs of the Porto Rican people cannot be questioned." " Four years ago Porto Ricans had never heard of base-ball ; it is now becoming the insular game." " A member of the 'Vol. 74, pp. 653-654, "Porto Rico, 1900-1903." LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 139 Executive Council told me that, in his opinion, base-ball was doing more to Americanize Porto Rico than express conciliation or legislative acts passed to that end. " Altered styles of dress, chiefly among the better classes, are noticeable. I well remember, three years ago, sitting in the plazas, ... on the Thursday and Sunday evenings when the band played. Up and down by twos . . . paced the girls and women of the city ; all classes, poor and rich, democratically assembled together. Some were bare- headed, with flowers in their loosely done black hair; some wore mantillas; all of them had their faces pow- dered to a pasty whiteness. Whatever charm their per- sonal appearance created was of a 'sweet disorder' in the dress ; a candid person would have called them a dowdy lot. Now, in the same familiar places, less than three years later, American and Parisian dressmaking is writ large over the same weekly parades. One scarcely ever sees a mantilla on these occasions; some of the women wear hats precisely like contemporary head-gear in New York. The passing of the mantilla is a misfortune; the hats are much less appropriate and becoming. But with the mantilla the unsightly powdering custom has nearly disappeared. . . . The naturally good complexions of the Porto Rican women glow now with a healthier color beneath a neat and well-ordered coiffure. The women are visibly better groomed. The band plays Sousa's marches, 'Mr. Dooley,' or airs from 'The Country Girl,' instead of the mournful minor music of the Danzas. The people laugh and talk as they walk ; they are out to see as well as to be seen ; young men walk with the women. "Dress has changed; manners and customs keep pace. At a ball given in honor of Admiral Higginson recently, I40 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Nothing suc- ceeds like time-honored Spanish social conventions were abandoned, as they have been since on similar occasions. Dances were divided ; young senoritas, after the Northern fashion, sat out dances or intermissions in the foyer or boxes of the adjoining theatre with their partners — a performance bringing social ostracism or engagements under the old standard. This is merely an instance — there are many others indicating what to us seems a more rational and wholesome association between men and women." In the struggles of interfused peoples that determine which shall assimilate the other, the victory is apt to go to the element that in some way demonstrates superiority. Recall the role of military success and political domina- tion in deciding the rivalries of Americans and French in New Orleans, of Americans and Spanish in California, of English and French in Canada. There is a great unlike- ness in the response of our aliens to their American en- vironment. Immigrants from a big and powerful people, like the English or the Chinese, Americanize less rapidly than representatives of the smaller peoples, like the Nor- wegians or Danes. Those that have no share and no pride in the state they come from — Irish, Russian Jews, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Poles — offer the least resistance of all. On the whole, those who come now Americanize much more readily than did the non-English immigrants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not only do they come from lesser peoples and from humbler social strata, but, thanks to the great r61e the United States plays in the world, the American culture meets them with far more prestige than it had then. Although we have ever greater masses to assimilate, let us comfort ourselves with the fact that the vortical suction of our civilization is stronger now than ever before. LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 141 When different religions are in contact, they are likely why exter- to borrow dogmas from one another before they borrow "^"f^^ rites from one another. Similarly, a system of law will borrow legal principles from another system before it borrows legal procedure. This is why externals — rites, ceremonies, organization — are apt to be more archaic than are the dogmas, principles, or functions they serve. This is why so often the shell or husk remains intact although the substance, the content, has been entirely changed.^ Think how legal fictions permit the spirit of the legal The form system to change without disturbing the form, how inter- '^"^'^^'^le' o ; f jie spint i£ pretation alters the spirit of the written constitution, how adaptable primitive religious rites and symbols remain, but are adapted to the age by progressive refinement in the mode '■ On the other hand, when a religion is forced upon a people below its cultural level, the order of borrowing is just the reverse, and it is the inner features that will be archaic. Thus Goldziher states that — "In different parts of the Islamic world paganism, with uncultivated tribes, in its more or less original forms, has outlasted the ruling influence of Islam, although that was established centuries ago." "The Ingush are Muhammadans in name; but, as with most peoples inhabiting moun- tains, their ancient paganism has conserved itself under their exterior Islam." "The worship of the idol Gushmile is almost universal among them. The Muhammadan Galgai (in the Caucasus) pray only by night in front of quadrangular stone columns of the height of a man, erected on hills and in cemeteries. Remarkable is the worship of skeletons in an ossuary near Nasran. The skeletons are said to come from their ancestors and to have begun to decay only since the arrival of the Rus- sians. These objects of worship are covered with green shawls from MekUa. This green shawl from Mekka, with which the objects and forms of the old traditional worship are covered, interprets very fittingly the ethno-psychological process involved in the Islamification of such popu- lations. Green is the Prophet's color. Under the 'green shawl' the old national religious '.^d^ continue to live.' " — Congress of Arts and Science, II, S", SI2- 142 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY of interpreting them. In England we see democracy coming in without, however, displacing the forms of monarchy, just as, in Rome, imperialism crept in under the venerable republican forms. Our pagan ancestors, when they launched a ship, bound a captive to the rollers to propitiate the god of the sea. The bottle of wine broken on the ship's prow to-day is our way of "reddening the keel" of the vessel to be launched and insuring her good luck. The old form is kept, but what a change in the spirit ! In the distant past youths and maidens celebrated the coming of the season of love with licentious dancing about a symbolic pole. Little children now caper inno- cently about the May-pole, but the sense of the original meaning of the thing is utterly lost. Anthropologists bid us recognize in the Lord's Supper the ancient rite, common to many primitive religions, of "eating the god." The sacrament may have had such a genesis, but it is certain that the theory of the rite, the significance of the symbolic act, has changed many times since the days of totemism. It is the Since the replacement of the inner element, by borrow- socSffif ^^S °^ ^y development, goes on more rapidly than the re- that abounds placement of the outer element, we come upon numerous in ossi "survivals," all of them in ways of doing, rather than, in ways of thinking and feeling. Double-dyed conservative that he is, man has always felt himself safe, provided only the aspect of time-hallowed ancestral things was duly preserved. This is why ceremonial is "the museum of history." When the "ordeal of battle" was the ultimate method of ascertaining the Divine Will, it was fitting that just before the coronation of an English sovereign an armed champion should sound his trumpet and offer to fight with any one who disputed the right of the claimant to the LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 143 throne. Yet the armor-clad horseman continued to appear in coronations down into the nineteenth century, when men had completely forgotten that the duel was once an appeal to the judgment of Heaven. Feudalism is defunct, but its titles — Monsieur, Duke, Lord, Count, etc. — survive. Norse mythology is dead, but Yule-tide and Easter, rebaptized as Christian festivals, live on. The original occasion and significance of Thanksgiving Day has passed away; the festival is now little more than an excuse for family reunions, overrepletion, and inter- collegiate football. No doubt it will experience many shiftings of significance in the future, but it will survive them all and die out only when the American people die out. Kingless though we are, the mace, that symbol of the Royal Presence, before which as before the King himself all unseemly brawling should cease, is still carried down the aisle of Congress when the members forget their dignity. That relic of pagan days, Hallowe'en, from the serious concern of men has become the glee time of prank- ish children, and in the " Eeny-meeny-miny-mo " of the playground lives on some incantation that once made spirits obey and men tremble. Other evidence of his principle is produced by Tarde Reverential when he savs:^ "Do we ever see one class which is in """^V°""^ -' _ superiors contact with, but which has never, hypothetically, been precedes subject to the control of, another determine to copy its j^mftatTon™ accent, its dress, its furniture, and its buildings, and end by embracing its principles and beliefs? This would invert the imiversal and necessary order of things. The strongest proof, indeed, that imitation spreads from within to without is to be found in the fact that in the relations ' " Laws of Imitations,'' 201. 144 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY between different classes, envy never precedes obedience and trust, but is always, on the contrary, the sign and the result of a previous state of obedience and trust. Blind and docile devotion to the Roman patricians, to the Athe- nian eupatrides, or to the French nobility of the old regime preceded the envy, i.e., the desire to imitate them exter- nally, which they came to inspire. Envy is the symptom of a social transformation which, in bringing classes together and in lessening the inequality of their resources, renders possible not only the transmission, as before, of their thoughts and aims, not only patriotic or religious communion and participation in the same worship, but the radiation of their luxury and well-being as well." The arts It is a corollary of the principle we are considering that pand°be^oiid ^^^ imitation of ideas precedes the imitation of the arts that the sphere express them. Thus Romanticism in thought preceded or idea'is^^ Romauticism in literature ; people had been prepared for they express Scott and Dumas and Jean Paul and Victor Hugo by the diffusion of the ideas of Jacobi and Burke and De Maistre. So the revival of Greek learning antedated the triumph of the art of Michael Angelo. Darwin and Moleschott made minds ready to appreciate the literary product of the Naturalists and Realists. It is not known that classic art was adopted by any people unacquainted with the Greek myths, or that Gothic architecture had a sphere of accept- ance wider than that of the Christian mysticism it so fully expresses. Hardly would the painting of Millet or Israels win so many disciples among artists were it not that social democracy is in the air. Similarly the ideas under the phrase "bankruptcy of science" had to gain circulation before there could spring up that school of writers known as Symbolists. LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION 145 This law explains why beliefs fuse sooner than languages, The funda- manners, or customs. The Delphic Oracle attained au- "">'»! be- , . . ^ uefs spread thority in all Greece long before the assimilation brought the farthest about by the Olympic Games. Europe had a common faith long before the great central monarchies began to assimilate the peoples. If language spread as rapidly as religion, there would be as many religions as languages, but the fact is that the struggle for existence and the elimi- nation of inferiors or variants is so much greater among religions, in consequence of their invasive power, that there are fewer of them. SUMMARY Movements arid actions readily infect the beholder. Matters like gesture and accent which are not ordinarily the object of conscious attention, quickly conform to example. The susceptibility of the sex appetite to suggestion justifies a certain social censorship over books, plays, pictures, etc. Feelings are more really communicated by suggestion than appetites or ideas. Personal ideals circulate more quickly than beliefs. For this reason Art needs the censor more than Science or Philosophy. Sex desire will follow the conventional type of the opposite sex. Impression and fascination inspire a general readiness to imitate. The outer form of institutions lasts, whereas the spirit and pur- pose change easily. EXERCISES 1. Why does your throat ache after listening to a speaker who forms his voice badly? 2. Consider the pros and cons of talks on sex hygiene before the segregated pupils of the public schools. 3. Does the progress in stability and security lessen the hero value of the leader, and exalt his directive capacity? 4. Why is it that the masterful teacher who keeps the big boys in order is imitated by them? 146 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 5. What is the chief objection to setting up in a public place the statue of a Tweed or a Quay ? 6. Show how a popular ideal like the Gibson Girl tends to get realized in flesh and blood. 7. Study closely some raw immigrant family and see if the pro- cess of their Americanization agrees with Tarde's law. CHAPTER IX THE RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY Perhaps the most general clew to the direction and spread of conventionality is given in the statement: — The social superior is imitated by the social inferior.^ Before illustrating this principle, the great key to con- ventional imitation, let us consider some of its limitations. In the first place the influence of the social superior Baskin- may be withstood in case it clashes with fundamental needs imy needs or instincts. For instance, in the upper class from resist imi- time to time it has been held "bad form" for ladies to superior nurse their children; but this convention violates so deep-rooted an instinct that it has never come into general good repute and probably never will. In his code of lady service or of duelling the social superior has at times gone to such absurd lengths that the common sense of the inferior has revolted. In the England of the seventeenth century it was not the profligacy of the upper class, but the Puritanism of the middle class, that finally gave the key-note to English morals. We see the same thing in Working- the refusal of wage-earners to accept the bourgeois aversion ^^ep t°the" to early marriage. Miss Addams^ points out that the bourgeois charity visitor, as she comes to know the situation of the elrw'mar- poor, " discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards nage ' See Tarda, "Laws of Imitations," 213-221. ' "Democracy and Social Ethics," 38, 39. 147 148 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 'or the oiu'geois DCtrine of le rights of lildren have been, and it takes but a little time to reach the con- clusion that she cannot insist so strenuously upon the con- ventions of her own class which fail to fit the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. The charity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the im- prudence of early marriages, quite naturally, because she comes from a family and circle of professional and busi- ness people. A professional man is scarcely equipped and started in his profession before he is thirty. A business man, if he is on the road to success, is much nearer pros- perity at thirty-five than twenty-five, and it is therefore wise for these men not to marry in the twenties; but this does not apply to the working-man. In many trades he is laid upon the shelf at thirty-five, and in nearly all trades he receives the largest wages in his life between twenty and thirty." " He naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very early." The writer goes on to show why parental abdication, now so popular with the bourgeoisie, is not imitated by wage- earners. "Parents who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, im- presses the immature, nervous system of the child, thus tyrannically establishing habits of obedience, so that the nerves and will may not depart from this control when the child is older. The charity visitor, whose family relation is lifted quite out of this, does not in the least understand the industrial foundation for this family tyranny. " The head of a kindergarten training class once ad- dressed a club of working women, and spoke of the des- ' RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 149 potism which is often established over little children. She said that the so-called determination to break a child's will many times arose from a lust of dominion, and she urged the ideal relationship founded upon love and confi- dence. But many of the women were puzzled. One of them remarked as she came out of the club room, ' If you did not keep control over them from the time they are little, you would never get their wages when they are grown up.' Another one said: 'Ah, of course she [meaning the speaker] doesn't have to depend upon her children's wages. She can afford to be lax with them, because even if they don't give money to her, she can get along without it.' " ' Happily, social prestige is not everything, and the By sheer humblest person may launch a doctrine or ideal which, by ™^"' ^ ^ -^ ' -^ tning may reason of its strength or fitness, will ultimately find favor mount in with the upper social layers. Chrysippus and Epictetus, ^f jg^j^j^^ though without social vantage-ground, radiated Stoic ideas gravity to the very apex of Roman society. Think of the success- ful propagation of the Gospel by Jews and slaves and "base mechanicals" in a world ripe for monotheism and a purer ideal ! Luther, George Fox, Howard, Pestalozzi, George Stevenson, Garrison, and Lincoln are men who in some way impressed society, without a dais to stand on. Then, in a strongly traditional society, the members of The lower a lower caste will prefer to imitate their ancestors rather ^^'^^^ ™ay ^ copy tneir than ape the upper caste. This is the Bauern-Stoh so ancestors often met with in Germany and Austria. "Rarely, in- thl^''^^^ deed, even among the most prosperous Bauers, so long periors as they are occupied in the cultivation of their land, is there any tendency to ape the manners or social customs • " Democracy and Social Ethics,'' 44. ISO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The superior insensibly borrows from the inferior Culture men enveloped by an in- ferior race become con- servative of even the poorest of the aristocracy or of the official ol the professional classes." ' Again, just as bodies of different temperature inter- change heat, so classes on different levels interchange char- acteristics, and to a certain extent the superior borrovi^s from the inferior. Slang or argot invades literature ; homely country phrases flavor city speech; darky songs and dances win the entree to the drawing-room ; Marie Antoin- ette in her Petit Trianon plays at peasant life ; Millet in- troduces the peasant into high art; the nobility accepts the frock-coat and the simple manners of the middle class ; masters become tainted with the sensuality and vices of their slaves ; our Southerners soften their consonants and open their vowels in unwitting imitation of the negro. When one language drives out another, it nevertheless borrows some words from the displaced tongue. English vanquishes Spanish in the Southwest, but accepts such words as calabash, cotton, palaver, guerilla, alligator, corridor, adobe, patio, arroyo, renegade, plaza, etc. From the long-vanished Indian speech English took such words as potato, squaw, wigwam, moccasin, pemmican, hurricane, and wampum. Whites in contact with aborigines let down. Certain of the first trans-AUeghany settlers became so Indianized as to wear a buckskin dress, marry a squaw, and let the scalp-lock grow. Realizing this danger of let-down, an isolated white folk enveloped by savages becomes intensely conservative. The French Canadians of to-day are French of the seventeenth century, and their conservatism has, no doubt, the same root that Miss Schreiner ^ finds for Boer conservatism. ' Palmer, " Austro-Hungarian Life." ' Cosmopolitan, 29, pp. 601-602. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 151 " It is true that the Boer has preserved in the South The key to African wilds the ideals and manners of his ancestors of ^°^'^^'^- servatism two centuries ago ; that in him the seventeenth, and even remnants of the sixteenth, century are found surviving as among few peoples in Europe ; but if this survival of the past be taken to imply . . . the immobility of the weak, and therefore unadaptable, nature, not having the vitality and strength to change, it is wholly untrue. Noth- ing so indicates the dogged, and almost fierce, strength of the South African Boer, as this unique conservatism. Placed in a new environment, removed from all the centres of European culture, thrown out into the wilds of the Afri- can deserts, surrounded by primitive conditions of life, and often by none but savage and primitive human crea- tures, nothing could have been easier, or would have seemed almost more inevitable, than that rapid change should at once have set up in the South African Boer; nothing more difficult, and almost impossible, than for him to maintain that degree of cultivation and civilization which he brought from Europe and already possessed. Again and again, under like conditions, men of lofty Euro- pean races have been modified wholly. Thrown amid new and primitive surroundings, when, after a few genera- tions of isolation from European life, they come to be considered by us, we find that whatever of culture or knowledge they brought with them has vanished; their religion has atrophied, their habits of life are modified, and among savage peoples, and often interblending with them, they have lost all, or almost all, the old distinctive marks. They are a new human modification, but a modi- fication often lower in the scale of life than the primitive people by whom they were surrounded ; a degenerate and 152 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY decayed people. On the east and west coasts of Africa, in South America, and elsewhere, again and again this has happened. Europeans, not having the conserving strength to retain what they possess, have gone backward in the scale of being. With the South African Boer this has not been so. "That little flag of seventeenth-century civilization which he took with him into the wilderness two hundred years ago, we still find to-day gallantly flying over his head, untorn and hardly faded after its two centuries' sojoiurn in the desert. With the quick instinct of a power- ful race, the Boer saw, or rather felt, his danger. The traditions, the faith, the manners, of his fathers, he would hold fast by these. To move, to be modified by the con- ditions about him, was to go backward : he would not move ; he planted his foot, and stood still ! "You say he still wears the little short jacket of his great-great-grandfather's great-grandfather? Yes, and had he given it up, it would have been to wear none at all ! So, line by line, his wife made it, as his father's forefather's had been. You say he stuck generation after generation to the straight-backed elbow-chair and the hard-backed sofa of his forefathers? Yes, and had he given them up, it would have been to adopt nothing more aesthetic; it would have been to sit on the floor; so he held solemnly by the old elbow-chair and the straight- backed sofa, almost as a matter of faith. "You say he had only one book, and clung to it with a passion that was almost idolatry ? Yes, but had he given up that one book, it could not have been to fill his library with the world's literature; it would have been to have no literatiire at all ! That one book, which he painfully RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 153 spelled through, and so mightily treasured, was his only link with the world's great stream of thought and knowl- edge ... his one possible inlet to the higher spiritual and intellectual life of the human race. ... If the Boer had forsaken his Bible, we should have found him to-day a savage, lower than the Bantus about him, because decayed. In nothing has he so shown his strength as in clinging to it. "To one who wisely studies the history of the African Boer, nothing is more pathetic than this strange, fierce adherence of his to the past. That cry, which unceasingly for generations has rung out from the Boer woman's elbow- chair, 'My children, never forget you are white men! Do always as you have seen your father and mother do !' was no cry of a weak conservatism, fearful of change ; it was the embodiment of the passionate determination of a great, little people, not to lose the little it possessed and so sink in the scale of being. To laugh at the conservatism of the Boer is to laugh at the man who, floating above a whirlpool, clings fiercely with one hand to the only out- stretching rock he can reach, and who will not relax his hold on it by one finger till he has found something firmer to grasp." The English setders in America felt the down-pull, due PubUc edu- pardy to contact with the aborigines, pardy to the rude ^^^^"^^^ struggle with the wilderness,' but they successfully with- resisting stood it by organizing education. Fiske ^ speaks of the '1°™-?"'' "widespread seminal influence of Yale and Harvard, sending their graduates into every town and village as ministers, lawyers, and doctors, schoolmasters and editors, ' Eggleston, "The Transit of Civilization," 233-236. 2 "Old Virginia and her Neighbors," II, 253. 154 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY merchants and country squires." And adds: "Among the founders of New England were an extraordinary number of clergymen noted for their learning, such as Hooker and Shepard, Cotton and Williams, Eliot and the Mathers; together with such cultivated laymen as Win- throp and Bradford, familiar with much of the best that was written in the world, and to whom the pen was an easy and natural instrument for expressing their thoughts. The character originally impressed upon New England by such men was maintained by the powerful influence of the colleges and schools, so that there was always more attention devoted to scholarship and to writing than in any of the other colonies. Communities of Europeans, thrust into a wilderness and severed from Europe by the ocean, were naturally in danger of losing their higher culture and lapsing into the crudeness of frontier life. All the American colonies were deeply affected by this situation. While there were many and great advantages in the freedom from sundry Old World trammels, yet in some respects the influence of the wilderness was bar- barizing. It was due to the circumstances above men- tioned that the New England colonies were more success- ful than the others in resisting this influence, and avoiding a breach of continuity in the higher spiritual life of the community."* ' At the same time, stiffness and lack of flexibility in the superior race, blindness to the relativity of its own culture and to the good points of the inferior race, make it impotent to raise the inferior. Says Boutmy : " The French were loved by the Indians, and found in them faithful allies. The Spanish, by intermixing with the natives of Mexico, Peru, and Central America, formed a race which by degrees became initiated into the highest European culture. The Redskins, on the contrary, who lived on the borders of the United States, were cantoned, demoralized. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 155 The colony of five or six thousand Wiirtembergers at Conserva- Tiflis, descended from the emigrants who left their coun- GeTmans''^ try because their prince insisted on forcing on his subjects at Tiflis a new hymn-book which they cansidered too lax in its statements of doctrine, have become encysted in a con- servatism which enables them to resist their Russo- Oriental environment. Says Bryce : ^ " Here have they dwelt ever since, preserving all their old ways and habits, cherishing their Protestant faith, and singing out of their dear old hymn-book. Rows of trees run along the princi- pal street; breweries and beer-gardens border it, where the honest burgher sits at night and listens over his supper to a band, as his cousins are doing at the same hour in the suburbs of Stuttgart. Tidy little Fraus come out in the evening cool to the doorsteps, and knit and chat among their fair-haired Karls and Gretchens. They have their own schools, far better than any which Russian organization produces; they are nearly all Protestants, with a wholesome Protestant contempt for their supersti- and decimated. . . While in two hundred and fifty years only some hundred thousand Indians were partly licked into shape and civilized by the English, twelve millions of aborigines were in the same time raised by Catholic Spain to a far higher degree of civilization. The same inability to comprehend the inferior race, to stoop towards them so as to raise them up and place them on a level with themselves, is strik- ingly apparent in all the lamentable history of Ireland, in that of India, and in the present administration of Egypt. The English have secured material benefits to these populations: order, security, and riches. Their authority in Hindustan, for example, is exercised in all good faith, honestly and justly; but though a century has gone by they still hold among the mass of the natives the position of an isolated company, in that they have no adherents. Foreigners are they still, and a cry of deliverance would salute their departure, even if they took with them well-being and peace." — " The English People,'' 101-102. '"Transcaucasia and Ararat," 150. IS6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY tious Georgian and Armenian neighbors. They speak nothing but German among themselves, and show little or no sign of taking to Russian ways or letting themselves be absorbed by the populations that surround them. It was very curious to contrast this complete persistency of Teutonism here with the extraordinarily rapid absorption of the Germans among other citizens which one sees going on in the American West, Milwaukee, e.g. Here they are exiles from a higher civilization planted in the midst of a lower one; there they lose themselves among a kindred people, with whose ideals and political institu- tions they quickly come to sympathize." Most diffu- In general, however, the current of imitation runs from Bodai° avitv superior to inferior. Accent, style of handwriting, ges- tures, salutations, etiquette, amusements, and modes of The descent entertainment pass from Americans to immigrants, from of wants i^jg ^Qyg ^Q jj^(.^g ^Qyg jj^ school, from seniors to freshmen, from the travelled to the stay-at-homes, from whites to blacks, from society women to debutantes, from Mrs. Colonel to Mrs. Subaltern. Gurewitsch ' shows that nearly all existing elements of culture were first taken up by an upper class and penetrated to the masses under the in- fluence of their example. Dress, sported by the leisured to distinguish them from the clouted laborers, becomes clothing. Most cereals began by furnishing spirituous liquors to the well-to-do. Only when they entered the dietary of the poorer classes did their nutritive value begin to be prized. The useful metals furnished orna- ments to the rich before they gave tools to the artisan. The ass and the horse were probably domesticated not ' " Die Entwickelung der menschlichen Bediirfnisse." RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 157 so much for burden or draught purposes as for the saddle, and they were ridden less for comfort than for the digni- fied and impressive mode of locomotion they afforded. Butter, milk, cheese, and bread, no less than tea, coffee, and tobacco, are an acquired taste, and first became popular because the social superiors had made them reputable. The use of milk spread among the Hindus from the Brahmins. In Egypt and Mexico bread entered the diet of the upper classes while yet the rabble lived on dates and fish. Gurewitsch shows that even the artistic and intellectual The descent activities that later became the learned professions began °^ culture among the leisured as honorific employments, document- ing one's sensibility and talent. The sciences owe their begirming largely to the love of displaying intellectual prowess. Philosophy is of gentle origin, but exact science is of humble ancestry, for it was peasant brains that gave upper-class speculations a practical turn and transformed intellectual sport into serious work. Language owes much of its enrichment to the social superior seeking new terms and words in order to avoid the colloquial speech of the vulgar; but the masses would not thus be eluded and by appropriating such refinements they in- sured the development of the mother- tongue. Says Hearn ^ of Japan : " During the Tokugawa period, The descent various diversions or accomplishments, formerly fashion- of manners ^ and accom- able in upper circles only, became common property, piishments Three of these were of a sort indicating a high degree of refinement: poetical contests, tea ceremonies, and the complex art of flower arrangement. All were introduced '"Japan: An Interpretation," 390-392. of ideals of Kfe 158 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY into Japanese society long before the Tokugawa regime. . . . But it was under the Tokugawa Shogunate that such amusements and accomplishments became national. Then the tea ceremonies were made a feature of female education throughout the country." ' ' It was in this period also that etiquette was cultivated to its uttermost, — that politeness became diffused throughout all ranks, not merely as a fashion, but as an art." " For at least ten cen- turies before lyeyasu, the nation had been disciplined in politeness, under the edge of the sword. But under the Tokugawa Shogunate politeness became particularly a popular characteristic, — a rule of conduct maintained by even the lowest classes in their daily relations." The descent It is true that monogamy worked from below upward, embodying the anti-monopoly protest of the masses against upper-class polygamy. But the position of the wife in the monogamic union is patterned upon the rights and privileges of the first or favorite wife in the polygamous household of the upper class. The knightly ideal was worked out by a religious-military caste, adopted enthu- siastically by the upper ranks, and then slowly descended, partly by aid of social gravity, to the body of the people. In this process of universalizing, the pattern of the knight has become modified into that of the gentleman. Like- wise, Bushido, the knightly ideal that has been, and still is, the mould of Japanese character, was perfected within the fighting caste of the samurai. Says Dr. Nitobe : ' "In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where it originated, and acted as a leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral standard for the whole people. The precepts of knighthood, begun at first as '"Bushido," 108. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 159 the glory of the 6lite, became in time an aspiration and inspiration to the nation at large." ' Very rapid propagation of a practice not obviously Aristocracies meritorious is a sign of steep social inequalities, just as ^t^^Q^'' the rapid flow of rivers indicates that they find their early peoples sources in highlands. In the earlier societies aristocracies were the sole avenue by which foreign novelties could gain access to a people. Says Tarde:^ "Let us picture to ourselves the basin of the Mediterranean in the eighth century before Christ ; at the moment of the great Tyrian or Sidonian prosperity, when the Phoenicians, the Euro- pean carriers of the arts of Egypt and Assyria, were arousing among the Greeks and other peoples a taste for luxurious and beautiful things. These merchants were not, like the modern English, traders in cheap and common fabrics ; like the mediaeval Venetians, they were wont to display along the sea-beach fine products that appealed to the rich people of all countries, purple gar- ments, perfumes, golden cups, figurines, costly armor, ex voto offerings, graceful and charming ornaments. Thus all over, in Sardinia, in Etruria, in Greece, in the Archi- pelago, in Asia Minor, and in Gaul, the highest classes, the select few, might be seen wearing helmets, swords, bracelets, and tunics which from one end to the other of ' The reader may wonder whether a number of the cases cited in this and the three previous paragraphs do not exemplify rational imitation rather than conventional imitation, seeing that what the inferiors borrowed of the superiors was something of real merit, better than anything they had. But the fact is that, until the modern era of democratic enlighten- ment, the masses were too custom-bound to take a thing for its merit alone. Nothing less than the great prestige of social superiors could over- come the resistance of their brute conservatism, and spread improvements among them. 2 "Laws of Imitations," 219. i6o SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY A live aris- tocraq? is progressive and cos- mopolitan this vast region were more or less alike, while beneath them the plebeian populations continued to be differen- tiated from one another by their characteristic dress and weapons." A similar drawing together of societies at their tops occurred in the later Middle Ages when Vene- tian products, spreading throughout Europe, assimilated palaces and castles and city mansions but not cottages and huts. It is for this reason that the dress suit is the same the world over, while the peasant dress is distinctive for each people.* An aristocracy has, then, a certain value as an inlet for foreign tastes and ideas. Even though it be not inven- tive, it can still afford a good launching place for inven- tions or novelties. In early societies it helps to break the chains of custom, and so may smooth the way for progress. Often an aristocracy is a kind of social stand-pipe, from which under high pressure refined ideas and manners are diffused throughout society.^ The French upper classes '"The Bohemian nobles and aristocracy became so completelj' Germanized after the final conquest of the country by Austria in the seven- teenth century, that their mode of life at the present day differs but little from that of the same section of society in Austria. It is among the mid- dle and lower classes, and, above all, among the peasantry, that the most typical traits of the national character are met with." — Palmer, " Austro-Hungarian Life. " ^Says Bodley: "The permeation of civilization to a level in France lower than in other communities, is a gratifying feature of the national life. The country tradesman or the village postmaster often reveals in his unstudied speech the urbanity of good breeding, and cottagers some- times astonish strangers with their charm of manner. No doubt there are regions of France where the peasants are boorish, and their personal habits unattractive; but, on the whole, their civilization is remarkable. Their stores of household linen, their excellent cooking, the propriety of their attire, though not universal, exist as signs of the force of the French race which resists the di.sorderliness of its governors. At night- RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY i6i catch from the English nobility field-sports, tweeds, rac- ing, appreciation of country life, etc. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the English aristocracy formed itself upon Italian models, and thereby incidentally in- jected some Italian culture into the English ; later it took to French fashions, fine arts, free thinking, etc. The Roman aristocracy was a medium through which the Romans became acquainted with Greek ideas, culture, and civilization. The Gaulish aristocracy Latinized Gaul. The Russian aristocracy opened Russia to West European influence. The nobles and samurai took the lead in Europeanizing Japan. China's stagnation has been owing in part to the absence of an aristocracy. The planter aristocracy in the South imbued even the plain people in that section with chivalry toward women, courteous manners, and a sense of honor that supports a higher plane of commercial honesty than is maintained in the North. In the South the planter class, in the North the little red schoolhouse, was the channel for the injection of culture and refinement into the masses. As soon as an aristocracy becomes timid and obstructive and commits itself to tradition, its social r61e declines. The reciprocal imitation of social equals is far feebler A society than the unilateral imitation in a graded society. In a uppe°"ci™s society of equals natural centres and routes for the mustfostei rapid, automatic diffusion of culture are lacking, and educrtion fall the traveller who passes through remote villages sometimes sees through the open cottage door the evening meal neatly laid with a com- fort unknown in middle class houses in other civilized lands." "]f he enters the humble abode of a collier or of an iron-worker, he may perhaps see him surrounded by his family, taking his dinner served with accessories only found at the tables of the rich in other countries." — "France," I, 205. M 1 62 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY After the arts and professions have be- come dif- ferentiated a titular aristocracy hinders the diffusion of culture hence this social type presumes unusual intelligence and progressiveness in the ordinary man. Otherwise, you get stagnation or fatuity. Catholicism with its hierarchical determination of dogma has remained unified, whereas Protestantism, lacking an aristocracy of pope and bishops, soon split up into hundreds of sects on account of petty theological differences, and saved itself only by regaining a steadying leadership in the form of an educated clergy. A democratic society without due provision for public education will stagnate; but once adequate agencies for testing and diffusing culture have been established, the prestige of a titular upper class may become oppressive and obstructive. Thus Grant Allen ^ says: "This profound and now ingrained belief in the natural supe- riority of the Upper Classes reacts in a thousand most immoral ways upon English life. One is never at the end of it. But the worst of all its corollaries is undoubtedly this — ■ that it stands hopelessly in the way of the recogni- tion of all real betternesses. Nobody is anything by the side of the peer. His visible greatness eclipses all else. There is not a country in the world so lord-ridden as England; there is not a country where literary men, artists, thinkers, discoverers, great scientists, great poets, — the prophets and seers of the race, — fill so small a place comparatively in the public estimation." " Nobody who has not lived long in England can fully realize the appalling extent to which this gangrene of lord-worship, county gentlemen-worship, flunkeyism, snobbery, has eaten into the very heart and brain of the nation. . . . Nobody is ever thinking about real distinction; every- body is thinking about this tinsel sham which stands • Cosmopolitan, Vol. 30, pp. 659, 663, RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 163 visible in place of it. All society is organized on the same extraordinary and unreal basis. . . . There exists in England a Society of Authors, of which Tennyson was, and Meredith is, president. . . . Yet its annual dinner has usually been presided over, not by Thomas Hardy or William Morris, not by Robert Louis Stevenson or Andrew Lang, but — by a casual lord, who has written a booklet, fished up by hook or crook from the squares of Belgravia. Would the men of letters in any other coun- try submit to such an insult?" " The existence of a class which monopolizes public attention on the ground of birth alone, stands fatally in the way of the really superior class which deserves and struggles toward recognition in every direction. The artificial betterness eclipses the nat- ural." " Even worse ... is the effect produced upon the general public. Having a wholly false standard of the ad- mirable set up to them, our people ' meanly admire mean things,' as Thackeray said; they know and understand little or nothing about high ones. The average British middle class is the most debased, materialized, and soul- less bourgeoisie in the whole world. Of art, of literature, of poetry, of thought, of philosophy, of movement, it knows and cares nothing. A baronet is more to it than George Meredith or Herbert Spencer. Its ambitions are — tq make plenty of money, to live in a big house, to keep a carriage and servants in livery, to hang upon the skirts of the aristocracy if it can, to ape them in every- thing, and if possible to rise at least as far toward their level as the attainment of a knighthood. Rich families in America are generally aware of the existence of culture and the desirability of acquiring it, or at least some pre- tence and outer show of it. . . . But in England, most l64 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY wealthy people do not even pay this external and formal homage to culture. They do not know it exists; they do not care for it, or admire it, or value it in others. They wish to have a private box at the Oaks, a yacht like Lord Ulster's, a coach and four, an invitation to the garden- party at the neighboring baronet's, perhaps even to own a Derby winner, and to rise to the peerage through beer or cotton. That is all. Of the real betternesses of life they are as innocent as a Central African negro." "Hence English snobbislmess, that terrible, all-pervad- ing trait of English society from top to bottom. Do what you will, you cannot escape from it. If you live long enough in the country, you must inevitably succumb to it; you cannot emancipate even your own conduct from some lingering taint of that pervasive malady. For your neighbors, your servants, your tradesmen, your dependents, all judge you and your acts, not by what you are in yourself, but by the company you keep, the county society you do or do not know, the carriages with footmen that stop at your door or pass it by, the post assigned to you in the ordered hierarchy of the Lord Chamberlain and his flunkeys. No one is quite free from this hateful superstition. One cannot isolate one's self absolutely from one's social atmosphere. . . . England can never be free, wholesome, and whole-souled till she has cast out forever these belated false gods, and learned to pay homage at the shrine of the Genuine Betternesses." SUMMARY The social superior is apt to be imitated by the social inferior. This, however, will not be the case if the example of the superior clashes seriously with the instincts or circumstances of the inferior. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 165 Historically the stimulating example of the superior has been a great factor in overcoming the immobility of the mass. At the same time it has often given them false guidance. Nearly every element in the civilization of a people was once the exclusive possession of an upper class. In some cases the element has been an outgrowth of the manner of life and thought of the upper class. Usually, however, the upper class has served merely as its launching place. Being more closely in touch with one another than peoples, aris- tocracies have provided channels for the diffusion of a cosmopolitan culture. A society of social equals tends to stagnate unless education, both lower and higher, is amply provided for. After the various elements of culture have come to be cared for by the special arts and professions, the social r61e of an upper class declines, and its influence may become positively obstructive. EXERCISES 1. Show that the common people react selectively upon the ex- amples set them by the social superiors. 2. Why does the standard of living rise so promptly with every increase in prosperity that there is scarcely any let-up in economic strain? 3. Why is it easier to save money in the country than in the city? 4. What social changes going on in the South hinder the negroes getting refinement and civilization by the old route, and oblige them to get it via institutions like Hampton and Tuskegee? 5. Compare the big university with the small college in power to form and refine the student. 6. Does any good thing spread by social gravity which might not be diffused by the school? CHAPTER X THE RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY {Continued) The power- holder is copied The ex- ample of a Roman emperor contagious The holder of power is imitated. This is to say that the hierarchical superior in any au- thoritative organization — governmental, ecclesiastical, educational, or industrial — is by the very power he wields clothed with prestige in the eyes of some, and becomes therefore a radiant point of imitations. Quite aside from the motive of currying favor, people copy the power-holder because the presumption of superiority attaches to the example set by one on so glittering a pinnacle. Says Dill: ' "The example of an emperor must always be potent for good or evil. We have the testimony of Pliny and Claudium, separated by an interval of three hundred years, that the world readily conforms its life to that of one man, if that man is the head of the state. Nero's youthful enthusiasm for declamation gave an im- mense impulse to the passion for rhetoric. His enthu- siasm for acting and music spread through all ranks, and the Emperor's catches were sung at wayside inns. M. Aurelius made philosophy the mode, and the Stoic Em- peror is responsible for some of the philosophic imposture which moved the withering scorn of Lucian. The Em- peror's favorite drug grew so popular that the price of it became almost prohibitory. If the model Vespasian's homely habits had such an effect in reforming society, ' "Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius," 31. 166 RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 167 we may be sure that the evil example of his spendthrift predecessors did at least as much to deprave it." Upon the provincials the example of the Imperial City Provincial seemed to cast a magic spell. Dill elsewhere * says: — ^^*'™ °^ " Although for generations there was a settled abstinence from centralization on the part of the imperial government, the many varieties of civic constitution in the provinces tended by an irresistible drift to a uniform type of organi- zation. Free and federate communities voluntarily sought the position of a colony or a municipium. Just as the provincial town must have its capitol, with the cult of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, or imported the street names Velabrum or Vicus Tuscus, so the little community called itself respublica, its commons the populus, its curia the senate or the amplissimus et splendidissimus or do; its magistrates sometimes bore the majestic names of praetor, dictator, or censor, in a few cases even of consul. This almost ludicrous imitation of the great city is an example of the magical power which Rome always exercised on her most distant subjects, and even on the outer world of barbarism, down to the last days when her forces were ebbing away." The direction of the current of imitation reveals the seat of power. Always the nobility imitates its king and The head of the masses copy the nobles. "In Byzantium," says 'adianfp^int Baudrillart, "the court looked to the prince, the city to the court, and the country to the city in the matter of luxury." Louis XIV completed the hierarchization of French society under royalty. The obligation of every noble to attend the court ^ opened routes by which the • Ihid., 204. ''See Taine, "The Ancient Regime," 43-46- i68 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY National imitation of court luxuries and ex- travagances vanities and prodigalities of Versailles were automatically diffused throughout France. St. Simon observes: "Luxury is a plague which once introduced becomes an internal, all-devouring cancer, because from the court it is promptly communicated to Paris and throughout the provinces and the army." So seductive was the example of the powerful that it was deemed necessary to restrain by sumptuary laws the eagerness of the lower orders to emulate the extravagance of the nobles. Tarde,^ speaking of "the tendency to ape the hierarchical superior and the rapidity with which this inclination has at all times satisfied itself at the least gleam of prosperity," says: "The frequency of the sump- tuary edicts during the entire period of the old regime is a proof of this, just as the multiplicity of a river's dikes bears witness to the impetuosity of its current. The first French Court dates from Charles VIII; but we must not imagine that the imitative contagion of court manners and luxury took several centuries to reach down to the com- mon people of France. From Louis XII on, this influence was felt everywhere. The disasters of the religious wars arrested this development in the sixteenth century, but in the following century it started up again. Then the miseries brought on by the later wars of the Grand Mon- arch occasioned another set-back. In the course of the eighteenth century there was a fresh start; under the Revolution another reaction. With the First Empire the advance began again on a great scale ; but thenceforward it assumed a democratic form which we shall not consider at this moment. Under Francis I, under Henry II, the spread of luxury begim under Louis XII continued. At ' "Laws of Imitations," 218. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 169 this period a sumptuary law forbade ' all peasants, laborers, and valets (save those attached to princes) to wear silken doublets or hose overlaid or puffed out with silk.' From 1543 to the time of the League there were eight important ordinances against luxury. ' Some of them,' says Baudril- lart, 'apply to every French subject; they forbid the use of cloth of gold, of silver, or of silk.' Such was the ele- gance prevailing on the eve of the wars of religion."- In justifying laws in restraint of trade "one of the reasons most frequently advanced was that France was ruining herself in the purchase of foreign luxuries." Tfie more successful is imitated by the less successful. In the eyes of some, not the high, but the rising, are Thearistoc- clothed with prestige. Lofty station is ambiguous; it achievement may or may not testify to rare prowess. Often it is owed to birth, marriage, favor, or luck. But the man who makes his way upward by achievement furnishes thereby signal proof of his power. Occasionally the strong climber has a proper pride in his achievement and flaunts it in the face of the aristocracy of birth. Pope Urban IV, the son of a cobbler, who himself had worked at the trade, chose a cobbler's tools as his symbol. Senator Sawyer of Wis- consin, who made a fortune in sawmilling, put on his carriage the Latin word vidi, which, being translated, signifies "I saw!" The active element in society recog- nizes that the aristocracy of achievement belongs to the present, not to the past. It stands for some good thing lately done, not for something which has long gone by. "When Theodore Parker first visited Cincinnati, at that time the recognized leader among Western cities, he said that he had made a great discovery, namely, that while the aristocracy of Cincinnati was unquestionably founded 170 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The " men who do things " dispute the preeminence of the titled on pork, it made a great difference whether a man killed pigs for himself, or whether his father had killed them. The one was held plebeian, the other patrician. It was the difference, Parker said, between the stick 'ems and the stiick 'ems; and his own sympathies, he confessed, were with the present tense. It was, in other words, aristocracy in the making." ^ The tendency of men of achievement to wrest social leadership from the hereditary titular aristocracy is brought out by Taine.^ " On the one hand, the nobles are drawn nearer to the Third-Estate, and on the other, the Third-Estate is drawn nearer to the nobles, actual equality having preceded equality as a right. On the approach of the year 1789 it was difficult to distinguish one from the other in the street. The sword is no longer worn by gentlemen in the cities; they have abandoned embroideries and laces and walk about in plain frock-coats or drive themselves in their cabriolets. 'The simplicity of English customs,' and the customs of the Third-Estate seem to them better adapted to ordinary life. Their prominence proves irksome to them, and they grow weary of being always on parade. Henceforth they accept familiarity that they may enjoy freedom of action and are content ' to mingle with their fellow-citizens without obstacle or ostentation.' ... An equalization of the ways and externals of life is, indeed, only a manifesta- tion of the equalization of minds and tempers. The antique scenery being torn away indicates the disappear- ance of the sentiments to which it belonged. ... If the nobles dress like the bourgeoisie, it is owing to their having ' Colonel Higginson in The Atlantic Monthly, 93, p. 510. ' "Ancient Regime," 311-313. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 171 become bourgeois, that is to say, idlers retired from busi- ness, with nothing to do but to talk and amuse them- selves. Undoubtedly they amuse themselves and converse like people of refinement; but it is not very difficult to equal them in this respect. Now that the Third- Estate has acquired its wealth a good many plebeians have become people of society. . . . Their sons . . . throw money out of the window with as much elegance as the young dukes with whom they sup. A parvenu with money and intellect soon becomes brightened and his son, if not himself, is initiated : a few years' exercises in an academy, a dancing master, and one of the four thou- sand public offices which confer nobility, supply him with the deficient externals. . . . After this intermixture of classes and this displacement of character, what superiority rests with the nobles? By what special merit, through what recognized capacity are they to secure the respect of a member of the Third-Estate? . . . What superior education, what familiarity with affairs, what experience with government, what political instruction, what local ascendency, what moral authority, can be alleged to sanction their pretensions to the highest places? In the way of practice, the Third-Estate already does the work, providing the qualified men, the intendants, the ministerial head clerks, the lay and ecclesiastical administrators, the competent laborers of all kind and degrees. . . . Con- sider the young men who, about twenty years of age in 1780, born in industrious families, accustomed to effort and able to work twelve hours a day, a Barnave, a Carnot, a Roederer, a Merlin de Thionville, a Robespierre, an energetic race conscious of its strength, criticising their rivals, aware of their weakness, comparing their own 172 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY application and education to their levity and incompetency, and, at the moment when youthful ambition stirs within them, seeing themselves excluded in advance from any superior position, consigned for life to subaltern employ- ment, and subjected in every career to the precedence of superiors whom they hardly recognize as their equals. At the artillery examinations where Cherin, the genealo- gist, refuses plebeians, and where the Abbe Bosen, a mathematician, rejects the ignorant, it is discovered that capacity is wanting among the noble pupils and nobility among the capable pupils, the two qualities of gentility and intelligence seeming to exclude each other, as there are but four or five out of a hundred pupils who combine the two conditions. Now, as society at this time is mixed, such tests are frequent and easy. Whether lawyer, physician, or man of letters, a member of the Third-Estate with whom a duke converses familiarly, who sits in a diligence alongside of a count-colonel of hussars, can appreciate his companion or his interlocutor, weigh his ideas, test his merit, and esteem him at his just value. . . . The nobility having lost a special capacity, and the Third-Estate having acquired a general capacity, they are on a par in education and in aptitudes, the inequality which separated them becoming ofEensive and becoming useless." The sue- Society is called democratic not because a social hier- nSidsMid s-i^chy is absent, but because its hierarchy is formed on pace-setters the competitive rather than the hereditary principle. With us, not kings, princes, and nobles, but bankers, merchant princes, railroad magnates, capitalists, ofhcials, politicians, editors, educators, writers, and artists occupy the high seats, hold the baton, and beat time for the great RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 173 social orchestra. Society is no longer a many-storied pagoda of closed castes, but a pyramid whose sides, narrow- ing toward the top, provide a hierarchy of places into which individuals climb, or to which they are admitted on demonstrating their superior merit. As in wealth, so in eminence and fame, democracy tolerates many inequalities; but these are of recent, not remote, origin. As the boundaries between sections, classes, and nations fade out, the chorus of acclaim that greets the man of transcendent genius becomes vaster, for the bigger the audience, the greater the glory to be distributed among the actors. The apotheosis in our time of Lincoln, Gari- baldi, Victor Hugo, Tolstoi, Paderewski, Bernhardt, and Booth reveals among us pinnacles of literary and artistic glory never before dreamt of. The more dynamic a period, the more quickly the in the social sceptre passes from type to type. Some evidence gj"^'^ ^j^^ is accruing that the "men who do things" will be obliged educated art to yield somewhat to the educated. Miinsterberg ' ob- the kad^- serves: "The most important factor in the aristocratic ship of the differentiation of America is higher education and culture, and this becomes more important every day. . . . The social importance ascribed to a college graduate is all the time growing. It was kept back for a long time by xm- fortunate prejudices. Because other than intellectual forces had made the nation strong, and everywhere in the foreground of public activity there were vigorous and influential men who had not continued their education beyond the public grammar school, so the masses in- stinctively believed that insight, real energy, and enter- prise were better developed in the school of life than in '"The Americans," 600-602. 174 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Men of with more discrimina- tion than an upper class the world of books. The college student was thought of as a weakling, in a way, who might have many fine theories about things, but who would never take hold to help solve the great national problems — a sort of aca- demic ' mugwump,' but not a leader. The banking house, factory, farm, the mine, the law office, and the political position were all thought better places for the young American man than the college lecture halls. . . . This has profoundly changed now, and changes more with every year. . . . The change has taken place in regard to what is expected of the college student ; distrust has vanished, and people realize that the intellectual discipline which he has had until his twenty-second year in the artificial and ideal world is after all the best training for the great duties of public life, and that academic training, less by its subject-matter than by its methods, is the best possible preparation for practical activity. . . . The leading positions in the disposal of the nation are almost entirely in the hands of men of academic training, and the mistrust of the theorizing college spirit has given place to a situation in which university presidents and professors have much to say on all practical questions of public life, and the college graduates are the real sup- porters of every movement toward reform and civiliza- tion." In a society of hereditary grades the superior is copied the stream of imitation But where the grad- ing is elective or social, the superior is imitated most in that particular excellence which has won him acclaim and distinction. Hence no one person or class sets the pace in everything. A Kipling is imitated in point of achievement ^y the inferior in everything are imitated . ., , flows mostly one way, is unilateral. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 175 literary style, a Booth in acting, a Gibson in drawing, a Sargent in painting, a Brummel in dress, a Corbett in pugilistics. But the leader in one thing follows in some other things, so that the imitation becomes multilateral, and, to a certain extent, rational. Nevertheless, such rationalizing does not proceed very far for the reason stated by Cooley when he says : * " When there is a real personal superiority, ascendency is seldom confined to the traits in which this is manifested, but, once established in regard to these traits, it tends to envelop the leader as a whole, and to produce allegiance to him as a concrete person. This comes, of course, from the difficulty of breaking up and sifting that which presents itself to the senses, and through them to the mind, as a single living whole. And as the faults and weaknesses of a great man are commonly much easier to imitate than his excellences, it often happens, as in the case of Michael Angelo, that the former are much more conspicuous in his followers than the latter." The rich are imitated by the poor. There are times and circles in which wealth sums up the Among Humanly Desirable, and the possession of wealth creates ^^^^J^^gj^ an irresistible presumption of superiority. Then one the example verifies the saying of the Hindu epic poet, " That which is ^ infectious called the wealthy is a very important member of the state; for verily a man with money is the top of all creation." Then, in matters of opinion and conviction as well as in the trappings and formalities of life, the rich will wield the baton, no matter how destitute they may be of outlook, ideas, taste, or refinement. When the worship of Mammon is widespread the millionnaire is a high authority, not ' "Human Nature and the Social Order," 309. 176 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The rise of the Ameri- can dollar- ocracy only in the technique of money-making, but in every- thing else as well. He is interviewed on every fresh topic that crops up in public discussion. His crassest stu- pidities have the indescribable charm of coming from a "solid" man. A string of platitudes in the heavy Olympian style of Croesus is as much prized as a leaf from a Sibylline Book. When he expounds the vulpine ethics that justify his career, the Sermon on the Mount is rocked to its base. Upon the nod or frown of the boxes hangs the fate of the artist, the composer, the playwright. The pastimes, entertainments, and extravagances of the rich are eagerly noted and enthusiastically aped by the multitude immediately below them in the cash scale.. Small fry mortgage their homes to acquire an automobile which serves them about as well as an eight-day clock in the hut of a negro who can't tell time.^ Yellow journalism itself originated in the vertigo that a generation ago began to seize upon the people of the Northern cities when they contemplated the rich. It was born in 1882 out of a conversation in which Mr. Pulitzer, of the New York World, thus noted the rise of the dollarocracy.^ "The trouble with the American people to-day is their assumed independence. They imagine that they are ' " So mad has the race for social supremacy become that many owners of houses worth from $5000 to $10,000, which they have acquired after years of toil and saving, are mortgaging them in order to buy automobiles. So fearful are they of being outshone by their neighbors that they are resorting to the most reckless extravagance and trying to present the appearance of wealth on an income not exceeding $150 a month." From the report of a committee of the New Era Women's Club of Pittsburg as given in the press of July 18, 1907. 2 Public Opinion, XXXVIII, 269. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 177 alone in the universe. They are wealth-mad. They see it on every side of them — money and the work of money. They have created fortunes, and they don't know how to spend them. Those who have not succeeded in amass- ing money worship those who have, and these worshippers are in the majority. Their every thought is to become like the rich ; to emulate their every act and success. It is a sensation with them ; they crave sensation. "To be rich is the one object of the masses in every walk of life in this country to-day. There is nothing akin to this money craze in the older countries of Europe, but in place of it they have an aristocracy there. They expend their sentiment on that. . . . Give the people what they want. Give them an aristocracy. Tell them how these men and women have become rich. Tell the people how they spend their money; what they say; how they live; what their ambitions are. Tell it with pictures. Tell it interestingly and we will sell this paper." Mr. Watterson ^ thus pronoimces upon the new sceptre- holders from the view-point of an older and finer upper class. "The Smart Set is rotten through and through. It Barbarizing has not one redeeming feature. All its ends are achieved ^e'doUar- by money and largely by the unholy use of money. If ocracy one of them proposes to go into politics, he expects to buy his way, and the rogues who have seats in Congress or foreign appointments to sell, see that he pays the price. If one of them wants to marry a lord, she expects to buy him, and the titled scamps who seek to recoup their broken fortunes see that she pays the price. Their influence is to the last degree corruptive. Their hangers- ' " Compromises of Life," 461 passim. 178 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY on and retainers are only such as money will buy. Nine out of every ten of the fortunes behind them will not bear scrutiny; when it is not actually got by foul means, it yet goes back to the grimiest antecedents, the wash- tub and the stable yard. . . . Must these uncleanly birds of gaudy, and therefore of conspicuous, plumage fly from gilded bough to bough, fouling the very air as they twitter their affectations of social supremacy and no one to shy a brick and to cry, ' Scat, you devils ! ' . . . From Maine to California there are myriads of cheer- ful, comfortable homes where 'Dad' and 'Mam' and 'Granny,' yea, and 'Molly' and 'Polly' and 'Susey' and 'Sis' lead clean and wholesome lives, happy in their ignorance of evil such as in the mouths of the Smart Set is familiar as household words; not merely an honest, brawny people, who work for a living, and would scorn to have any earls or marquises sitting around on their cracker barrels, but educated, cultivated people, with plenty of money for all of the reasonable luxuries and adornments of life, who would blush to sit at table with these unclean birds and to listen to their chatter." The spread Not long ago a Newport divine, preaching against of the pe- divorce, pleaded with his fashionable congregation to order cuniary civ- ' ^ o o iUzation themselves more Strictly in things marital. "Remember," he said to them in effect, "your example in family matters is followed by eighty millions of people." Shortly after an eminent Southern writer hotly denounced the clerical admonition as a slander, and denied that any considerable section of the American people heeds the example of the Newport plutocracy in any serious relation of life. The rebuke was just, yet the virus of wealth-worship spreads and area after area is infected. Baltimore, Richmond, RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 179 Charleston, Savannah, Louisville, — strongholds of a dif- ferent prestige, — begin to suspect that they are provincial. The cold-cash standard of human excellence, having conquered the big cities in the North, is now reducing the smaller centres and the country.* ' In her introduction to " Fads and Fancies," a sumptuous volume of "puffs" of the leaders in New York society, a distinguished literary woman, Mrs. Burton Harrison, remarks : — "Toward the middle of the nineteenth century we find the sociologists and commentators upon our best society beginning to discuss the points with sufficient vigor and lifting up their voices in public print against the decadence of republican manners and customs, resulting from the great wealth and material prosperity of our country. Then, as now, it was New York that came in for the lion's share of the abuse. "Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington still held to their old traditions. Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah were hedged behind a thorny growth of antique customs and exclusiveness. Chicago and San Francisco were yet to be heard from as rivals in the race for civic preeminence and social outlay. . . . "What would the valiant crusader against 'hypocrisy, the devil, and the lujcury of Corinth,' as set forth by his charming and pungent Poti- phar Papers, say to the multiplication of the outward and visible signs of plutocratic life in America to-day — a half century farther down the stream of time ? "The same society endures, has surprised itself, astonished the world by its magnificence, goes on increasing the methods of ridding itself of superfluous fortunes — and as yet no fire from Heaven has fallen into its ranks. "We cannot gainsay the fact that wealth and the power it brings rule supreme in our land. Especially would it be pains thrown away to try to epitomize the best society of America as represented by the present dwellers in cosmopolitan New York, without continual reference to the golden basis upon which it stands." i8o SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SUMMARY The possessor of power bedazzles and fascinates. Currents of imitation radiate from rulers. In monarchies the extravagance of the court spreads outward and has a pernicious effect upon the tastes and wants of the people. If a titular aristocracy be closed, a moment comes when its social leadership is disputed by the men of distinguished achievement. In a society without a hereditary upper class the conspicuously successful are looked up to and copied. The imitation of the successful is altogether more discriminating and rational than the imitation of a titled nobility. When wealth is supremely coveted, the rich are admired and imitated. The diffusion of pecuniary standards of excellence from the doUarocracy whets greed and lowers the moral tone of society. EXERCISES 1. What elements enter into the standard by which a person is valued in your community, and what is their order of importance ? 2. Is the attitude of the public the same toward the man who has married money, as toward the man who has made money ? 3. Show the difference in tone and standards between the self- made rich and the hereditarily rich. Contrast their influence on society. 4. If the successful compose the influential social class, what will be the effect upon the birth rate? Upon the frequency of heart- failure and neurasthenia? 5. If the general avidity for wealth be intensified, what will be the effect upon commercial, professional, and political ethics ? Upon the motives to social intercourse and to matrimony ? 6. Show how training in a professional school instead of an office favors the efficiency standard of human worth as against the cash standard. CHAPTER XI THE RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY (Concluded) The city is imitated by the country. City dwellers never keep abreast of country dwellers Highpo- in reproduction, and hence the city is constantly fed with ^g'citv° the overflow from the farms, an overflow that is, in a sense, the cream of the rural population, for it consists of stirring and ambitious persons who migrate to the city early in the active period of life. Freshened constantly with such effervescent elements, the city never becomes tradi- tional and stagnant, as it might well do if it raised its own population. Moreover, these eager young immigrants, fleeing the deadness of quiet neighborhoods ahd the tedium of humdrum villages, sharpen and brighten one another. Outworn traditions, narrow local sentiments, and obstinate provincial prejudices meet and cancel one another. A type of mentality emerges more impres- sionable and plastic than that of the farms. The shutters of the intellect are swung back. The mind becomes alert and supple. Freed from the hampering net of kin and class ties, the individual appears. The city is, there- fore, a hotbed, where seed ideas quickly germinate. Its progressive population naturally places itself at the head of the social procession and sets the pace for the slower country dwellers. Says a distinguished economist:' "The two great ' Professor Jastrow in Congress of Arts and Sciences, VII, 771- 772. i8i l82 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The cities pass the torch to the rest of society The cities cast a spell upon the country foxmders of modern pedagogy, Rousseau and Pestalozzi, have sprung from cities. The universities can, in their modern organization, be traced back, in Europe as well as in America, to the model established by Bologna and Paris, centres of urban culture. The numerous founda- tions of imiversities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were made exclusively in cities; they represented the reaction against the older, monastic, world-shunning learnedness, as also only those monastic orders took hold of them, which in the two preceding centuries had sought their seats not in rxiral loneliness, but in the cities." "The city acquires cultural treasures, but only in order to let them radiate and in order to begin, thereupon, the work again on new materials. Its educational work is a constant renunciation of acquired privileges. This is shown especially clearly in America in the history of the library movement. This movement has begun espe- cially in the cities. First it was the ambition of each city to surpass the country by the possession of a public library, accessible to everybody. To-day it is the am- bition of the cities to induce the country to follow their example." Thanks to its real superiorities, everything about the city comes at last to have a glamour. Thus Mahaffy ' writes of the Hellenistic period: "The brilliancy of city life, the comforts and conveniences with which the citizens became supplied, the privileges which they obtained, gave to all this epoch of men a strong tendency to migrate from the country into the towns. So it was that to live in villages like the Pagani of the Romans, came to suggest boorishness and want of refinement. In the book of ' "The Progress of Hellenism in Alexander's Empire,'' 122. RADIANT POINTS OF CONVENTIONALITY 183 Revelation, which concludes our New Testament, the ideal of the future is no longer the Elysian Fields, but the New Jerusalem come down from heaven, a city with walls and gates and splendid streets. This and not fair glades and trees and streams was the conception of the highest happiness produced by average Hellenism." Christianity owes much to city prestige. Its Founder labored on the countryside and amid the hamlets, yet so much hinged on the city reaction upon his work that few realize that Jesus passed but a few days in Jerusalem. Paul preached in the cities, and Christianity spread from the great urban centres to the towns, and lastly to the country, where the lowest class of peasants (pagani) dwelt. Writes Pliny to Trajan: "This contagious evil has spread not only in the cities, but also in the towns and villages." In the same way modern socialism is of city origin and propagation, and sometime, perhaps, it will be combated by city capitalists alarming, organiz- ing, and exploiting the conservatism of the rural districts and of rural sections like the South and the far West. The city as fountainhead of initiative and examples The citizens is well described by Tarde : ^ "In the hypertrophy of great °^ 'Jje great cities and, especially, of capitals, where oppressive privi- stitutea leges take root and ramify, while the last traces of the ^°'ftoo°so- ° ° ciety's efforts right of free contract." " Three of them hold eight-hour to adjust it- laws unconstitutional; two more hold statutes limiting sf^'°°^'' ' ° situations the hours of labor unconstitutional; four deny effect to statutes fixing the periods at which certain classes of laborers shall receive their wages; another passes ad- versely on a statute prohibiting the practice of fines in cotton mills ; another deals in the same way with a statute prohibiting corporations from deducting from the wages of employees to establish hospital and relief funds ; three overturn acts regulating the measuring of coal for the has been used to justify the American practice of exalting Federal judges, by means of life tenure, into a politically irresponsible body, able with impunity to thwart the will of the people as expressed in laws, by declaring such laws "unconstitutional." See J. A. Smith, "The Spirit of American Government," ch. V. 212 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY purpose of fixing the compensation of miners; two hold void statutes designed to prevent the payment of em- ployees in store orders; another passes adversely on an act requiring laborers on public contracts to be paid the prevailing rate of wages ; another denies effect to an act requiring railway corporations to furnish discharged em- ployees a statement of the causes of their removal ; while another decides it unconstitutional to prevent employers from prohibiting their employees from joining unions or from retaining membership in unions to which they belong." ' The judicial The Same blind deference causes the people to allow other'thln *^^ administrative agencies they create for the purpose of common law inspecting, supervising, regulating, or prosecuting, to be reme les overthrown or shackled ^ in a time when common law methods of protecting the citizen in his rights have failed. Says Professor Pound:' "From the beginning the main ' Roscoe Pound, " The Spirit of the Common Law," Tlie Green Bag, January, igo6. ' Says Dr. Smalley : " The gradual growth of the doctrine of judicial review and the gradual development of the methods employed by the courts, have gradually paralyzed the state railroad commissions by destroy- ing their will as well as their power. Under the burden of judicial review, the commissions have become discouraged from the task of rate regula- tion; most of them pay relatively slight attention to the matter of rates, confining themselves largely to the other and much less important duties imposed upon them. Some have practically desisted from rate-making. Some esteem their duty done when they attempt to arbitrate the few cases between carrier and shipper which are brought to their attention, but which form only a microscopical part of the great question of rates. This relaxation of effort, this growing indifference to the most impor- tant of all their functions, has been conspicuous in recent years, and is a discouraging feature of the railroad problem of to-day." — " Railroad Rate Control," 124, Pubs, of the Amer. Econ. Association. ' Transactions of the American Bar Association at its Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting. CUSTOM IMITATION 213 reliance of our common law system has been individual initiative. The main security for the peace at Common Law is private prosecution of offenders. The chief security for the efhciency and honesty of public officers is mandamus or injunction by a taxpayer to prevent waste of the proceeds of taxation. The reliance for keep- ing public service companies to their duty in treating all alike at reasonable price is an action to recover damages. Moreover, the individual is supposed at Common Law to be able to look out for himself and to need no adminis- trative protection. If he is injured through contributory negligence, no theory of comparative negligence comes to his relief; if he hires as an employee, he assumes the risk of the employment; if he buys goods, the rule is caveat emptor. In our modern industrial society, this whole scheme of individual initiative is breaking down. Private prosecution has become obsolete. Mandamus and in- junction have failed to prevent rings and bosses from plundering public funds. Private suits against carriers for damages have proved no preventive of discrimination and extortionate rates. The doctrine of assumption of risk becomes brutal under modern conditions of employ- ment. An action for damages is no comfort to us when we are sold diseased beef or poisonous canned goods. At all these points, and they are points of everyday contact with the most vital public interests. Common Law methods of relief have failed." This fatal crusting over of social life with the lapse of Why new time is one reason why new societies — if not isolated — strip au°"' are apt to be more progressive and prosperous than old others societies. They escape many of the customs and punc- tilios that stifle initiative and paralyze effort. Here, in- 214 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY deed, is the secret of the "Western" spirit. Thus we read : ^ — The secret "This forcefulness of the West is seen in all forms of °'h^\i " social life. It is indicated by those modes of business spirit and habits of action so familiarly known as 'hustling.' The Western man is bound to succeed and sticks at no obstacles. A few years since the people of a certain religious denomination in Minnesota began to take meas- ures for the organization of a church in a rising suburb of a great city ; but the management was in the hands of an Eastern society, and plans did not at once materialize in deeds. The members of another organization not radi- cally different in creed learned what was contemplated. There was room at the time for not more than one church, and whatever one was the first to start was quite sure to be the leading one when the suburb should become popu- lous. Accordingly, one Sunday afternoon, about two weeks before the proposed meeting for organization under the Eastern society, the members of this other denomi- nation held a quiet meeting on their own account. They then and there perfected a church organization, elected officers, appointed a pastoral committee and a building committee, and adjourned. The next day the building committee bought a lot, and on the following day began the erection of a temporary building. Meanwhile the pastoral committee telegraphed a call to a young clergy- man to become their pastor; he accepted, and at once took a train for his new field. On the following Sunday, one week from the time of the original meeting, the com- pleted building was dedicated by the new pastor. The other enterprise was abandoned. The church so rapidly ' Judson, in Shaler's " United States of America," II, 311, CUSTOM IMITATION 215 put in form has to-day a fine house of worship and a large membership." SUMMARY The great rival to conventionality is custom. The roots of custom imitation start in the association of children with parents. The hallowing influence of time creates an irresistible presump- tion of superiority in favor of whatever is old. A rapid and wide departure from the customary and familiar produces in many a distressing sense of self -alienation. Much of early man's fear of the unknown and untried was due to his animistic ideas. The long-established has by that very fact shown itself workable ; but there is a strong likelihood that it has lost much of the fitness it once had. There is a tendency for the transmitted to become even more definite and precise, so that each generation is confined under a thicker and tougher cake of custom. The bondage of the living to the dead is by no means absent from American society. The proverbial energy and prosperity of new communities are due largely to escape from the burden of the past. EXERCISE 1. What are your feelings when you have a sudden realization of having drifted far from the beliefs, ideals, and standards of your youth ? 2. Has acquaintance with the scientific view of life and society altered your feelings in such a case ? 3. Does vnder knowledge of the diverse traditions and customs of other peoples make you more cautious and provisional in your attitude toward your own beliefs and practices ? 4. Are ancient precepts about the conduct of life worthier of our confidence than ancient institutions ? 5. What is it chiefly that invalidates ancient religious dogma ? 2i6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Ancient teachings regarding the family ? Ancient political institu- tions ? 6. Show that, unless it can be easily amended, a written con- stitution, no matter how perfect, becomes in time an incubus. 7. Show the dangers of creating perpetual endowments for specific and limited charitable uses. CHAPTER XIII CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE SWAY OF CUSTOM The blind adherence to custom so pronounced through- Fear of the out the patriarchal stage of social organization ^ is partly fjje des^ due to fear of the spirits of the deceased forefathers, who preserves naturally would resent and punish any departure from their favorite beliefs or ways. The cult of the dead — ancestor worship — is, perhaps, the most conservative type of religion, and much was gained for progress when nature gods were substituted for deified ancestors as objects of worship. What is received becomes fixed by self -imitation (habit), The age of and so becomes more obdurate with advancing years. f°dTa°(^rs Hence, other things being equal, society will be con- affects the servative or progressive according as it puts to the fore ^^^^^^ the old men or young men. The installing of the old in all past places of authority and direction as surely brings on social old age as the calcareous deposit in the walls of the arteries brings on an old-age condition of the body. ' Says Jenks: "The desperate tenacity with which patriarchal society clung to a practice, merely because it was a practice, is illustrated by the well-known Roman custom of examining the entrails of victims to ascertain the prospects of an expedition. Originally, no doubt, it was a practical expedient adopted by the nomad tribes from which the Romans were descended, in their wanderings through unknown country. To test the fitness for food of the new herbs with which they came into contact, they caused a few of their cattle and sheep to eat them, and then by sort of rude post-mortem, judged of the result." — "History of Politics," 41. 217 2i8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY In general, it is young men who provide the logic, deci« sion, and enthusiasm necessary to relieve society of the crushing burden that each generation seeks to roll upon the shoulders of the next. The Greeks were right in accepting Hesiod's maxim, "Work for youth, counsel for maturity, prayers for old age." The domination of gray- beards is equivalent to a fatty degeneration of the social brain.* The patriarchal constitution of the family is inim- ' His first-hand observation of the incompetency of aged English gen- erals in the Boer War prompts Kipling derisively to put into the mouths of the Old Men these words : — "We shall not acknowledge that old stars fade or alien planets arise (That the sere bush buds or the desert blooms or the ancient well-head dries), Or any new compass wherewith new men adventure 'neath new skies. " We shall lift up the ropes that constrained our youth to bind on our children's hands; We shall call to the water below the bridges to return and replenish our lands; We shall harness horses (Death's own pale horses) and scholarly plough the sands. "We shall lie down in the eye of the sun for lack of a light on our way — We shall rise up when the day is done and chirrup, ' Behold, it is day ! ' We shall abide until the battle is won ere we amble into the fray. " We shall peck out and discuss and dissect, and evert and extrude to our mind. The flaccid tissues of long-dead issues offensive to God and mankind — (Precisely like vultures over an ox that the Army has left behind). " The Lamp of our Youth will be utterly out : but we shall subsist on the smell of it. And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands and suck our gums and think well of it. Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that is the perfect- est Hell of it 1 CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 219 ical to the bright ideas of young men, and it was a red- letter day for progress when the lad became his own master the moment he could wield the arms of the warrior. The committing of government first to the elders of the tribe, later to gerontes and senatores, the very name indi- cating the graybeard, threw it into a rut from which only warfare, bringing young men to the front, could lift it. In China, when a man gets to be sixty years old he begins to become a leader, and the older he grows, the more he is honored. A Chinaman confesses, "I approached my grandfather with awe, my father and mother with venera- tion, and my elder brother with respect." Thanks to this gerontolatry, the power of government is lodged to a large degree in the hands of the aged. " Only the lower official ranks are usually reached in middle life, and it is not until the best powers of body and mind have begun to weaken that the highest places of honor and responsibility are secured. The confusion in government can often be traced to the palsied hands that are guiding its affairs." * It is not surprising that a society thus guided should China com- become a byword for stupid conservatism. On the other S*"^^*^ ^]^ •' '■ _ Revolution- hand, tasks for rapid and wholesale readjustment fall ary France into the hands of young men.^ At the outbreak of the French Revolution the eleven men who were destined to become its leaders averaged thirty-four years of age ! " This is our lot if we live so long and listen to those who love us — That we are shunned by the people about and shamed by the Powers above us. Wherefore be free of your harness betimes; but being free be assured, That he who hath not endured to the death, from his birth he hath never endured I" ' Sheffield, Forum, 29, p. 595. ^ "This constant return to purely logical activity vdth each generation keeps the world supplied with visionaries and reformers — that is to say, 220 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Old-age con- servatism is psychological in origin and may be avoided Old men discredited in such com- petitive fields as war- fare and business It is true that the neophobia of the old has its cause in mental attitude rather than in physical decay. It is not that the mental power is less ; but it is natural for a man to rely on the thinking he did in his twenties and to refuse to reopen questions he "settled" half a lifetime ago. This atrophy of thought can be avoided if the danger is fore- seen, and a man deliberately forms the habit of breaking thought-habits. It can be escaped if a man recognizes that he is borne on a stream of social change and that, instead of trusting to the perspective in which things ap- peared to his youth, he must look and look again. Then there are searchers, skilled in the advancement of knowl- edge, who never conclude their education, who become accustomed to disowning their yesterdays and building on to-morrows, who remain progressive throughout life, and in their riper years, rich in the garnered fruits of experi- ence, they render the greatest services to society. Such splendid specimens are, however, too few to man the high posts, and there is little danger of society dis- pensing too soon with their services. The danger is all the other way. The aged generals of Frederick the Great cost Prussia dear in the Napoleonic wars, and England paid well for putting "good old BuUer" in charge of her South African campaign. A nation is easiest to thrash about a generation after a successful war, when the heroes with saviours and leaders. New moveKients are born in young minds, and lack of experience enables youth eternally to recall civilization to sound bases. If each generation started where the last one left off, imagine where Lord Chesterfield's sons would be to-day. The passing generation smiles and cracks its weather-worn jokes about youthful effusions; but this ever new, ever hopeful, ever daring, ever doing youth- ful enthusiasm, ever returning to the logical bases of religion, ethics, politics, business, art, and social life — this is the salvation of the world." — Barnes, "The Child as a Social Factor," " Studies in Education," 359. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 221 of that war, having become old, and wise in their own conceit, have gone to sleep on their laurels. It is well, therefore, that our government permits the retirement of an army of&cer at sixty-two and requires it at sixty-four.' The instituting of pension funds for college professors will, no doubt, promote efficiency by permitting the timely retirement of those teachers who have not mastered the difficult art of self-renewal. In the sphere of industrial management Americans are as impatient with old men as were the Athenians of Pericles with old men in public affairs.^ ' Our navy, on the other hand, is in the hands of the old. In his message on this subject on December 17, 1906, President Roosevelt says: "Under the present archaic system of promotion, without parallel in the navy of any other first-class power, captains are commissioned at the average age of fifty-six, and rear-admirals at the average age of sixty. The following table gives the age of the youngest captains and flag- officers, with the average years in grade, in the navies of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. Captains Sea-going Flag -OFFICERS Age Average years in grade Age Average years in grade " Great Britain 35 II. 2 45 8.0 France 47 9-S 53 14.2 Germany 42 6.2 51 6.0 Japan 38 8.0 44 II.O United States 55 4-5 59 i-S" *"One prominent feature in the administration of American works, and perhaps especially so of steel, iron, and engineering works, is the large number of young men who are to be found in positions of authority. This is founded upon one of the aphorisms of American enterprise — that a young man's intuitions are more effective than an old man's experience. As an example of the comparative youthfulness of the men who are charged with responsible positions, I probably could hardly cite a more striking case than that of the Pressed Steel Car Company at Pittsburg — a concern that employs about 10,000 hands at four works of unusual magnitude. In this case I ascertained that the founder 222 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Old men as Where continuity is precious, where it is a matter of custodians keeping pure for all time "the faith which was once of religion r n r i i ■ indoflaw delivered unto the saints," old men are properly kept m charge. This is why popes, cardinals, bishops, and rabbis are appointed old and hold for life. This is why, at the last pontifical election, the great cardinal who guided the policy of Leo XIII was adjudged "too young" at sixty, and was reserved for the next vacancy that should occur in the chair of St. Peter. If "all principles, both of law and of equity, have long since been declared and are to be found in the adjudged cases," if a system of law is "the perfection of reason" and good for all time, then law should be passed down the generations through the hands of old men. Judges should hold for life, and it should be a matter of no uneasiness that the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States average 65.5 years, and are separated by an interval of 43 years from the completion of their formal legal education; that the circuit judges average 57.5 years, and are 36.5 years from their preliminary legal studies ; that the judges of the highest state courts are near 56 years, and for them the interval is 32.5 years. If, on the other hand, ours is not a static, but a highly dynamic, society, and the rapid and sweeping trans- formations that occur in the spheres of industry, transpor- tation, business organization, and urban life call for correlated changes in law and administration, then the wisdom of hinging all this adaptive development ^ on the is fifty-six years; the president, thirty-eight years; his assistant, thirty- six years; the chief engineer, thirty-two years, the consulting engineer, forty-two years; and the secretary, thirty-six years of age." — Jeans, "American Industrial Conditions and Competition," 79-80." 'Professor Henry C. Adams, in an address on "Economics and Jurisprudence," read before the American Economic Association in 1897, cial immo- bility costs CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 223 consent of life judges steeped in the older legal philosophy, is open to question. Commenting on the question, "How can the gradual, Whatjudi- cumulative effect of working conditions, and of living con ditions, upon the public health, be made obvious to the society minds of the judges composing the courts of last resort?" Professor Henderson says:^ "So long as young lawyers are told by the highest and worthiest of their teachers that 'the law library is the laboratory of the student,' what can we expect afterward ? Every beneficent change in legislation comes from a fresh study of social conditions and of social ends, and from some rejection of obsolete law to make room for a rule which fits the new facts. One can hardly escape from the conclusion that a lawyer who has not studied economics and sociology is very apt to become a public enemy ; and many a good judge would be hurtful if he did not get through newspapers and maga- zines a diluted kind of sociology which saves him from bondage to mere precedent. Reformation does not come from a law library, which has its useful function in con- servatism; it comes from a complete mastery of the real world, and a moral judgment as to what ought to be and is not yet. . . . Without this study of sociology and economics we may have acute interpreters of legal phrase- ology, shrewd money-getters, advisers of corporations ; but says: "Every change in the social structure, every modification of the principle of political or industrial association, as well as the acceptance of a new social ideal, must be accompanied by a corresponding change in those rights and duties acknowledged and enforced by law. Should this development in jurisprudence be arrested or pursued sluggishly, as compared with that of some particular phase of associated action, serious mischief will inevitably follow." ' American Journal of Sociology, XI, 847. 224 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The hyper- trophy of structure arrests the progress of society Geographi- cal barriers may shut out stimuli to change we cannot have the best type of leaders of social progress. The legal profession has already rendered service which we gladly recognize and honor; but, on the other hand, many of its best trained men, lacking the vision for the principle that 'new occasions teach new duties,' obstruct the way with barricades of dead precedents." Government, owing to the fact that it is a form of organization, is conservative ; and hence preponderance of imperative occasions for cooperation over optional occasions engenders coercive forms of cooperation, magnifies the r61e of government in social life, cramps individual initia- tive, dwarfs individuality, and finally arrests development. The great irrigating, river-basin societies — Egypt, Baby- lonia, India, China — in consequence of the need of authoritative levee-building and systematic regulation of the waters, developed government to such a degree that they became stalled by these massive structures.^ Over- much cooperation in fighting tends in the same direction. On the other hand, little societies like the Greek city- states, established in small valleys with natural defences, opening seaward, leave individuality free and foster progress. Physical isolation favors the sway of custom. In the "valley closets" of mountain regions the old endures long after the plains and the seaboard populations have discarded it. In the Pyrenees are encysted the little mediaeval Republic of Andorra and the Basques with their queer agglutinative language. Auvergne and Savoy, the highlands of France, are little penetrated by scepticism, ' See Buckle, "History of Civilization in England," ch. V, for the ob- structive working of authoritative government — as distinguished from the ministering type of government that here and there is appearing. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 225 divorce, suicide, liberalism, and the other characteristic features of the modern social type. Hidden away in the mountain areas are found persisting social forms which mark out the forgotten trail by which the culture peoples climbed to their present height. The Russian sociologist Kovalewsky owed much of his success in reconstructing early social conditions to the revelations of the primitive societies sealed up in the Caucasus, while Westermarck was enabled by his studies on the people of the Great Atlas to make rich contributions to social embryology. The literary artist in search of local color goes to the Carpathians or the Balkans. The people of the Appala- chians, one of the largest horseback areas left in all the world, with their hospitality and feuds, their spinning- wheels and hand- looms, their "hard-shell" predestinarian- ism and their retention of old words like "holp" and "drug" and "gorm" and "feisty," resemble their colonial forebears more than any other Americans.' Says Mahaffy : ^ " This clear and bold, though perhaps Mountains narrow, view of justification by faith alone, the sudden o^^jjfj^ passage from darkness to light, the exclusion of all attempts at virtue outside the pale of this conviction, — all has been inherited by the modern Protestant from the ancient Stoic far more directly than most men imagine. We can trace it historically, with but few gaps in the obscurity of the Middle Ages from the rugged mountains of CiUcia, the original home of Stoicism, to the equally rugged land of the Scotch Covenanters. Among the bold mountaineers ' From the daily speech of the Kentucky mountaineers Professor W. I. Thomas gathered a list of three hundred words obsolete since about the sixteenth century or surviving only in the dialects of England. '"The Progress of Hellenism in Alexander's Empire," 144-145. Q 226 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Backward- ness of out- of-the-way islands Why the back country is old-fash- ioned of Cilicia, celebrated in their heathen days for facing death instead of slavery, where whole city populations committed suicide when pressed by Persian, by Greek, by Roman besiegers, this congenial doctrine found its home, till from Isauria, the wildest part of these high- lands, came the Emperor Leo to sit on the Byzantine throne and open his crusade against images. It was this Protestant or Stoic spirit that dictated the whole icono- clastic war, and when the adherents of this dynasty were driven out, they took refuge in Wallachia and Moldavia, whence they passed, or their spirit passed, into Moravia and Bohemia, where in due time arose John Huss and Jerome of Prague ; and from these early reformers Protes- tantism spread to Germany, England, Scotland, and thence with the Pilgrim Fathers to North America — all the spirit of Stoicism, so strong in Paul, and so strong in the Scotch Calvinists, that it is difficult to find any closer spiritual relationship asserting itself over diversities of race and language across wide gulfs of space and time." Islands, if they are off the beaten tracks, tend to be traditional in spirit. The Isle of Man is famous for the old-time flavor of its institutions and customs. In the interior of Sardinia the traveller can reckon on a hospi- tality that reminds one of the Odyssey. In Corsica blood feud is still so flourishing that France is said to hang the walls of her schoolrooms there with admonitory texts like "Thou Shalt not kill." In general, the country has few contacts with the out- side, and is therefore conservative. Here old fashions, greetings, ballads, locutions, superstitions, and prejudices find their asylum. In the back country survive clannish- ness, the sacrament theory of marriage, full quivers, CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 227 marital supremacy, patriarchal authority, snufE-dipping, herb doctors, self-supporting preachers, foot-washing, hell- fire doctrine, controversy on the form of baptism, dread of witchcraft, and belief in the flatness of the earth. Where tradition holds, the institutions of control are effective, and hence rural communities are usually quiet and orderly. But some of their members object to canned life. Mrs. Grundy stifles individuality, and so the rebels break for the city where they will not meet at every turn the query, "What will people say?" Here some, missing the whole- some inherited restraints, sink into vice and crime, while others, on escaping from the cave of ancestral custom, burst into intellectual bloom and help to make city life a fever of progress. The variety of occupations, interests, and opinions in the urban group produces a spiritual fermentation which results in a broader, freer judgment and an appreciation of new thoughts, manners, and ideals. Compare the provincialism and conservatism of the South — essentially rural — with the temper of the more urban North. Compare Russia (rural) with Germany (urban). The introduction of improved communication under- Effect of mines the sway of custom in case it depends on physical J^omm^- isolation. When the first railroads were run through the cation backward provinces of France, the new visibly percolated outward from the railroad as water seeps from an irri- gation canal and forms a green strip in the desert. The clan system of the Highlands was doomed when in 1745- 1746 General Wade built his military road into their heart. The railroads penetrating the rougher parts of Mexico set the hand three centuries forward on the dial. Linguistic isolation favors the old. Difference of speech offers a serious barrier to mental contact and inflow of 228 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY A local dia- new ideas. A dialect, or patois,. — such as Basque, Breton, lect shuts Manx, Welsh, Cornish, Gaelic, Erse, Canadian French, out new J J 7 7 J > ideas Pennsylvania Dutch, Yiddish, — is virtually an amber matrix preserving intact the manners and beliefs of a former time. It was responsible in part for the super- stitiousness and feudal loyalty that made La Vendee the open sore of revolutionary France. By means of com- mon schools to replace such a tongue with one of the great national languages is like substituting an irrigation ditch for natural seepage, and is necessary if nationalism is to triumph over provincialism, ciannishness Social isolation, by hindering contact with contem- consmrTtism poraries, makes closer the contact with the past. The Jews, for ages penned up in the Ghetto and barred from full civil and social equality, came to be obstinately tradi- tional. Confined behind the walls of the Jewry, forbidden to own an estate or practise a profession or intermarry with Christians, they kept alive a jealous, exclusive, tribal spirit, foreign altogether to the demotic character of modern society. As if Canon Law and Civil Law had not done enough, the Jews maintained between them- selves and the Christians a hedge of their own, viz., their religious and ceremonial observances. The practice of their rites obliged them to live in closest contact with one another and to shun the uncircumcised. They might not eat the same food as the Christians, or food prepared in the same way. Regulated in the minutest details of life by the six hundred and thirteen commandments binding on the orthodox Jew, they were obliged to keep aloof from the Gentiles, with the result that they became in the last degree clannish and conservative. Their feast-days and fast-days commemorate the ancient joys and sorrows of CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 229 Israel, and, after eighteen hundred years, the Synagogue still .bewails the fall of the Temple. Conversely, an institution like the "guest-friendship" "Guest- of the Homeric Greeks can do much to avert the cramp- f"™'^^^'?' J^ makes for mg eftects of isolation. Says Keller:' "The Greeks were advance- an ' active ' race ; with them inertia before a possibility of "^"^ advance was at a minimum. Minds were alive and elastic, eager and curious concerning external happen- ings, and bent upon an enthusiastic pursuit of material welfare. In all the phases of Greek life are found evi- dences of this receptivity of mind and eagerness for advance, impulses which work powerfully toward the de- cay of syngenetic feelings and customs, and toward the evolution of amalgamation and nationalization. Toward this end one of the chief contributors is a body of tradi- tions and usages connected with strangers, suppliants, guests, and guest-friends. Since the stranger became at once a guest, and since the guest was forever afterward a guest-friend, this body of ideas and practices is appro- priately called guest-friendship." After describing the imlimited hospitaUty and courtesy shown to the chance stranger, Keller goes on to say:^ "The presence of the religious sanctions in such number and strength indi- cates that the birth of the host-guest relation took place in the more or less remote past; this is witnessed to also by the completeness of the relation's development. Ap- parently the origins of guest-friendship lay in the reach- ings-forth of a developing people toward an advance and toward a further and larger acquaintance with a world of greater material wealth and luxury than their own." " The people were eager to learn, and men were their only ' " Homeric Society," 299. ' Ibid., 303. 23° SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The home not an ade- quate sphere of stimulus books; a stranger, who, if he were not himself a Phceni- cian, could yet describe the wonders of those magical foreign lands, was a rare treasure to an isolated com- munity. People came to be very fond of entertaining, and gladly accommodated another man's guest in his absence. One man is mentioned who had a house on the public road and entertained every one who came." " In time the real practical value of the relation became more and more apparent, and Zeus became the guardian of strangers, who were the heralds of the time's advance. Eagerness for news, for tales of the exterior world, its people and doings, is marked; it is characteristic of an energetic, isolated community." Guest-friendship seems to have taken its -origin "from a period several centuries earlier than the Homeric age, and to have been due chiefly to the quickening contact with an older and more polished civilization." House life, by secluding inmates from one another and from the outside world, favors custom imitation. Women are most narrow-minded and traditional where the harem or zenana prevails. The marked conservatism of even latter-day woman in respect to religion, education, and ethics — her foolish clinging to superannuated race and class prejudices — is due to the restricting of thought- provoking intercourse by the immuring walls of the home. In the Balkans men's costumes became Orientalized by contact with the Turks, whereas the women, secluded at home, preserved the old national costumes of pre-Turkish days.* The kitchen, lying within woman's jurisdiction, is confessedly primitive, far less transformed by mechanical inventions than the workshop. In South Europe a pot ' Evans, "Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina," 15, 16. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 231 or cruse from the kitchen is more likely to resemble some classic pattern than a tool from the artisan's bench.' The household crockery and pottery of the Danubian peoples show a similarity of pattern that recalls their unity under the vanished Eastern Empire, whereas the field implements show no such fidelity to the past. Literacy is adverse to custom imitation because, on the Reading whole, books and newspapers create contacts with the fgj'i^'^en present rather than with the past. Oral tradition over- access to leaps time, books both time and space. Most of what the °"^ ^ ™" illiterate receive orally ■ — lays, ballads, legends, myths, and proverbs — is handed down and consequently cuts a charmel between past and present, but not between people and people. Therefore diffusion of the ability to read makes, on the whole, for progress, though, to be sure, the staple of reading may come to be an ancient sacred litera- ture. To-day, at least, the power to read opens a door to the newspaper, which is the natural enemy of tradition, because it is bound to emphasize the new and to exaggerate the momentousness of the present. School education is in our day a mighty engine of progress. The school The teacher has a wider outlook and a freer mind than the ™^^ ^ '"' strument average parent, so that the school, provided it appropriates either of promptly the fruits of contemporary thought and research, ^^^If^^^^^ is an emancipator. It delivers the young from ignorant parental prejudices, and counteracts oral tradition by injecting into the mind up-to-date knowledge. Never- theless, if the basis of instruction be the ancient writings — Talmud, Koran, Vedas, Chinese Classics — the school may foster a traditionalism far more cramping and in- veterate than the naive traditionalism of the unlettered. ^Ibid., 17, 18. 232 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Universities as citadels of dead learning The contents of its curriculum make the Chinese school the instiller of the most impregnable conservatism that has been encountered by the Western culture. Says Sheffield : ^ " The scholars of any city in China could now rewrite the leading classics from memory. Not only are Confucian scholars saturated with these writings, but the more striking sayings have passed down into the common speech, so that those who are 'blind with their eyes open ' (the uneducated) are constantly quoting them without thought of their origin. The common speech is loaded with proverbs that reflect the thoughts of the Ancients. Scholars, competing for honors, must present in their essays the traditional inter- pretation of the doctrines of the Sages. If they should presume to set forth views of their own, not in harmony with this interpretation, they would be stripped by the public examiner of honors already conferred, and would be excluded from competing for literary distinction. Thus the educational system of China has not served to lead men's minds into new lines of thought or into fresh fields of investigation ; rather has it served to confine the thoughts of each generation of scholars within the limits of ' ancient instruction,' and to stifle independent thought and in- quiry." The record of Oxford, Louvain, and Pisa as enemies of science and modern thought ^ makes one wonder if there is any conservatism so rooted and fanatical as that which springs from a certain type of university. The traits of this type are brought out by Bryce ' in commenting on the ' Forum, 29, p. 593. ' White, " History of the Warfare between Science and Theology,'* I, 128, 133, 149, 387-389. 406; II, 335-337- ' " Studies in History and Jurisprudence, " II, 231-233. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 233 resemblance between the mediaeval universities and El Azhar, the great Mohammedan university of to-day. "In both, a narrow circle of subjects and practically no choice of curriculum. El Azhar teaches even fewer branches than did Oxford or Bologna in the thirteenth century, for in Mussulman countries the Koran has swal- lowed up other topics more than theology, queen of the sciences, and the study of the Civil and Canon Laws did in Europe." "Finally, in both, a kind of teaching and study which tends to the development of two aptitudes to the neglect of all others, viz., memory and dialectic ingenuity. The first business of the student is to know his text-book, if necessary to Icnow every word of it, together with the different interpretations every obscure text may Dear. His next is to be prepared to sustain by quick, keen argu- ment and subtle distinction either side of any controverted question which may be proposed for discussion. As the habit of knowing text-books thoroughly — and the knowl- edge of Aristotle and the Corpus Juris possessed by mediaeval logicians and lawyers was wonderfully exact and minute — made men deferential to authority and tradition, so the constant practice in oral dialectical dis- cussion made men quick, keen, fertile, and adroit in argu- ment. The combination of brilliant acuteness in hand- ling points not yet settled, with vmquestioning acceptance of principles and maxims determined by authority, is characteristic of Muhammadan Universities even more than it was of European ones in the Middle Ages, and tended in both to turn men away from the examination of premises and to cast the blight of barrenness upon the extraordinary inventiveness and acuteness which the habit of casuistical discussion developed." 234 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Open dis- cussion dis- solves the bonds of custom Freedom of discussion breaks the ancestral spell. On this there is nothing equal to the classic passage from Bagehot/ " A government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once brealcs down the yoke of fixed custom. The idea of the two is inconsistent. As far as it goes, the mere putting up of a subject to discussion, with the object of being guided by that discussion, is a clear admission that that subject is in no degree settled by established rule, and that men are free to choose in it. It is an admission, too, that there is no sacred authority, — no one transcendent and divinely appointed man whom in that matter the com- munity is bound to obey. And if a single subject or group of subjects be once admitted to discussion, erelong the habit of discussion comes to be established, the sacred charm of use and wont to be dissolved. 'Democracy,' it has been said in modern times, ' is like the grave ; it takes, but it does not give.' The same is true of 'dis- cussion.' Once effectually submit a subject to that ordeal, and you can never withdraw it again ; you can never again clothe it with mystery, or fence it by consecration; it remains forever open to free choice, and exposed to pro- fane deliberation. " The only subjects which can be first submitted, or which till a very late age of civilization can be submitted to dis- cussion in the community, are the questions involving the visible and pressing interests of the community; they are political questions of high and urgent import. If a nation has in any considerable degree gained the habit, and exhibited the capacity, to discuss these questions with freedom, and to decide them with discretion, to argue ' "Physics and Politics," 161-164. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 235 much on politics and not to argue ruinously, an enormous advance in other kinds of civilization may confidently be predicted for it. And the reason is a plain deduction from the principles which we have found to guide early civiliza- tion. The first prehistoric men were passionate savages, with the greatest difiiculty coerced into order and com- pressed into a state. For ages were spent in beginning that order and founding that state; the only sufiicient and effectual agent in so doing was consecrated custom; but then that custom gathered over everything, arrested all onward progress, and stayed the originality of mankind. If, therefore, a nation is able to gain the benefit of custom without the evil, — if after ages of waiting it can have order and choice together, — at once the fatal clog is removed, and the ordinary springs of progress, as in a modern commimity we conceive them, begin their elastic action. " Discussion, too, has incentives to progress peculiar to Discussion itself. It gives a premium to intelligence. To set out the ^3^1^^' arguments required to determine political action with analytic such force and effect that they really should determine ™™ it, is a high and great exertion of intellect. Of course, all such arguments are produced under conditions ; the argu- ment abstractedly best is not necessarily the winning argument. Political discussion must move those who have to act ; it must be framed in the ideas, and be consonant with the precedent, of its time, just as it must speak its language. But within these marked conditions good dis- cussion is better than bad ; no people can bear a govern- ment of discussion for a day, which does not, within the boundaries of its prejudices and its ideas, prefer good reasoning to bad reasoning, sound argument to unsound. teaches tolerance 236 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY A prize for argumentative mind is given in free states, to which no other states have anything to compare. Discussion " Tolerance, too, is learned in discussion, and, as history shows, is only so learned. In all customary societies bigotry is the ruling principle. In rude places to this day any one who says anything new is looked on with suspicion, and is persecuted by opinion if not injured by penalty. One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It is, as common people say, so 'upsetting'; it makes you think that, after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill founded ; it is certain that till now there was no place allotted in your mind to the new and startling inhabitant, and now that it has con- quered an entrance, you do not at once see which of your old ideas it will or will not turn out, with which of them it can be reconciled, and with which it is at essential enmity. Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it. Even nations with long habits of discussion are intolerant enough. In England, where there is on the whole probably a freer discussion of a greater number of subjects than ever was before in the world, we know how much power bigotry retains. But discussion, to be suc- cessful, requires tolerance. It fails wherever, as in a French political assembly, any one who hears anything which he dislikes tries to howl it down. If we know that a nation is capable of enduring continuous discussion, we know that it is capable of practising with equanimity con- tinuous tolerance. " The power of a government by discussion as an instru- ment of elevation plainly depends — other things being equal — on the greatness or littleness of the things to be CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 237 discussed. There are periods when great ideas are 'in The free the air,' and when, from some cause or other, even com- ^15™^^'°" ' of great mon persons seem to partake of an unusual elevation, questions The age of Elizabeth in England was conspicuously such f°'^"^^ a time. The new idea of the Reformation in religion, and of progress the enlargement of the mcenia mundi by the discovery of new and singular lands, taken together, gave an impulse to thought which few, if any, ages can equal. The dis- cussion, though not wholly free, was yet far freer than in the average of ages and countries. Accordingly every pursuit seemed to start forward. Poetry, science, and architecture, different as they are, and removed as they all are at first sight from such an influence as discussion, were suddenly started onward. Macaulay would have said you might rightly read the power of discussion 'in the poetry of Shakespeare, in the prose of Bacon, in the oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh.' This is, in truth, but another case of the principle of which I have had occasion to say so much as to the character of ages and countries. If any particular power is much prized in an age, those possessed of that power will be imitated; those deficient in that power will be despised. In con- sequence an unusual quantity of that power will be de- veloped, and be conspicuous. Within certain limits vig- orous and elevated thought was respected in Elizabeth's time, and, therefore, vigorous and elevated thinkers were many; and the effect went far beyond the cause. It penetrated into physical science, for which very few men cared; and it began a reform in philosophy to which almost all were then opposed. In a word, the temper of the age encouraged originality, and in consequence original men started into prominence, went hither and thither 238 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY A sacred book is ob- structive, particularly if it is the product of a single mind where they liked, arrived at goals which the age nevei expected, and so made it ever memorable. " In this manner, all the great movements of thought in ancient and modern times have been nearly connected in time with government by discussion. Athens, Rome, the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the communes and states-general of feudal Europe, have all had a special and peculiar quickening influence, which they owed to their freedom, and which states without that freedom have never communicated. And it has been at the time of great epochs of thought — at the Peloponnesian War, at the fall of the Roman Republic, at the Reformation, at the French Revolution — that such liberty of speaking and thinking have produced their full efEect." Society rusts on its bearings when it acknowledges the supremacy of an ancient sacred book, particularly a book that grasps the believer on all sides of his life. All worship of an intellectual product from a remote past shuts out con- temporary influences ; but never is the mind so sealed up as when the object of reverence is a single writing rather than a body of literature, like the Bible or the Sacred Books of India. The latter, beiijg the outcome of diverse experiences, epochs, and points of view, gives some room for judgment and choice, whereas the former, being off- spring of a single mind, cramps. Says Bryce:' "The Koran, being taken as an unchangeable and unerring rule of life and thought in all departments, has enslaved men's minds. Even the divergence of different lines of tradition and the varieties of interpretation of its text or of its traditions has given no such opening for a stimula- tive diversity of comment and speculation as the Christian ' " Studies in History and Jurisprudence," II, 235. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 239 Standards, both the Scriptures themselves, the product of different ages and minds, and the writings of the Fathers, secured for Christian theology." Strong group or race feeling hmits intercourse with con- A historical temporaries and directs the gaze backward. Such feeling g^f^P-<=°°- ■^ ° ° sciousness may have its origin in religious hatred. Think of the fosters tra- clannishness, and therewith traditionalism, of the Jews, <^'''°°^^'° the Copts, the Druses of Lebanon, the Parsees, the French Protestants, the Irish Presbyterians, the English Catholics ! Or, tradition may be cherished as the badge of a crushed but still living nationality. A people no longer indepen- dent, striving to keep itself distinct and united in the midst of another people (Czechs, Bulgars, Poles, Serbs, Georg- ians), naturally makes the literature and history of the distant epoch when it was independent and glorious, the focus of its attention, the pith of its instruction.' If it ' "Whoever has lived among these Transylvanian Saxons, and has taken the trouble to study them, must have remarked that not only seven centuries' residence in a strange land and in the midst of antagonistic races has made them lose none of their identity, but that they are, so to say, plus catholiques que le pape — that is, more thoroughly Teutonic than the Germans living to-day in the original fatherland. And it is just because of the adverse circumstances in which they were placed, and of the opposition and attacks which met them on all sides, that they ha^e kept themselves so conservatively unchanged. Feeling that every step in another direction was a step towards the enemy, finding that every con- cession they made threatened to become the link of a captive's chain, no wonder they clung stubbornly, tenaciously, blindly to each pecu- liarity of language, dress, and custom in a manner which has probably not got its parallel in history. Left on their native soil and surrounded by friends and countrymen, they would undoubtedly have changed as other nations have changed. Their isolated position and the peculiar circumstances of their surroundings have kept them what they were. Such as these Saxons wandered forth from the far west to seek a home in a, strange land, such we find them again to-day, seven centuries later, like a corpse frozen in a glacier which comes to light unchanged after a long lapse of years." — Geraed, "The Land beyond the Forest," 31. 240 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY No inter- assimilation among cus- tom-bound peoples The coercive vs. the at- tractive method of assimilation has a religion of its own, it clings to it with a zeal all the more desperate because it is all that patriotism has to cling to. It is not surprising that the Armenian Church, although dominated by the lay element, is in point of doctrine and ritual "extremely conservative." Indeed, aside from color difference, there is nothing like custom imitation to keep race currents distinct and to delay ethnic assimilation. Eastern Europe and the Orient is a crazy-quilt of diverse races and nationalities that evince no tendency to amalgamate, because they are all under the sceptre of custom. Bryce ^ calls Tifiis a "strange mixture of many races, tongues, religions, and customs. Its character lies in the fact that it has no one character, but ever so many different ones. Here all these people live side by side, buying and selling and working for hire, yet never coming into any closer union, remaining indifferent to one another, with neither love nor hate, nor ambition, peaceably obeying a government of strangers — and held together by no bond but its existence. Of national life or municipal life there is not the first faint glimmering." Of Transcaucasia he says:^ "Each race, Georgians, Armenians, Tatars, Persians, Lesghians, Mingrelians, Germans, Russians, is too weak numerically to absorb the rest, and too distinct in religion and habits to blend on equal terms with any of the others. This is a phenomenon that constantly meets one in Eastern coun- tries, being not only a consequence, but a cause, of their unprogressiveness. ' ' The attempt (1881-1904) of the reactionary Russifying statesmen, Pobyedonostseff, Ignatieff, and Katkoff, to crush into uniformity the heterogeneous national elements ' " Transcaucasia and Ararat," 167-168. ^ Ibid., 414. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 241 incorporated into the Russian Empire by driving over them Russian Orthodoxy and Czardom hke an enormous steam roller, was boimd to fail because it sought to sub- stitute one tradition for another. Men will be boiled in oil before they allow another to clamp his traditions upon them. The scientific policy of assimilation aims to dis- solve the traditionalism in which the alien elements in a national population are imprisoned by getting them to vibrate in a new plane, to imitate contemporaries rather than forefathers. There are five features of Americanism which have given the United States a greater solvent power than has been shown by any other nation, ancient or modern. I. Toleration. — Coercion, unless crushing, arouses re- Our way sentment and race self-assertion. Russia's persecution of ^'^i* ^nt the Jews interrupted the processes of spontaneous Rus- "Do as you sification, refilled the neglected synagogues, restored the P'^^®' influence of the rabbis, and revived the decaying tribal spirit. Dynamite can tear out the ice gorge that chokes the stream of progress, but toleration is the June air that will melt it. There is the old fable of the north wind and the sun vying to see which could strip the traveller of his cloak. The wind tugged at it, but the wilder the blast, the tighter the traveller's grasp. Then the sun came out and beamed till he was glad to throw off his cloak. The point is that we cannot combine coercive assimilation with spontaneous assimilation. If we made our emigrants follow American ways, they would cease to Americanize themselves. 2. Individualism. — To Josef or Pietro our democracy "Be a says, "Stand up like a man!" His fellow- workmen tell ™^"' him, "Be your own boss!" Our nipping and eager air 242 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY "Look ahead I" "Vote your senti- ments ! " braces the immigrants to defy the commands of priest, rabbi, and padrone, the natural upholders of tradition. After four years of it the Lithuanian is bold enough to declare : " When my baby grows up I will not send him to the Lithuanian school. They have only two bad rooms and two priests who teach only from Lithuanian prayer- books. I will send him to the American school which is very big and good." * 3 . The Cult of Progress. — The custom-bound immigrant finds himself among people who ridicule the "good old times" and have no reverence for antiquity. He is asked in irony if he wishes to go back to the flail, the sickle, the tallow dip, and the spinning-wheel. He is taught that not only nearly everything that makes him safe and com- fortable is of recent origin, but that whatever is will some day be surpassed. We bid him look ahead, not back. Thus we bring the newcomers into sympathy with ourselves and with one another by turning their eyes from their different national pasts to one spot on the horizon — the Dawn.^ We cannot interest them in our past; we can interest them in our future. 4. Conferring of Political Rights. — Liberality in be- stowing the franchise, though it has diluted the electorate, has set in motion Americanizing forces. Not only is the naturalized foreigner the object of much party attention and effort, but the exercise of the law-making power with the knowledge it demands, the interest it excites, and the responsibility it involves, tends to bring men of different nationalities info harmonious unity. 'Holt, "Undistinguished Americans," 31. ' "Neither race nor tradition, nor yet the actual past binds the Ameri- can to his countrymen, but rather the future which together they are building." — MiJNSTERBERG, "The Americans," 5. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 243 5. Education. — On one point only is America inflexible. "Let us " Dress as you please, speak as you please, worship as you '^^udj-en r please, but you musl let us teach your children." Our insistence on this does not antagonize the stranger, while the moulding influences that can be brought to bear in the school not only detach the young from the parental tra- ditions, but actually inspire them to become accomplices in the Americanizing of their parents. Sedentariness allows social life to fall into ruts. Long Contrast of residence in a given physical environment means sameness an"th™'^^ of surroundings, interests, occupation, neighbors, manner migrant of life. Let a group of pioneers or miners or immigrants settle down in a locality, and in the course of two or three generations, provided there is dearth of stimulating culture contacts, an invisible confining net of tradition spreads over the community as moss covers the undisturbed log or a green mantle forms over stagnant water. Migration, on the other hand, often requires change of dress, diet, style of dwelling, domestic animals, occupation, crops, method of tillage, etc., in deference to a climate, soil, mineral wealth, commercial situation, or population den- sity, quite different from that to which the migrant is accustomed. Such imperative adjustments may shatter the habit of following ancestral precedent and pave the way to a general open-mindedness. This is one reason why those who remove to new countries or to cities show such extraordinary energy and progressiveness. They no longer drag the ball-and-chain of the past. This explains why new countries and colonies are such daring path-breakers in law and government,' and by ' The spirit that prevails when men from different communities come together to found a new commonwealth is expressed by Walker: "Scarce 244 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Feitilizing contact with other socie- ties neces- sary for continued progress their example encourage older societies to free them- selves. A lacli of culture contacts may permit a society to fall asleep in its tracks. Says Bryce,' in accounting for the arrested development of the Mohammedan peoples: "The philosophy, theology, and law of Islam have been less affected by external influences than were those of Christian Emrope. Greek literature, though a few treatises were translated and studied by some great one of these men present at this new founding but had suffered from some law or custom. One man, perhaps through the leaving out of a portion of the rigmarole which in older states the law makes compulsory in a conveyance of real property, had lost his farm and home. When it came to the question of conveying real estate in this new country, he declared that the form must be of the simplest character, something that an honest man could draw himself, if need be, something that would render the legal exactions of the older states impossible. Another man, who, in searching up a title where half a dozen or more courts of record serve to confuse the unwary purchaser, had neglected one of these and so overlooked an important flaw, declared that he wanted but one place of record for all transactions, so that the least intelligent citizen going there and finding nothing against the property he contemplated buying would know, without the costly intervention of an expert, the justice of his title. " Another, who had seen in some Southern state the laws framed to prevent the collection of mortgages, in the interest of those who are already debtors, and the consequent shutting out of that section from the money markets of the world, declared that he must have a law so clear and explicit in its construction that, if it should become necessary for him to borrow money with which to make improvements, the loaner would have no question to consider other than the value of the securities involved. Still another, who had seen the injustice perpetrated through the inability of married women to hold separate estate, claimed a position for her in this new government of equality with man in the ownership of property, thereby simplifying the legal relations of the sexes and doing away with the complicated wife's dower. The men present from all these states and territories stood each ready to see that the most modern ideas ad- vanced in his own section should be incorporated into the constitution and laws of the new state." — Cosmopolitan, 9, p. 63. ' " Studies in History and Jurisprudence," II, 235. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 245 thinkers, told with no such power upon the general move- ment of Mussulman thought as it did in Europe, and nota- bly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and Greek influence among Muslims, instead of growing, seems to have passed away." "There has been in the Mussul- man world an absence of the fertilizing contact and in- vigorating conflict of different nationalities with their diverse gifts and tendencies. Islam is a tremendous denationalizing force and has done much to reduce the Eastern world to a monotonous uniformity. The Turks seem to be a race intellectually sterile, and like the peoples of North Africa in earlier days, they did not, when they accepted the religion of Arabia, give to its culture any such new form or breathe into it any such new spirit as did the Teutonic races when they embraced the religion and assimilated the literature of the Roman world." War has been, perhaps, the greatest producer of fructi- Conquest fying culture contacts. Ward ' points out that "the cross ^«5'°''^ "^'f- •^ *-• ^ ference of fertilization of cultures is to sociology what the cross potential fertilization of germs is to biology. A culture is a social structmre, a social organism, if any one prefers, and ideas are its germs. These may be mixed or crossed, and the effect is the same as that of crossing hereditary strains. The process by which the greater part of this has been accomplished, at least in the early history of human society, is the struggle of races." " A race of men may be looked upon as a physical system possessing a large amount of potential energy, but often having reached such a complete state of equilibrium that it is incapable of performing any but the normal functions of growth and multiplication." But "by sheer force of circumstance, ' "Pure Sociology," 235. 246 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Warfare brings for- ward the bold experi- menter and innovator by the exuberant fertility of mankind, by the pushing out of boundaries to avoid overcrowding, by wanderings and migrations, different races, charged with potential energy locked up in varied cults and customs, tongues and ten- dencies, experience wholly fortuitous encounters and collisions, resulting in conflicts and conquests, whereby all these divergent idea-germs are first hurled promiscuously together and then rudely jostled and stirred into a hetero- geneous menstruum that tends to polarize on the social spindle, but ultimately blends." * " For all primitive and early undeveloped races, certainly, the condition of peace is a condition of social stagnation." ^ Jenks says:"* "Real war is a death struggle, and each combatant will strain every nerve to gain the advantage. If any one will show him a new dodge for defeating his enemy, he will take it and be thankful. He will not ask if it is consecrated by the wisdom of his ancestors." He points out that the state when it first replaced the tribe was untraditional. "The founders of the State were all suc- cessful warriors, who had won success by new combina- tions, new methods, daring disregard of tradition. It was hardly probable that, under their rSgime, the old tradi- tional, customary life would be continued. Their watch- word was ability, not custom." "All over Europe the break-up of patriarchal society is marked by a striking change in the idea of nobility. The old nobility of birth and wealth, the members of the sacred families of the tribe and clan, the great lords of cattle, are replaced by the royal nobility, whose hall-mark is the choice of the king." ' " Pure Sociology," 236. 2 Ihii., 238. * " History of Politics," 79. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 247 Morris' points out how war promotes progress. "An isolated nation is in the same position as an isolated in- dividual. Its experiences are limited, its ideas few and narrow in range. Its thoughts move in one fixed channel, and the other powers of its mind are apt to become virtually- aborted." " Yet peace, in all barbarian and semi- civilized nations, seems to tend strongly toward this condi- tion of isolation; and such isolation in its conservative influence is a fatal bar to any wide or continuous progress. The long persistence of one form of government, of one condition of social customs, of one line of thought, tends to produce that uniformity of character which is so fatally opposed to any width of development or breadth of mental grasp. From uniformity arises stagnation." " Variety of influences and conditions alone can yield a healthy and vigorous growth of thought. The movement of the na- tional mind in any one line must soon cease. Its limit is quickly reached, unless it be aided by development in other directions." " Were nations, after attaining the limit of progress in their special lines, to be thoroughly mingled, each falling heir to the mental growth of all the others, a sudden and rapid intellectual progress might well be achieved, hosts of new ideas arising from this grand influx of new experiences. In barbarian and semi- civilized communities such an intermingling proceeds but slowly in times of peace. A certain degree of intercom- merce and of emigration may exist. But emigration under barbarian conditions does not usually bring peoples into contact, except it be the harsh contact of war. The only peaceful contact is the commercial one. Merchants, undoubtedly, in early times penetrated foreign tribes and • Popular Science Monthly, 47, pp. 826-831 passim. 248 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY In primitive times no contact of peoples except through war Warfare breaks up habit nations, and brought home, in addition to their wares, stories of what they had seen and learned abroad. But the merchants were too few, too ignorant and prejudiced, and too little given to observation, to spread much useful information in this way ; and their peoples were too self- satisfied to give up any customs and beliefs of their own for those thus brought them. " How, then, could any effective result from national contact be produced ? In primitive times the only effective agency must have been that of war. Destructive as this is in its results, it has the one useful effect of thoroughly commingling diverse peoples, bringing them into the closest contact with each other, and forcing upon the attention of each the advantages possessed by the other. The caldron of human society must be set boiling before its contents can fully mingle and combine. War is a furnace in which this ebullition takes place, and through whose activity human ideas are forced to circulate through and through the minds of men. " But there is a special cause that renders war peculiarly effective in this direction. In every war there are two peoples to be considered, the invaders and the invaded. The latter remains at home, on the defensive, its govern- ment intact, its prejudices condensed by hatred of the invaders, its people strongly bent on both mental and material resistance. The invaders, on the contrary, not only leave their country behind them, but they leave its laws and conditions as well. They march under new skies, over new soils, through new climates. They come into the closest contact with new customs, laws, and condi- tions. And their local prejudices only partially march with them, The laws of the peaceful state are abrogated CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 249 in the army. Its members are brought under other laws and disciplines. Religious influences weaken. A sense of liberty fills the mind of the soldier ; expectancy arises ; new hopes and fears are engendered ; the old quiet devo- tion to law becomes a tendency to license. "Thus the mind of the soldier is in a state essentially A career of unlike that of the peaceful citizen." " It is in a state <=°"i"^t , . . emancipates rendermg it a quick and ready solvent of new experiences, a people All its fixity of ideas is broken up, the deep foundations of ^™'" '"''°'" its prejudices are shaken, it is in a receptive condition; fresh thoughts readily pass the broken barriers of its reserve." "For this reason we find races which have dwelt long in self-satisfied barbarism suddenly leaping into civilization when they assume the r61e of conquerors. The savage hordes of Timur developed, in a few genera- tions, into the comparatively civilized Mogul people of India. From the Saxon pirates who conquered England an Alfred the Great soon arose. " Thus the world progressed through its long ages of War coin- partial civilization. The combined experiences of the ™™si^*^ ^ ^ products of members of the tribe yielded a certain degree of advance- local and ment, and there- stopped. Each tribe differed from all *"''^''^^- ' '^^ velopment others to the extent that its experiences and their resulting ideas differed. During peace the tribes repelled each other and remained intact, each with its special form of mental progress. In war they overflowed each other, greatly diversified thoughts and habits were brought into intimate contact, new ideas were engendered from the mixture, new forms of civilization arose. And as war was almost incessant, so these new products of thought were constantly brought into existence. Nomads became agriculturists through conquest ; but the habits and ideas 250 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY But pro- longed war- fare may overload a society with structure gained in a nomadic life mingled with those of the con- quered agriculturists, and yielded a new and superior result." " Mountaineers brought down their ideas to combine them with those born of the plain. Deserts and river valleys poured their common thought results into new and more comprehensive minds. The great ebullition went on. East mingled with west, north with south, mountain with plain, seashore with interior ; men's thoughts fused and boiled incessantly; new compounds constantly appeared ; the range of ideas grew wider and higher ; and mental development steadily advanced — though over the ruins of empires and through the ashes of man's most valued possessions." But prolonged warfare, especially with those of a different religion, may so aggrandize and intrench the great conservative structures, State and Church, that individual- ity is stifled and development is arrested. Eight centuries of fighting against the Moors so imbued Spain with blind loyalty and fanatical orthodoxy that she finally became dead to the progress of the world. ^ Again, geographical remoteness may cut off a people from external stimuli. Says Sheffield^ of China: "The first cause of arrested development that may be mentioned is the wide separation of China from other great centres of civilization, which deprived Chinese thought in its formative period of the inspiration that would have been derived from the inflow of fresh ideas. Buddhism entered China at the beginning of the Christian era. Mohammedanism and Nestorianism followed in the seventh and eighth centuries; but this 'See Buckle's eloquent indictment, "History of Civilization,'' I2I-I22. ' Forum, 29, p. 590. n, CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 251 was long after the formative period of Chinese social life." Familism fosters conservative feeling. Family roof- Family loy. trees, portrait galleries, heirlooms, visits and reunions, jo^n^e attention to family and local history, emphasis on genealogy individual and relationship, open channels for the descent of family traditions and create a sentiment for the past. The sacrifice of individual inclination to family considerations often amounts to a sacrifice of the living to the dead. When the hero of "Coningsby" took it into his head to form a deliberate conviction, his grandfather cried, "You go with your family, sir, like a gentleman; you are not to consider your opinions, like a philosopher or a political adventurer."' Aristocracies always magnify line- age, ancestral achievement, and family honors and privi- leges, so that, quite aside from the dictate of their class interests, they cannot help imbibing the conservative spirit. The middle and working classes, lacking time and means for cultivating these sentiments, let their thought and feeling be shaped by present facts rather than ancient facts, and are therefore the mainstay of liberalism and reform. Note how, in our South, familism, fostered by the aforetime aristocratic spirit engendered by the slave regime, goes hand-in-hand with ultra-conservatism. What- Dissolution ever makes the support of one's kin group less needful — Zrl\^ makes protection by public authorities rather than by fellow- forindi- clansmen, education at the public expense, public poor jo^^an^^*^ relief, facilities for life insurance — • undermines it. The initiative universal westward migration that prevailed during the settlement of our country, by incessantly snapping ties between blood relatives and thereby weakening clan feeling, helped to individualize Americans and has un- 252 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY doubtedly been a factor in their progressiveness. There are signs, however, that familism is on the increase in the United States,' and, if so, conservatism will grow. SUMMARY Among the factors that favor custom imitation may be dis- tinguished: ancestor worship; giving authority and direction to the old; hypertrophy of regulative organizations, such as State and Church; physical isolation; linguistic isolation; social isolation; house-life; illiteracy; reverence for an ancient sacred book; the clannishness of oppressed groups ; coercive methods of assimilation ; sedentariness; lack of culture contacts; familism. Among the factors that oppose custom imitation may be dis- tinguished: giving authority and direction to the young; improved means of communication ; the substitution of a national language for a dialect, or patois; civil and social equality; guest-friendship; the admission of women to activities and association outside the home ; literacy ; diffusion of education ; freedom of discussion ; free- dom of investigation ; attractive methods of assimilation ; travel and migration; war and conquest; individualization. EXERCISES 1. Show how the rise of romantic love helps emancipate society from the past. 2. What are the effects upon woman of restricting her to the home " sphere " ? 3. Is it well to regard some topics as too " sacred " to be discussed at all? 4. Contrast lay control and clerical control of a church in their effect on its conservatism. ' Craze for genealogy and heraldry, manifest ambition of multi- millionnaires to transmute themselves into aristocrats by acquiring the necessary lineage, rage for hereditary patriotic societies such as Society of Mayflower Descendants, Society of Colonial Wars, Society of Colo- nial Dames of America, National Society of Colonial Dames, Founders and Patriots of America, Daughters of the Revolution, Daughters of the American Revolution, Sons of Revolutionary Sires, etc. CONDITIONS AFFECTING SWAY OF CUSTOM 253 5. Compare in point of flexibility: a religion based on a revela- tion of the Divine Will completed in ancient writings; one based on a continuing revelation through an ecclesiastical organization ; one based on such revelation as may from time to time be vouchsafed through individuals. 6. Contrast the laboratory method with the text-book method in forming the open interrogative mind. 7. Why should the college curriculum give more place to the forming sciences — bacteriology, psychology, economics, sociology — than to the well-settled sciences? 8. Does the science of history foster the conservative spirit? 9. What is the tendency, in this respect, of the study of Uterary masterpieces? CHAPTER XIV THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION Custom rules There appear to be certain fields of life, such as in- mentroriife dustry, business, and the advancement of science, where merit rules; other fields, like dress, personal adornment, display, luxury, equipage, and amusements, which are the happy hunting-grounds of novelty; and, finally, certain fields, like language, ceremony, ritual, worship, govern- ment, relations of races, sexes, and classes, in which custom prevails. These last are the fossil-bearing strata of society, the relic-yielding, river-drift caves. No other fields yield so much to the explorer in quest of materials for recon- structing the past. If we inyestigate why custom rules in one department of life and not in another, we come upon certain general truths. I. A survival is not kicked aside until it gets in the way. Just as a settler tolerates the stumps in the pasture till he wants to plough it up, so we put up with the debris of the past until it seriously incommodes us ; then we clear it away. In India caste lines are held rigid until railway eating-houses come in. Then, when it is eat with the low- caste man or go hungry, the caste lines begin to bend. Ganges water is religiously drunk till modern sanitation 254 not thrive THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 255 provides a supply of better water near at hand. On the same principle a vestigial organ — pineal gland, third eyelid, vermiform appendix — held in the firm clasp of heredity, is reproduced indefinitely until a moment comes when it begins seriously to hinder survival ; then natural selection seizes upon it and roots it up.' Now, effete customs cannot live on in a field like warfare, where the where there spearmen who come out against Gatlings perish and with competition them their belated style of fighting; or industry, where custom can- those who cling to the hand-to^l i'" :he age of the machine starve ; or business, where the merchant who does without telephone, typewriter, or the loose-leaf system fails; or the professions, where resistance to the use of ether or anti-toxin brings ruin. In all such fields it is not necessary that all become open-minded. Competition forces the pace. If one out of twenty is progressive enough to adopt the happy innovation, the other nineteen are obliged to follow suit or abandon the field entirely. Even religion starts forward under this spur, and the interdenominational rivalry for members and popular favor obliges conserva- tives themselves to lower the bars of creed. On the other hand, fields like ceremony (curtsey, wedding, coronation), festivals (Hallowe'en, St. Valentine's Day, rolling Easter ' "The habit of keeping provisions stored up within the fortified church walls, to this day extant in most Saxon villages [of Transyl- vania], is clearly a remnant of the time when sieges had to be looked for. Even now the people seem to consider their goods to be in greater security here than in their own barns and lofts. The outer fortified wall around the church is often divided into deep recesses or alcoves, in each of which stands a large wooden chest securely locked, and filled with grain or flour, while the little surrounding turrets or chapels are used as store- houses for home-cured bacon." — Gerard, "The Land beyond the Forest," 67-68. No doubt a few bad seasons would break up this wasteful custom. 2S6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY eggs), forms of address (Madam = My lady, Good-by = God be with you), modes of spelling, riddles, proverbs, and everything pertaining to children (lullabies. Mother Goose, " King's x ," " King's Cruse," " Tit-tat-toe "), being untested by competition, are full of survivals. Govern- ment departments, missing the enlivening prick of compe- tition, cling to antiquated procedure. The commonplace, uneducated woman is ingenious, experimental, and open to novelty, only during the brief period when she is com- peting with other ma.den" for masculine favor. Once she has achieved a fixed status as wife she is probably content to do as her mother did. The alcoves 2. Custom ruks in the less accessible fields. of social life j^ ^j^g reccsses of the home, live on practices that could become cob- ' ^ webbed with not endure the open air. The way a man tills his field custom jg more subject to invidious comparison than the way a woman washes her dishes or cares for her babies. Cook- ery, kitchen utensils, table manners, personal ablutions, courtship, christening, nameday and birthday observances, family ceremonies and festivals, are ruled by tradition because they are private. So long as the making of garments is a household art, costume may show great stability. Thus, some believe that the shaggy sheepskin mantle and the close-fitting woollens of the Bulgarians still hint, amid the vine and the olive, of the bleak Central Asian home of the race. 3. Collective habits are more stable than individual habits. When tied The reason is that they cannot be dropped by man after together men ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ await concerted abandonment or modi- follow the ' beaten track fication. However bad the old highway has become, no single teamster can afford to survey a road for himself ; THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 257 yet it may be long before a sufScient number can be brought to cooperate in building a new highway/ ' This persistence of the superannuated until men arc ready to make a collective effort for reform is hit off in Sam Foss's poem : — "THE CALF PATH " One day, through a primeval wood, A calf walked home as good calves should, And left a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail, as all calves do. " Since then two hundred years have fled. And I infer the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail. And thereby hangs my moral tale. "The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o'er dale and steep. And led his flock behind him, too. As good bell-wethers always do. " And from that day, o'er hill and glade, Through those old woods a. path was made. And many men wound in and out. And bent and turned and crooked about. And uttered words of righteous wrath. Because 'twas such a crooked path. " But still they followed — do not laugh — The first migrations of that calf. And through this winding woodway stalked Because he wobbled when he walked." He proceeds to tell us that the path became a lane, and that the lane became a road, where many a poor horse toiled on with his load beneath the burning sun and travelled some three miles in one. "And men in two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. For men are prone to go it blind. Along the calf-ways of the mind. And work away from sun to sun. To do as other men have done." S 258 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Festivals of remote origin are usually of wide ob- servance On the survival of criminal festivals, Fererro ' remarks: "We see, therefore, that collective crime has opposed a greater resistance than individual crime to the progress of civilization. But why have these criminal festivals endured so long, while individual customs have been undergoing transformation?" "A crowd of men is always more afraid of the new, more conservative, than are the men who compose it. For that reason a usage is more stable and less subject to variation in proportion to the number of men who observe it." " Every one can observe that it is easy for a man to change his in- dividual habits, but that the habits of a family, being more fixed, are changed with greater difficulty." " But fixed as family customs are, they are unstable enough if we compare them to the usages of large aggregates, to the whole population of a city, for example. In all Europe, in Italy, France, and Germany, some of the cities still celebrate the festivals of the Middle Ages, occasionally even Roman festivals, which plunge a whole population every year into the past again. The costumes, the banners, and the signals, everything in these festivals is old, and no one would be satisfied to use anything modern in them, for all their beauty would then seem to vanish. We find yet more superannuated usages when we consider still larger human aggregates; for while in the usages of a city we find survivals of its history, in the usages common to all civilized men we find survivals of the ancient primitive life, customs which appertain to the savage period. Of such, for example, is the worship of ancestors." " The rites relating to it have been nearly entirely abandoned, yet these rites, which exist no • Popular Science Monthly, 43, pp. 762-765. THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 259 longer in individual practice, still survive as a general usage among all Roman Catholic peoples, for the cere- mony of the day of the dead is nothing else than a survival from the ancient ancestral religion. "A mass of men is thus always more afraid of novelty What men than the men that compose it: these may change their dlvidiwiiy" feelings and their ideas, but they come together ; the feel- vanishes ings and ideas acquired by the individuals will have no ^hat^they"^ influence, or but little, upon their conduct. What is must quit the cause of this contradiction? Man . . . hates all ^°'° ^ novelty and tries to preserve everything that exists — his ideas and feelings — so long as he can, without changing them. Yet, when very strong necessities urge him, man . . . changes his habits and his ideas, and rebels against institutions and laws he had once venerated; but it is always a painful task, a disagreeable effort for every man. . . . Difficult as this change may be for each man, it is still more so when a collective usage is con- cerned; for then the opinion of all the other men to the same effect and imitation reenforce the neophoby natural to man. The struggle is not only against one's own conservative instincts, but also against the fear of being alone in neglecting a usage which all others observe.' For these usages to pass away there must, therefore, be causes acting upon the whole mass of those who ob- serve them, producing gradual decadence. Now these causes would naturally act more slowly than those which produce individual changes of manners, ideas, etc. ; they ' Says an Igorrote chief : "The Americans don't like us to take heads, but what can we do? Other people take heads from us. We have always done it. The women won't marry our men if they do not take heads." — Holt, "Undistinguished Americans," 227. 26o SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Immigrants quit tlieir personal ways sooner than their communal ways will act more slowly, too, as the aggregate of men subject to tlieir influence is greater. " So the genesis of criminal festivals is explained. When crimes become the object of legal repression and then of moral repulsion, men begin, each on his own ac- count, to abstain from committing them. . . . But these criminal festivals, to which the ancient liberty and the ancient glory of crime have given rise, being usages com- mon to a whole tribe or people, enjoy the advantage of the greater stability in collective usages. . . . Thus, the Dahomeyan, who is no longer a cannibal, becomes an anthropophagist again in the great public festivals that are celebrated after a victory; the East Indians slay men upon the foundations of a palace, but only when great public edifices are a-building ; and the inhabit- ants of Sumatra, gentle enough in their ordinary customs, solemnly eat their old men, in the belief that they are thereby observing the most sacred of their duties as sons." Roberts ' shows that in the coal regions the Sclavs do not Americanize / their corporate practices as rapidly as their individual practices. "The Sclav religiously observes the days on which the saints are commemorated and invariably takes a holiday. On sacred seasons of the year, such as Easter and Christmas, they are at great trouble to commemorate the historical events which form the basis of the Christian religion. On Easter, tombs are constructed in churches and a semi-military religious organization associated with the Church assigns quater- nions of its members to guard them. Relays succeed each other for a period equal to that during which Christ is said to have remained in the grave. On Easter also mem- ' " Anthracite Coal Communities," 54-55. THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 261 bers carry baskets laden with provisions to the Church that the priest may bless them, and when they are brought home again the family sit down to the consecrated feast. At Christmas time, members of the Church go from door to door carrying emblems of the nativity and recite the story of the miraculous birth. Accompanying them are grotesque figures, representing the enemies of the Church, which add mirth to the visitations. These parties take up collections which are turned over to the priest. On Easter and Christmas a solemn procession is formed, when sacred relics are carried, and the members, chanting, march aroimd the church or along the aisles. On Ascen- sion Day branches of trees are cut down and hung over the doors of the houses and around the pictures of sacred personages in the homes." "As the Sclavs gain in numbers and confidence they give greater publicity to their native customs and peculiarities. Troops of men will, on idle days, amuse themselves by playing a childish game which affords them much amuse- ment. They carry charms and sacred relics with greater publicity than they did in former years. They do not enjoy their frolics and weddings with the same privacy as in the early years of their life in the coal fields." "Last Fourth of July, a company of Tyrolese paraded the streets with a hand-cart drawn by men, in which was placed a barrel of lager. Over it stood a comrade, goblet in hand and crowned with a garland of laurels, singing some jargon, while sitting on the rear end of the vehicle was another fellow with an accordion. Along the streets they marched to the strains of music and at intervals they stopped to drink the good beverage they celebrated in song. It was an imitation of the honor paid Bacchus 262 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY which was one of the most joyous festivities of ancient Rome." The greater obstinacy of the drinking of liquor at banquets or in "treating" than in private drinking is another illustration of the principle. 4. Habits of consumption are more stable than habits of production. ModeofHfe There are a number of reasons for this. The former, changes being more private, are less subject to imfavorable com- more slowly or' J than manner parison and Criticism. Competition obliges one to change '"°'^ his ways of producing, but not his diet, costume, bever- ages, or house architecture. A large proportion of pro- ducers work under direction, but as consumer one is a free man. As children we consume long before we produce. Finally, our recollection of a form of enjoyment or con- sumption ("the old swimmin' hole," "pies like mother used to make") is more vivid and lasting than our recol- lection of a manner of doing work. Fixity of the Habits of Consumption constitute the standard of lAVmT ° li'vi'^g, which may become so imperious as to overrule the sex and family instincts and exercise a salutary check upon the growth of population. The stubbornness with which men cling to their customary standard of living is emphasized by Mrs. Mead:^ "At the other extreme of society is foimd the class that has not yet developed wants of a qualitative character. Included here are all who are still in a caste system ; for example, the Chinese, the coolies, the European peasantry. From generation to generation they eat the same food, dwell in the same houses, wear the same clothing, work at the same trades, and indulge in the same pleasures. The Hindoo who starves to death during the famine rather than eat wheat, ' Journal of Political Economy, IX, 228. THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 263 and the Italian who imports macaroni and olives, and who puts up with expensive adulterated articles rather than change his diet, are characteristic of the class. To them must be added the degenerate element of our city slums. On the borders is the backwoodsman, who, in his isolation, has become inured to the hardships of his life and indifferent to the advances made in comfortable living. He is contented with a ham-and-egg diet, and he has implicit belief in the superiority of everything home- made, from soap to butter, and from shock mattress to clothes. In general, education for the lower class must mean the excitation of new wants." The inelasticity of habits of consumption explain Laborers certain economic paradoxes. Says Weil, of Mexico : ' " The ""^^ accom- ^ ■' modate earn- low wages, however, appear to be largely the result of the ings to cost ignorance and improvidence of the natives, and it is °^t'^™i somewhat questionable whether higher daily wages would cost of living permanently benefit the peon, unless at the same time '° ^^"^"'"ss his standard of life rose. The experience of railroad companies and other employers of labor in Mexico has been that higher daily wages increase idleness, and that, if the wages for a day's work be doubled, the number of working days will be halved. It is also a fact con- firmed by the experience and observation of many em- ployers that the amount of labor performed bears no direct relation to the wages, and that even where work is done by the task instead of by the day the promise of additional remuneration will seldom result in an in- creased output." Says our consul ^ of the working class ' Bulletin of the U. S. Dept. of Labor, No. 38, p. 48. ^H. R. Docs., 1884-1885, vol. 26, "Labor in America, Asia, etc.," 239- 264 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY of Ecuador: "The working class in the main lives for to-day, letting to-morrow take care of itself. This class works sufficiently to earn a subsistence, but exhausts no energies in efforts at accumulation. The cause is an example handed from age to age and generation to genera- tion. The tendency is to fall into a beaten track, to do things now as they were done last year, or ten or fifty years ago. They are not hostile to innovations and new things ; but they do not seek them, and only accept them when it is easier to accept them than to cast them aside. . . . There are no signs that either the rate of wages or the general condition of the working class will be changed for many years to come. When there is a great change, it must result from external influences. The working class appears to be much more contented with its condition here than the same class in those countries where a greater degree of intelligence and a higher order of civilization abounds." Ease of ex- Among a custom-boimd people the problem of ex- cistom * ploitive government is simple. So long as they do not bound threaten the laboring man's customary comforts, the ruling peop e classes can absorb all the rest of the social income without exciting a revolt. With railroads, mines, plantations, and factories, they may multiply the national output by three, yet cede the masses no share in the new prosperity. Such, generally speaking, is the technique of exploitation in the South American countries. On the other hand, where the working classes have become discontented and outreaching and ambitious, it is necessary for the ruling class to concede them a share in the increase of social income. Discontent and restlessness and striving to better one's condition, penetrating society to the very THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 265 bottom, is the only adequate guarantee for the permanence of democratic government. It is their relative immobility of consumption that makes Asiatic im- the unrestricted immigration of Asiatics so menacing to ™'grf"ts " ^ ^ ^ will borrow the future of our country. The coolies, acquiring our our skill industrial methods — and consequently our earning power ^°°^" ^^"^ — ere they have accepted our standards of living, would ards of multiply at a higher rate than Americans, and would ^'^^"^ therefore tend to supplant the native stock. Elsewhere the writer has said : Suppose Asiatics flock to this coimtry and, enjoying equal opportunities imder our laws, learn our methods and compete actively with Americans. They may be able to produce and therefore earn in the ordinary occupations, say three-fourths as much as Ameri- cans; but if their standard of life is only half as high, the Asiatic will marry before the American feels able to marry. The Asiatic will rear two children while his competitor feels able to rear but one. The Asiatic will increase his children to six under conditions that will not encourage the American to raise more than four. Both, perhaps, are forward-looking and influenced by the worldly prospects of their children; but where the Oriental is satisfied with the outlook, the American, who expects to school his children longer and place them better, shakes his head. Now, to such a competition there are three possible By freer results. First, the American, becoming discouraged, yo'^^'Jj^a^j"^.^ may relinquish his exacting standard of decency and will replace begin to multiply as freely as the Asiatic. This, however, Americans is likely to occur only among the more reckless and worth- less elements of our population. Second, the Asiatic may catch up our wants as well as our arts, and acquire 266 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY the higher standard and lower rate of increase of the American. This is just what contact and education are doing for the French Canadians in New England, for the immigrants in the West, and for the negro in some parts of the South; but the members of a great culture race like the Chinese show no disposition, even when scattered sparsely among us, to assimilate to us or to adopt our standards. Not until their self-complacency has been undermined at home and an extensive intellectual ferment has taken place in China itself will the Chinese become assimilable elements. Thirdly, the standards may remain distinct, the rates of increase unequal, and the silent replacement of Americans by Asiatics go on unopposed until the latter monopolize all industrial occupations, and the Americans shrink to a superior caste able perhaps by virtue of its genius, its organization, and its vantage of position to retain for a while its hold on government, education, finance, and the direction of industry, but hopelessly beaten and displaced as a race. In other words, the American farm hand, mechanic, and operative might wither away before the heavy influx of a prolific race from the Orient, just as in classic times the Latin husbandman vanished before the endless stream of slaves poured into Italy by her triumphant generals. 5. Custom is powerful in matters of feeling. This is because there are no objective or logical tests to emancipate us from a transmitted emotional attitude. In comparison with beliefs and practices, loves and hatreds, admiration and contempt are inveterate. Recall the hereditary vendettas of Corsica, Calabria, Scotland, and Kentucky. Think of the tenacity of popular attach- ment to effete dynasties like the Stuarts and the Bourbons. THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 267 Says Bryce:' "The Franks in Gaul during the seventh and eighth centuries were as fierce and turbulent a race as the world has ever seen. Their history is a long record of incessant and ferocious strife. From the beginning of the seventh century the Merwing kings, descendants of Clovis, became, with scarcely an exception, feeble and helpless. Their power passed to their viziers, the Mayors of the Palace, who from about a.d. 638 onwards were kings de facto. But the Franks continued to revere the blood of Clovis, and when, in 656, a rash Mayor of the Palace had deposed a Merwing and placed his own son on the throne, they rose at once against the insult offered to the ancient line; and its scions were revered as titular heads of the nation for a century longer, till Pippin the Short, having induced the Pope to pronounce the deposition of the last Merwing and to sanction the transfer of the crown to himself, sent that prince into a monastery." That feudal loyalty dies slowly may be seen in the Beliefs can affection of Scottish Highlanders for their clan chief ''^J^°fV'°" ° verted but long after English law had transformed him into a grasp- not feelings ing, relentless landlord, and in the hereditary tie that in Old Japan bound a samurai line to a daimyo line. National friendships and enmities tend to become in- veterate, as witness the traditional feeling between the French and the Poles on the one hand, between the French and English on the other. The Irishman's hatred of the "Saxon" passes undiminished from parent to child, and even bears transplantation to American soil. The writer once saw an Englishman and a Scotch- man, in the presence of ladies, come to blows over a chance '"Studies in History and Jurisprudence," II, 22. 268 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY allusion to a battle between their peoples six centuries ago! Inter-race 'feelings survive time and change. Recall the undying antipathy between Spaniard and Moor, Kurd and Armenian, Turk and Macedonian. The relation between Boer and Kafi&r is an open sore, the color line in our South is far from fading away, and people still bait the Jews "because they crucified the Saviour." Though their Mogul masters have long been' dust, the Bengali still cringe like spaniels under the tone of command. Inter-class feelings are hard to uproot. Witness the persistence of Brahminical disdain, of seign- iorial pride, of plantation manners, of Helot crouch, and peasant deference. Inter-confessional feelings live long. Scratch a Scotchman and you come upon an antipathy to the Church of England that goes back to the persecu- tion of the Covenanters, Claverhouse, and the Massacre of Glencoe. The "No Popery" fanaticism of the English masses is a heritage from the fires of Smithfield, the Spanish Armada, and the Bloody Assizes. The riots between Orangemen and Catholics that once convulsed American cities show how an antipathy may keep its vitality for two centuries. Relations be- Inter-sex feelings, such as male overbearingness or tween men female mistrust, long outlast the state of things to which and women . governed by they Correspond. Chivalry and dependence are still standardized ^^^ Standard sentiments between young men and women, sentiments even though they have nothing more to go on than rescu- ing the young lady from a mouse or giving her super- fluous aid in alighting from a car. Hence, endless posing and attitudinizing. Man insists on protecting and woman on clinging as in the rude and parlous times before the THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 269 ubiquitous policeman. Between youth and maid a "Platonic friendship" is impossible, not because it goes against their nature, but because it clashes with the dominant tradition that any liking between them must be sentimental. Strong feeUng about the disposal of the dead makes why mode us, against our better judgment, resist cremation. The °fti)e^deS'^ mode of disposal (burial, burning, embalming, hanging is a race in trees, exposure to birds, throwing into the sacred jg^tk; river) is for each people so characteristic and stable that by this mark alone ethnologists atid archteologists can trail a race across wide stretches of time and space. Feelings about the gods is long-lived.' Instance the re- appearance of Christianity in France after the submer- gence of religion during the Revolution. Dostoiewsky tells a story of the Russian who on becoming enlightened broke the icons that adorned the altar, put out the candles, and then replaced the icons with the works of atheistic philosophers, after which the candles were piously re- lighted! Likewise, the Religion of Humanity founded by Comte retains the familiar emotions, but gives them a new object. The feeling for an ideal lasts because it is awakened so early. The reason why great men of action so often give their mothers the credit for their eminence is that a sublime character is grounded not on moral principles, but on moral admirations and detesta- tions, i.e., on personal ideals, and these are aroused in ' "Although the Sakalava people (in Madagascar) have adhered to Islam for three centuries, 'they have adopted Islam without bringing any notable change to their former customs and manners.' Allah and the Prophet take a prominent place in their religious ceremonies, yet still inferior to Zanahatry and Angatra, their national divinities.'' — St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences, II, 511-512. 270 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Feeling can- not be over- come by arguments The agen- cies of con- trol need the prestige of age Archaism of law US by our mothers in the tender years before the father's influence becomes strong. The love that native-born colonials cherish for the mother country is usually trans- mitted to them through their mothers. It has been suggested that the absence of the filial feeling for Holland among the South African Boers is due to the fact that the first settlers were wived with forlorn orphan girls, sent out from the poorhouses of Holland, who naturally had no tender memories or warm feeling for the mother land to pass on to their children. Discussion is more destructive to hold-over beliefs than to hold-over feelings. Argument carries the out- works of pretext, but finds that they mask the impregnable inner citadel of "I like this!" "I hate that!" Only by vivid images and impressions that excite counter feel- ings is it possible to extirpate a superannuated sectarian feud, class antipathy, or race prejudice. No force of logic can kill these inherited venoms; but they may be neutralized by wider contacts and fresh experiences. 6. Institutions of control — law, government, religion, ceremony, and mores — are fossilijerous} All these endeavor to bind the will of man to social requirements. In this difl&cult and ticklish undertaking nothing helps like prestige; and, of all the prestiges, that of great antiquity is for most men the strongest and most reliable. The archaic spirit of law is shown by the appeal to precedent, the fiction that the law is immemorial custom, the venerable "trial by jury," the uncouthness of legal phraseology, the ancient forms of procedure, the retention of wigs, gowns, seals, and criers. Says John Stuart Mill 'See Ross, "Social Control," 190-194. THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 271 of English law in the time of Bentham : '■ " The law came to be like the costume of a full-grown man who had never put off the clothes made for him when he first went to school. Band after band had burst, and as the rent widened, then, without removing anything except what might drop off of itself, the hole was darned, or patches of fresh law were brought from the nearest shop, and stuck on. Hence, all ages of English history have given one another rendezvous in English law: their several products may be seen all together, not interfused, but heaped upon one another, as many different ages of the earth may be read in some perpendicular section of its surface; the deposits of each successive period not sub- stituted, but superimposed on those of the preceding. And in the world of law, no less than in the physical world, every commotion and conflict of the elements has left its mark behind in some break or irregularity of the strata. Every struggle which ever rent the bosom of society is apparent in the disjointed condition of the part of the field of law which covers the spot; nay, the very traps and pitfalls which one contending party set for another are still standing ; and the teeth, not of hyenas only, but of foxes and all cunning animals, are imprinted on the curious remains found in these antediluvian caves." The archaic spirit of government is seen in the cling- Archaism of ing to traditional policy (Will of Peter the Great, Balance government of Power, the Temporal Power, Monroe Doctrine) ; in the place conceded to classes long since decayed (the landed nobility in the British House of Lords) ; in the appeal to distant precedent and musty charters for the settlement of the rights and duties of to-day; in the hold ' "Dissertations and Discussions," I, Essay on Bentham. 272 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY of profligate dynasties; in that magical power of legiti- macy which restored the French and Spanish Bourbons, and, when Germany, Italy, and Hungary attained unity or independence, made a crown the rallying point; in the blending of contradictions seen in constitutional monarchy, in the legalizing of revolutions, in the legiti- mating of usurpers, in the interpretation of written constitutions. Government, moreover, is full of sur- vivals — court dress, court etiquette, regalia, titles, emblems of authority, royal polygamy, "etc. Archaism of The archaic spirit of religion is attested by the use of organized gj^^ kuives in Sacrifice or circumcision lone after metal religion ° knives have come in, and of the fire drill for kindling the sacrificial flame after flint and tinder have become known ; in the higher sanctity ascribed to candles over other illuminants; in the retention of Koptic in the liturgy of the Abyssinian Christians, of the Old Bactrian of the Zend-Avesta in Parsee worship, of the Arabic of the Koran among non-Arabic Mohammedans, of ancient Hebrew in the Jewish services, of Latin in Catholic worship, of Old English in Bible and Prayer Book; in the preference for the faulty King James version of the Bible; in the emphasis laid on Apostolic Succession; in the difficulty of bringing the Westminster Confession abreast of current Presbyterian thought; in the settle- ment of disputed points by appeal to the Bible or to the Fathers.^ Ceremony, too, is full of outworn symbols, gestures ^ Nevertheless, when religious dogma and organization have been broken up and swept away by a powerful burst of prophetism, religion may show itself very radical and transformative so long as this current runs. THE FIELDS OF CUSTOM IMITATION 273 and picture actions of forgotten meaning, obsolete words, etc. To the folk-historian a marriage service, a royal coronation, the drinking of healths, or the rite of extreme unction is a museum of antiquity. The reason why institutions of control are so full of Only out- survivals is that such institutions work the better the '^°™'^"^ noxious tra- older they grow, which is not true of a construction in ditions syntax, a funeral service, a pattern of tool or garment, discredited Devices in the field of control, however crude at first, improve with age Uke wine. A duty enjoined in the old sacred books or the precept of an ancient sage binds us more than would the same if it came to us unhallowed by time. Crown and royal blood win for the Emperor Dom Pedro an obedience that his republican successors in Brazil can command only by military force. To ask religion, government, law, or morality to make extensive and thoroughgoing changes in a single generation is to ask an army to form a new line in the face of the enemy. There are cases in which the discrediting of tradition is like picking out the mortar that holds together the fabric of society. The immediate fruit of the French Revolu- tion, as of the Protestant Reformation, was anarchy and the dissolution of morals. The withering interrogation of all maxims, doctrines, and ideals by men without a sense of the past may lead to a denial of everything save one's own will. SUMMARY By making the twentieth man master of the situation, competition produces a high death rate among outgrown customs. The spirit of tradition is strong in everything pertaining to the horhe. He travels farthest who travels alone. Everything in which men must move together is liable to fall behind the times. T 274 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Men will change their manner of working sooner than their man- ner of living. When custom-bound men exploit richer opportunities, they en- large their family rather than raise their standard of living. For this reason the competition between races in the same area assumes two forms. The higher race may outdo the lower, or the lower may underlive the higher. Feelings between races, nations, classes, sects, and sexes rarely correspond to the contemporary situation, but reflect some bygone situation. Institutions of control are rich in survivals, because the prestige of age aids in control. EXERCISES 1. Why is the official creed of a denomination less elevated in respect to infant damnation or eternal punishment than the personal creed of the average member? 2. Why do woman's legal rights lag behind her generally acknowl- edged moral rights? 3. Why is it a mistake to send the Indian girl back to her tribe when she finishes school ? 4. Is our noisy manner of celebrating Independence Day on a level with the present taste of the American people ? 5. Is the Jewish love of large families suited to a remote or to a present situation ? 6. If you were trying to induce Jews and Christians, Orangemen and Catholics, Germans and Slavs, Poles and Lithuarians, to sink their enmities and unite in a labor movement, how would you pro- ceed? 7. Why is it that our immigrants save so much more and " get ahead " so much sooner than the American born ? 8. Why is it that as soon as the Chinese in Hawaii " adopt an American manner of life, they cease to be a depressing factor in the labor market " ? CHAPTER XV RELATION OF CUSTOM IMITATION TO CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION I. There is a contrast between societies in respect to the relative power of custom and conventionality. In some societies "old" equals "beloved." Nihil Profound mihi antiquius est said Cicero, meaning " Nothing is dearer ™gg^ ^ ^^.J to me." In China " my elder brother" and "How old you ditionai and look !" are forms of greeting. In such societies status, not jjo^^i society competition, determines men's relations. Social considera- tion depends on one's birth. Religion is usually ancestor worship, in any case, tribal, exclusive, and non-proselyting. The hereditary principle prevails in government and priest- hood, perhaps even in occupations. The family is patriar- chal and the patria potestas is well-nigh unlimited. Local customary law prevails. The language differentiates into local and class dialects. Duties are more emphasized than rights. Morality imposes upon the individual sacri- fices in view of certain permanent wants of his walled-in group — his family, tribe, city, canton, or country. Respect for old age, faithfulness to blood revenge, and feudal loyalty are resplendent virtues. In other societies (as in the United States to-day) the watchwords are "progress," "enlightenment," "the age." The cant commendations are "brand new," "up-to-date," "latest and best," "new blood." No phrase is so damn- ing as "behind the times." Society is individualistic and 275 276 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY competitive. Rights are more emphasized than duties. The spirit is cosmopolitan. Familism, clannishness, and Chauvinistic patriotism are considered "narrow." Pre- tensions founded on family, or the worthiness of some ancestor, are laughed at. Social grading is on the basis of some present fact — money, efficiency, achievement, education, or character. Language grows by incorporat- ing terms which make their debut as slang. Customary law is supplemented by legislation. The patriarchate dissolves. Religion proselytes. Philanthropy is honored. Morality summons the individual to sacrifice himself for certain wide interests — the public, humanity, posterity, race elevation. Its sanction is not divine command, but public opinion, honor, and self-respect. 2. In the life history of a society there are alternating epochs of outlook and backlook, of "our time" and "our country." A society These give us alternations of "breaking" and sub- osciUates t- ggjling^ of expansion and deepening, of innovation and tionaiism pause, of the Tulc of the Liberals and the rule of the Tories. TOiitanlsm' France, in the last half of the eighteenth century, was all outlook, infatuated with classic, English, and American political models ; now, with her cult of Joan of Arc and of Napoleon, her glance is backward. Germany was cos- mopolitan in tone under Frederick the Great and his successors, but after 1806 (Fichte, Stein, Hardenberg), and again after 1870, backlook supervened. In American society there has been a great deal of outlook, but, since the series of Centeimial celebrations (1875-1889), there has been a certain backlook showing itself in the revival of historical studies, in the formation of hereditary patriotic societies, and in the dread of "drifting away from the RELATION OF CUSTOM TO CONVENTIONALITY 277 ancient landmarks." In Japan an epoch of wholesale borrowing has been followed by backlook, while China, after long rusting in her bearings, is just beginning to mould herself after foreign models. After an epoch of cosmopolitanism, and reform on the basis of foreign ex- ample, a nation seems to experience a certain decay in the forces of social control. Law, religion, and morality suffer, and signs of disintegration in the form of rampant individualism or bitter class antagonism appear ; thereupon there is an instinctive turning to and brooding over the past in the futile hope of recovering thereby solidarity and moral health. 3. In times, in circles, and in matters, where custom imitation rules, new things try to appear old. In early society, adoption of an outsider into the family When age was disguised as sonship, and naturalization into the w^heTew tribe was the feigning of kinship. Just as Menelik, " King pretends to of kings" of Abyssinia, claims descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, so the successful Germanic warrior- king felt obliged to acquire an aristocratic pedigree. Says Jenks:' "Leaders like Clovis, and Theodoric, and Alaric, and Egbert, . . . began to buttress up their authority by appeals to other sanctions (than military prestige). One of the most skilful of these appeals was the appropriation by the kings of the character and attributes of the tribal chief whom they had conquered or dispossessed. It is possible that, in a few cases, they were really and truly, members of tribal aristocracies, though probably not of the aristocracies of the tribes whom they had conquered. In most cases, they were simply adventurers who had obtained their positions by sheer 1" History of Politics," 85-86. 278 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY hard fighting. But they soon, by a series of fictions which could only have been accepted in a simple age, persuaded their subjects that they really were members of the ancient families whom they had overcome. The pedigree of an early European king generally led up to some well-known Hero who had long been regarded with reverence as a mythical ancestor of the tribe or tribes over which he was ruling." In the same vein Napoleon, finding mere efficiency no solid basis for his rule, summoned the Pope from Rome to anoint him Emperor, received the acclamations of his army in the iron chair of Dagobert, held court at Aachen, first capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and in Milan crowned himself king of Italy with the Iron Crown of Charlemagne. Jesus represents himself as the "fulfilling of the Law," the Messiah. St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans endeavors to establish a sympathetic bond be- tween Jewish law and Christianity. New legal principles masquerade as old ones. Maine ' shows that both English Legal Case-Law and the Roman Responsa Prudentum rest on fictions, and adds: "It is not difficult to understand why fictions in all their forms are particularly congenial to the infancy of society. They satisfy the desire for improve- ment, which is not quite wanting, at the same time that they do not offend the superstitious disrelish for change which is always present. At a particular stage of social progress they are invaluable expedients for overcoming the rigidity of law and, indeed, without one of them, the fiction of Adoption, which permits the family tie to be artificially created, it is difficult to understand how society would ever have escaped from its swaddling clothes, and ' "Ancient Law," 25-26. fictions RELATION OF CUSTOM TO CONVENTIONALITY 279 taken its first steps towards civilization." Of the Bar- barian Codes Jenlcs observes:' "Written custom cannot be altered imperceptibly ; it is always possible to point to the exact text, and show what it says. Nevertheless customs must alter in a progressive society ; and so it was necessary to have successive editions of the written Codes, as in fact happen. Thus people came gradually to accept the idea that custom could be altered; and occasionally they even allowed the king, by way of bargain or agreement, to introduce certain deliberate alterations. No doubt a good many more alterations were secretly slipped in by the royal scribes who drew up the Codes." Gallic logic recognizes the new for what it is, but in English England every great political reform has posed as a hark a^an'S- ^ back to the "ancient liberties" of the much-overworked heritance Magna Charta. Says Burke :' "We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we pos- sess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any scion alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity. . . . You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavor to prove that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King John, was connected with another positive charter from Henry I, and that both the one and the other were nothing more than a re-afi&rmance of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. ... In the famous "'History of Politics," 126. ' " Reflections on the Revolution in France," 36-40, passim. 28o SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY law called the Petition of Right, the parliament says to the king, 'Your subjects have inherited this freedom,' claiming their franchises, not on abstract principles as the 'rights of men,' but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers. . . . You will observe that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers and to be transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any more general or prior right. By this means our con- stitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage ; and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors. ... By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom, it carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits; its monumental inscriptions; its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men, — on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are de- scended." Thanks to our rigid Constitution, the powers that enable the Federal government to cope with difficulties beyond the ken or foresight of the fathers cannot be granted by the present will of the people. We expect our judges to draw them out of the Constitution as a juggler draws rabbits out of a hat. RELATION OF CUSTOM TO CONVENTIONALITY 281 Columbus found it useless to urge his idea of the ro- tundity of the earth unless he could prove it to be old. Filmer in his Patriarcha sought to ground the authority of Charles II on the authority granted by Jehovah to the patriarchs of the Old Testament ! Rousseau appealed to an imaginary "state of nature" in justification of his political ideals. The French revolutionaries found war- rant for their acts in the history of Athens and Sparta. Henry George made much of primitive land-holding policy in urging his single-tax reform. The Mussulman sect of Wahabees poses as a return to primitive Islam, just as sect after sect of Protestants has proclaimed itself a restoration of Apostolic Christianity. Theosophy aims to be impressive by surrounding itself with the glamour of hoary Hindu antiquity. A Methodist convert to Dar- winism seeks to commend the doctrine to his brethren by proving John Wesley to be an evolutionist. It was, again, the dread of newness that made Charles II claim the reign of Cromwell as part of his own and Louis XVIII, in 1814, date his earliest state papers " in the nineteenth year of our reign." 4. In times, in circles, and in matters, where conven- tionality imitation rules, the old tries to appear new. In our own society the new has unusual prestige, and When hence the old hides her gray locks with a wig and decks "e°^^ p,., out her withered countenance with the finery of youth, tige, the old Aristocracy pretends to find its scientific vindication in the teTew^ '° Darwinian doctrine of natural inequality and survival of the fittest. The truth is, of course, that privilege sus- pends for its darlings that very struggle for existence which conduces to the survival of the fittest. Defenders of the ecclesiastical "prohibited degrees" — within which mar- pres- 282 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The confir- mation of dogma by "science" riage will not be solemnized — justify their anachronism by citing facts on the evils of in-and-in breeding ; whereas union with a deceased wife's sister is not in-and-in breeding at all. Sabbatarianism eagerly identifies its "holy day" with the "day of rest" that social science finds to be necessary for the well-being of toilers. Divines pretend that the mystical transmission of Adam's guilt to all his descendants is confirmed by the modern investigations into heredity. Exploitive imperialism arrogates to itself the support of sociology, and talks finely about a " civilizing mission" and "the duty of the higher races to the lower." A brutal selfishness as old as the Ice Age struts about in phrases borrowed from the Darwinists, and bids us see in the prosperity of the wicked the Success of the Adapted ! Even the dogma of the Immaculate Conception finds countenance in the "latest science." Fiske ' gives a specimen of Rev. Joseph Cook's manner of vindicating orthodoxy. "According to Mr. Cook, Professor Huxley says : ' Throughout almost the whole series of living beings, we find agamo genesis, or not-sexual generation.' After a pause, Mr. Cook proceeded in a lower voice : ' When the topic of the origin of the life of our Lord on the earth is approached from the point of view of the microscope, some men, who know not what the holy of holies in physical and religious science is, say that we have no example of the origin of life without two parents.' He went on to cite the familiar instances of parthenogenesis in bees and silk moths, and then proceeded as follows : ' Take up your Mi- vart, your Lyell, your Owen, and you will read [where ?] this same important fact which Huxley here asserts, when he says that the law that perfect individuals may be virginally ' "A Century of Science," 345-346. RELATION OF CUSTOM TO CONVENTIONALITY 283 born extends to the higher forms of life. I am in the presence of Almighty God; and yet, when a great soul like that tender spirit of our sainted Lincoln, in his early days, with little knowledge but with great thoughtfulness, was troubled by this difficulty, and almost thrown into infidelity by not knowing that the law that there must be two parents is not universal, I am willing to allude, even in such a presence as this, to the latest science concerning miraculous conception.' (Sensation.)" If, however, the old cannot assume the guise of youth, The old it strives to discredit the new by making it out to be old. "^^"'^ ** newness of Fromundus in his " Ant-Aristarchus" pretends that the the new discovery of Copernicus is only the exploded theory of a Pagan philosopher. The doctrine of evolution is declared to be merely "a rehash of Lucretius." The conclusions of the Higher Critics of the Scriptures are dismissed as an "old heresy" that has been disposed of again and again. The agnosticism of the modern scientific man is assimilated to the Athenian worship of "the Unknown God." The philosophical pessimism of Schopenhauer is waved aside as only a current version of the pessimism of the author of the book of Ecclesiastes. Collectivists are refuted by reciting Aristotle's critique of Plato's communal republic. Extension of state activity is represented as a revival of the regime by which the Incas exploited the subject Peruvians. Contemporary divorce, which is chiefly at the instance of the woman, is identified with ancient divorce, which was at the instance of the man and wrought the degradation of woman. 284 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SUMMARY It makes a profound difference in the characteristics of a society whether its members imitate in the longitudinal plane or the trans- verse plane. There is a swing of the pendulum between the cosmopolitan spirit and the spirit of tradition. When the spirit of custom rules, every innovation seeks to com- mend itself by feigning age and pedigiee. When the liberal spirit reigns, every hoary dogma or institution strives to furnish up-to-date reasons and support. If it cannot do so, it tries to discredit its antagonist by making it out to be old and passe. EXERCISES 1. What doctrines are most helpful to a proselyting religion ? 2. Show that in large societies socialization is much more com- plete if conventionality rules than if custom rules. 3. Contrast the effects of foreign war and of civil war upon the spirit of tradition. 4. What are the disadvantages of the way of deriving popular liberties recommended by Burke ? 5. Why is easy amendment better than spurious interpretation as a means of making a written constitution elastic? 6. Should the divorce problem be settled by BibUcal texts? If not, what should settle it ? 7. Why does lawless love now call itself an " affinity " ? IS rare CHAPTER XVI RATIONAL IMITATION The purging of the mind from every kind of preposses- Origination sion or prestige gives room for either origination, or rational imitation. Now, origination, i.e., invention or discovery, is so difficult that it will always be the prerogative of the few. In a well-knit society, even those who have the originality to invent find usually that some one has anticipated them, and learn from another what they might in time have found out for themselves. The frequency of nearly simultaneous origination by two or more persons proves how brief is the interval, after the discovery or invention is ripe, before it is actually made. This is why nearly every element in our body of culture has been propagated from one point. The youthful D'Alembert discovered for himself many theorems already known, but not for long was such genius allowed to run to waste. The ingenious shepherd lad, James Ferguson, who in- vented a clock, a watch, and a celestial globe, might, if he had stayed with his sheep, have devised many other contrivances already known to mankind. But even he was found and educated, so that, instead of continuing to , iavent the invented, he enriched his fellow-men with the orrery, the tide dial, and the eclipsareon. In rational imitation our attitude toward a practice de- Attitude of pends in no wise on the prestige or discredit of those who have adopted it, or of the time and place of its origin, but 285 the rational imitator 286 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY only on its a,-ppsiient fitness. Likewise our attitude toward a proposition depends solely on its appearance of truth, i.e., its probability. The rational imitator is not fascinated by the great man or the crowd. He is impressed neither by antiquity nor by novelty. He is as open to what comes from below him as to what comes from above him in the social hierarchy. He is conservative in that he keeps every precious inheritance from the past until he has found some- thing better; he is radical in that he goes to the root, instead of judging by mere surfaces. On the one hand, he regards the existing device or institution as a provisional thing that will some day be surpassed; on the other, he knows that not one out of ten innovations that sue for his favor is an improvement on the thing as it is. When the transforming forces are most active and society is in a dynamic condition, he will figure as a "heretic," "up- setter , " or " disturber " ; in the lull, he will be called ' ' moss- back" or "obstructionist." For him, however, social life is always a process. Seeing the bases of society in incessant flux, he realizes that the superstructure must change. He accepts the relativity of our dearest mental furniture, our moral standards, social theories, political philosophies, and party programmes. He distrusts yester- day's thought, not as unsound, but as unfit for to-day's occasions. Most institutions he knows are in the grasp of a current of change which relentlessly antiquates not only the wisdom of the fathers, but even the conclusions of his own youth. Hence, he combats the somnolence that creeps upon us in the thirties, insisting, though the years pass, that it is still forenoon and not too late to think. The accumulation of changes on the rational princi- ple is ^ro^z-e^s; oi utiiities, practical progress; of truths, RATIONAL IMITATION 287 intellectual progress. Moral progress and aesthetic prog- Moral and ress do not come about essentially by origination and ^^^^^^'^ ■' •' o progress rational diffusion. Progress in these departments is hinge on usually the consequence of material or intellectual advance- ^^Intei- ment. The sparing of captives began as soon as men lectuai prog- reached the agricultural stage and were able to set their ^^^^ captives to productive labor. In the Northern states, the abandonment of African slavery seems to have come about in consequence of the general adoption of expensive farm implements which slaves could not be brought to use skilfully or carefully. The improvement in the status of the wife flows from the necessity of making matrimony more attractive to woman, now that so many industrial and professional careers are open to her. That militant ethical opinion which slashes now here, now there, laying low at each stroke some wrong or abuse, is the outcome of improvements in the apparatus of publicity. As instances of a moral advance conditioned by intellectual progress may be cited — the humanization of punish- ments in consequence of the diffusion of scientific ideas of crime and punishment; the abandonment of judicial torture owing to the psychological demonstration of its futility; the restriction of child labor following upon our fuller knowledge of the bodily and mental growth of children ; the introduction of safety appliances in industry after investigations unveiling the vast and bloody tragedy of industrial accidents. There are certain elements of culture that tend to diffuse Rational byrational imitation, viz., the practical arts and the sciences, ^^j^^f To be sure, in each of these authority is recognized and reUanceon followed. This could hardly be otherwise in view of the »"'''°"'y immense advantage of the specialist. But the foundation 288 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY RationaKty in the spread of the prac- tical arts of such authority is not prestige, but past success. It is perfectly rational to treat as an authority in his line the general who has won every battle, the lawyer who has gained every suit, the physician who has saved every case ; on the other hand, to withdraw some of our confidence from the civil engineer when his bridge falls, from the as- tronomer when his prediction fails. Two causes can be assigned why rational imitation pre- vails more in the practical arts than in manners, dress, amusements, or the fine arts. Competition I. The spur of Competition hastens the triumph of the fittest tool, machine, or process, but not of the fittest gar- ment, ceremony, or sport. Armed with the lever of com- petition, one progressive man can lift out of the rut the ninety and nine unprogressive men. One dentist prac- tising painless dentistry forces all other dentists. One manufacturer marketing safety bicycles coerces all makers of big-wheel bicycles. One nation arming itself with rifled cannon, compels other nations to throw their smooth- bores on the scrap-heap. 2. Exact measurement enables us to discover the better of two practical types — electric or cable cars, natural or creosoted railroad ties, overshot or turbine wheels, Jersey or Durham cows, alfalfa or timothy grass. But there is no means of exactly comparing the recreation afforded by bridge whist with that from diavolo, the fun of base-ball with that of golf, the spell cast by the realist with that cast by the romancer, the thrill from Shelley's poetry with the thrill from Kipling's poetry, the pleasure from a Bouguereau painting with the pleasure from a Monet. It is owing to this difference that there are "schools" Measure- ment RATIONAL IMITATION 289 and "movements" in the fine arts, never in the practical The fine arts arts. Thus we hear of the Delia Cruscans, the Lake t''«sp°'^'°f ' prestige School, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Symbolists, the Decadents, the Secessionists, the Esthetes. In music there persist side by side Italian opera and German opera, in literature the romanticism of Scott and Hugo and the realism of Balzac and Tolstoi. A great artist, like Michael Angelo or Wagner, becomes, in spite of him- self, the founder of a school, the members of which, having no touchstone of discrimination, copy eagerly his faults as well as his excellences, and, moreover, being without any means of measurement, exaggerate his technique to the pitch of the grotesque. If, by a skilful disposition of lights and shadows on the nude figure, the painter suggests the knotted muscles that go with violent action, his imitators will make their lights higher and their shadows deeper, in the hope of producing even greater effects. If the composer disfigures his work by introducing the leii motif, then his followers will sow their compositions with absurd kit motifs. All this, because there is no means of assaying masterpieces and parting the gold from the dross. Criticism, to be sure, aspires to appraise by ob- jective and universal standards, so that our acceptance or rejection of art methods or works may be rational ; but the standards of one generation of critics are the mockery of the next, so that criticism is, after all, little more than one man's liking or dislike. There are two causes why science diffuses in virtue RationaUty of rational imitation, but not theological, metaphysical, o^j^fg^^"^ political, or ethical thought. I. The applications of a science in the practical arts Practical test the truth of its doctrines. Thus boring and mining ^PPi'<=*t'°ns ago SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Verification "Thought" the sport of prestige test geology, practical sanitation tests pathology and bacteriology, synthetic chemistry tests analytical chemis- try, while spectrum analysis, telephony, wireless teleg- raphy, and X-ray applications test the principles of physics. 2. In science every important statement must be veri- fiable. This it is that distinguishes the fabric of modern science from all previous fabrics, e.g., the Summa of Thomas Aquinas. Science is credible, not because the intellectual power of its builders surpasses that of the Alexandrian philosophers or the mediaeval Schoolmen, but because of its method. Each of its great strides dates from some happy experiment or observation. Torricelli's experiment of balancing thirty-two feet of water against thirty inches of mercury ends "Nature abhors a vacuum." When Newton measured the relative velocities of sound and light, he put a quietus on the argument that we see the lightning before we hear the thimder, "because sight is nobler than hearing." Galileo's detection of Venus's phases with his telescope gave the Ptolemaic system its coup de grdce. Foucault's pendulum made visible the earth's rotation. The laboratory study of carbonic acid gas destroyed Agri cola's theory that the suffocating gases in mines are "the breath of malignant imps." Franklin's kite ends the vision of God "casting thunderbolts." The finding of half -digested fragments of weaker animals in the fossilized bodies of the camivora upset Wesley's amiable theory that the carnage now going on among the animals is the result of Adam's sin ! In consequence of this distinction there are "schools" and "movements" in philosophy, theology, political and ethical "thought," but not in true science. Individual RATIONAL IMITATION 291 scientists, like Haeckel or Weismann, may speculate, but science, while appropriating their verifiable discoveries, rejects their speculations. In philosophy, we have the school of Plato and the school of Aristotle, the Realists and the Nominalists, the dualists and the monists. In ethical thought, there are the followers of Tolstoi and the followers of Nietzsche. In political thought, there are the disciples of Rousseau and the partisans of De Maistre, the school of Webster and the school of Calhoun. In social philosophy, we meet with Fourierites and Owenites, St. Simonians and Marxists, autoritarians and anarchists. In all these, the prestige and authority of the great man come into play. But the genuine scientist wins no dis- ciples, founds no school, leaves no personal impress. Nothing is taken on his ipse dixit} The obituary notice of him in the journals of his science is cold and imper- sonal. His work, and the singleness of aim, close appli- cation, and intellectual power that made possible his work — that is all. Nothing of his personal appearance and daily life, none of the sayings and anecdotes that are lovingly preserved by the disciples of the philosopher or the founder of a religion. The practice of rational imitation grows and ought to ' Kepler's main reasoning as to the existence of a law for cometary movements was right; but his secondary reasoning, that comets move nearly in straight lines, was wrong. His successors verified the former and accepted it, tested the latter and rejected it. Says White : " Very different was this from the theological method. As a rule when there arises a thinker as great in theology as Kepler in science, the whole mass of his conclusions ripens into a dogma. His disciples labor not to test it, but to establish it ; and, while, in the Catholic Church it becomes a dogma to be believed or disbelieved, under the penalty of damnation, it becomes in the Protestant Church the basis for one more sect." — " History of the Warfare of Science with Theology," 203. 292 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The exten- sive growth of rational imitation grow. But its growth may be either extensive or inten- sive. In the one case, the practice extends to new layers of the population; in the other, it invades new depart- ments of thought and activity. One great aim of all culture-diffusing agencies should be the increasing of the number of those who imitate rationally. Universal instruction, free libraries, high-class periodicals, college settlements, the exercise of the suf- frage, women's clubs, experience in voluntary associa- tions, — all can play a part in emancipating people from blind imitation. It is not enough to break the yoke of custom. The radical spirit, coupled with political and social equality but without enlightenment, simply puts mob mind in the place of custom as lord of life. To justify itself democracy must be much more than a politi- cal movement, or even a social movement. Its goal is not attained by giving every man a vote, or even an oppor- timity. It must include a great culture movement aiming to lift all to a plane of discrimination and rational choice. Then, whatever element gains control of society, the Dark Ages can never recur.^ ' Professor Dresslar elicited from 875 California normal school students, four-fifths of whom were young women, 3225 confessions of belief in superstitions. Of the hundreds of distinct superstitions these students were able on demand to recall and put on paper nearly half inspired some belief. What a vast underground sheet of pseudo- wisdom seeping down through the centuries by oral transmission ! If the semi-educated young people to whom we are presently to commit the teaching of our children are such slaves to the unreason of benighted ancestors, can we wonder at the popular faith in lotteries, luck, mascots, fortune tellers, clairvoyants, occultists, mediums, "divine" healers, quacks, patent medicines, absent treatment, water witching, and the like? Enthusiasts who anticipate intellectual and social regeneration within a generation or two in consequence of our universal education would do RATIONAL IMITATION 293 The intensive growth of rational imitation means the Theinten- entrance of science with its verifiable statements into sive growth realms ruled hitherto by authority, tradition, or conven- tion. We see it in the substituting of scientific hygiene for transmitted rules of ablution, propriety, and absti- nence ; of meteorology for empirical weather lore and the guesses of weather "wizards"; of psychiatry for doc- trines of witchcraft and demoniac possession; of com- parative anthropology for the legend of a "chosen people." An ethics basing its norms on human nature and the Ethics nature of the social organization is superseding the alleged commandments of Deity, the precepts of ancient sages, the customs of the fathers, and the edicts of Mrs. Grundy. Sociology, regarding the family as a purely social institu- Sociology tion, to be constituted not according to tradition, or ecclesiastical decree, or the intuitions of great writers, but with reference to individual happiness, social wel- fare, and race interest, promises to end profitless contro- versies as to whether marriage is a sacrament or a contract ; bigoted denunciation and passionate defence of divorce; the "woman's sphere" dogmas; and the appeal to the prescriptive division of labor between husband and wife. The light from child study will guide in matters that Pedagogy have been the football between venerable pedagogic false- hood and sentimental faddism. A scientific economics. Economics acquainted with human nature, the conditions of indus- triousness, thrift and enterprise, and the laws of group well to consider how little of our teaching as yet has the power to build up a rational mental habit, and how thin is the veneer of culture over that great mass of irrational predisposition which in the hour of fear and excitement resumes control of the popular mind and leads on to folly and ruin. — University of California Publications, "Superstition and Education,'' 1907. 294 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY survival, and judging an economic institution not by subjective standards but by the way it tends to work out in the long run, will displace "natural right" dogmas and end the barren age-long controversies over the ethical basis of property, the morality of land ownership, and the rightfulness of interest or inheritance. A jurispru- Juris- dence embodying a scientific apprehension of society's pru ence needs and of the relation of law to society, will thrust aside legal doctrines based on a primitive tradition, a remote code, the "wisdom of our ancestors," or the apocryphal "reasons" ofEered by the commentators. Comparative Comparative politics, coupled with comparative legisla- ^ '"^ tion, will render it unnecessary to take as beacon the philosophy of some political sage, a Rousseau or a Burke, a Hamilton or a Jefferson. The arts as In the practical arts, likewise, the blindly imitated is of scknce"^ yielding to the reasonable or demonstrated. Each of the arts is, in fact, coming to be applied science. One has but to mark the intimate dependence of the practice of medicine on pathology, of nursing on hygiene, of plant and animal breeding on biology, of brewing on bacteri- ology, of cooking on chemistry, of fruit raising on horti- cultural science, and of farming on agricultural science. SUMMARY After a mind has been purged from all regard for prestige, imita- tion proceeds on a rational basis. The attitude of the rational imitator is that known as the " scien- tific." It is not irrational to follow authorities, provided our confidence in them has a rational ground. The growth and diffusion of the practical arts is largely a rational RATIONAL IMITATION 295 process, because they are exposed to competition, and their results admit of measurement. The fine arts, on the other hand, are subject to mob mind, fad, fashion, tradition, and personal prestige. Because of its practical applications and its principle of verifica- tion, science rises and spreads on rational lines. Tradition and personal authority are influential, however, in the various departments of " thought." Rational imitation may grow by reaching more things or by mas- tering more people. In origination and the growth of rational imitation lies the hope of progress. EXERCISES 1. What changes — material and intellectual — are behind the temperance movement? the peace movement? the arts-and-crafts movement ? 2. Contrast the unbridled spirit of innovation and social experi- ment vdth the scientific attitude toward institutions and proposals. 3. Is the obtrusiveness of personality and temperament in litera- ture, painting, and music a sign of advancement or a mark of back- wardness ? 4. What is the rational way of ascertaining woman's " sphere " ? 5. Why is it vain to debate whether marriage is a sacrament or a contract ? 6. Is the wrongfulness of interest settled by showing the interest- taker to be one who " reaps where he has not sown " ? Reasons. 7. How can you settle whether a thing is right — by consulting conscience or by consulting physiology, psychology, and sociology ? CHAPTER XVII INTERFERENCE AND CONFLICT Two kinds of conflict Prestige against prestige Like systems of waves in air or water spreading from different centres of disturbance, incompatible forms of thought or feeling or action, as they are progressively propagated outward through space or downward through time, must eventually encounter and interfere with one another. There comes a moment when cuneiform writ- ing, spreading out from the Euphrates Valley, meets and is checked by the triumphant diffusion of the Phoenician characters, parent of all our own writing; when the spreading worship of Christ comes into collision with the expanding worship of Mithras; when Hindu religious myths, beliefs, and practices, peacefully descending through the centuries from father to son, and from pundit to pupil, find their course blocked by a religion that, having com- pleted the conquest of the Occident, is being carried by missionary zeal into the very citadels of Oriental civiliza- tion; when coffee, introduced into Europe by the Turks and spreading upward from the Southeast, meets the ex- panding empire of tea, whose capitals are England and Russia. Such interferences lead to conflict, of which we can distinguish two chief kinds — silent conflict and vocal conflict, i.e., discussion. Silent conflict is sometimes the struggle of two prestiges. The outcome of the competition between the French language and the English in the Egyptian schools has 396 INTERFERENCE AND CONFLICT 297 turned mainly on the relative prestige of France and England in the eyes of the Egyptians. The brows both of Christianity and of Theosophy are white with the hoar of antiquity, and in many minds their conflict will be decided by their comparative prestige. So, in the inter- ference of the styles of costume launched by rival foot- light favorites, of the examples of vying social leaders in respect to note-paper or parlor recitals, of the interpreta- tions of Hamlet by great actors (Garrick, Kean, Booth, Irving, Mounet-Sully) , of the rowing methods of two champion oarsmen, of the unlike vocalization of two popu- lar singers, the result may hinge entirely on relative per- sonal prestige. Whenever social superiority and subordi- nation are marked, merit is little considered, and it is comparative prestige that is likely to decide the day. Hence, in a hierarchized society, or in the dealings of advanced nations with rude peoples, everything depends on the example set by those looked up to ; and all manner of ascendencies flow from that which confers prestige, viz., military and poUtical ascendency. The magnificence of the Czar's coronation, the splendor of the Durbar at Delhi, aids the ascendency of empire over tribal traditions and feudatory native dynasties, and is, therefore, a great procurer of obedience. Again, conflict is sometimes a duel between a prestige Prestige and a merit. This often is the situation presented when ^g^'?^' '^ merit the new collides with the old. The Dyaks of Borneo used to cut straight into a log, the U-chop. When they came into contact with the easier V-chop of the Euro- peans, they wanted to use it, but their medicine men told them it would anger the gods; so, for a while, they em- ployed the V-chop only when alone in the forest, safe between new and old 298 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY from observation. So, in the struggle between suUee and no-suUee, the Chinese bandaged foot and the natural foot, the hour-glass waist and the natural waist, the prestige is all on one side. When we hesitate whether to write "waistcoat" or "vest," "labour" or "labor," the issue lies between precedent and convenience. In our own society, however, novelty is not without a certain prestige, so that the innovation wins the faddists for nothing; but by far the greater number of people can be impressed only by its merits. The conflict The relation of victor and vanquished in such conflicts brings out clearly the fallacy of the recurring notion that the regression or decay of social fornis is the coimterpart of their progression or growth ; the illusion that a style of painting, an industrial process, a language, or a religion, has a natural old age as it has a natural youth. The fact is that a social form spreads like a system of undulations, radiating from one centre, which do not return on them- selves unless an obstacle is encountered; or like a living species which expands until the limits of its habitat are reached, and then becomes stable. A species of plant or animal does not die, it is exterminated by some better adapted competitor; a machine or a dogma does not die, it is displaced by some new and superior rival. The Divine Right of Kings, the Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures, cujus regio ejus religio, the Ptolemaic system, and the laisse faire policy succumbed, not because they had lost their former congeniality with the human mind, but because they could not compete successfully with certain later modes of thought. The spread or progress of a practice or belief is usually due to some excellence in that practice or belief. Occa- INTERFERENCE AND CONFLICT 299 sionally the regress is due to the loss of this excellence, i.e., why the old is ve quished to changes in the social situation which deprive it of its °id is van- fitness. Thus indissoluble marriage is a misfit as soon as women have become individualized and economically emancipated. The town-meeting plan of government exhibits none of its vaimted merits, once the town has become populous. With the differentiation in the forms of property, the old general property tax becomes a scandal. Generally, however, the decay of a social form is due simply to the encroachments of a successful rival. Sometimes the regress of A is nothing but the obverse of the progress of its substitute B. Thus, the decline curve of stage-coaches is just the growth curve of railroads, turned upside down. So, in the losing battle of sail with steam, of wooden ships with iron ships, of church educa- tion with secular education, the graph of the decadence of the one answers to the graph of the progress of the other. Finally, the duel between two forms may be decided Merit wholly on relative merits. When we hesitate whether to ^^jlS" say "telegraph" or "wire," "exposition" or "exhibition," "rubbers" or "overshoes," prestige is not a factor, for the thing in mind is recent. So, the struggle between banjo and accordion, decimal fractions and vulgar frac- ions, French quotation marks and English quotation marks, sloping handwriting and upright handwriting, cane sugar and beet sugar, the English saddle and the American saddle, is decided essentially upon the basis of comparative excellence. Among the means of deciding the silent struggle are authority, persecution, example, observation, and trial. Authority refers to the one man, or small body of men, 300 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Settling conflict by authority The case of Joseph II having the power to end a struggle summarily. In in- numerable minds of the fourth century a.d. the issue between the old faith and the new was settled by the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity. The will of a few score of men imposed the gold standard on Russia, whereas, in the United States, the matter had to be argued before a jury of thirteen million voters. In one church "Rome speaks," and there is a sudden silence; in another the battle goes on until settled by the vote of an (Ecumenical Council or a General Assembly; in a third it continues until the members have made up their minds for one side or the other, and the conflict dies down for lack of fresh material. For thinkers of a certain school, the intervention of the benevolent autocrat, or the initiative of an enlightened aristocracy is an ideal short-cut to social reform. It seems so easy for the social philosopher to set things right simply by winning over to his ameliorative projects a Frederick the Great or a Napoleon. The fiasco of the reforming Emperor Joseph II of Austria shows, however, what is likely to happen when struggle, instead of agitating the minds of the entire people, is confined to the mind of an autocrat. "He was penetrated by the characteristic ideas of the eighteenth century as to the duties of an absolute monarch, and began at once to give effect to them in a fearless and almost revolutionary spirit. His first step was to combine the various nationalities subject to him into a single state with thirteen administrative districts. He refused to be crowned king of Hungary, and would not summon the Hungarian diet, insisting that the country should be governed as a province, and causing German to be used as INTERFERENCE AND CONFLICT 301 the official language. Among other reforms he proclaimed the abolition of serfdom, substituted various punishments for the capital penalty, established common tribunals, and issued new codes based on the principle that all citizens are equal before the law. He transferred the censorship of books from the clergy to laymen of liberal sympathies, and granted complete freedom to journalism. He instituted public libraries and observatories, founded a medical college in Vienna, a university in Lemberg, and schools for the middle classes in various parts of the monarchy, and encouraged art by offering prizes in con- nection with the academy of the plastic arts. Industry and trade he fostered by destroying many monopolies, by aiding in the establishment of new manufactures, by raising Fiume to the position of a free harbor, and by opening the Danube to his subjects from its source to the Black Sea. ... In 1781 he issued an edict of toleration, granting freedom of worship to all Protestants and to mem- bers of the Greek Church; and between 1782 and 1790 about 700 monasteries were closed, the members of religious orders being reduced from 63,000 to 27,000. All these changes were well meant, but the emperor, in the ardor of his philanthropy, shot too far ahead of the prevailing sen- timent of his people. Moreover, his good intentions were often rendered fruitless by unskilful or unsympathetic sub- ordinates. In nearly every part of the monarchy discon- tent soon manifested itself, and some of the inhabitants of Tyrol broke into open rebellion. The Hungarians bitterly resented the suppression of their ancient privileges, and in 1787 the emperor's new institutions led in several dis- tricts to a furious conflict between the peasantry and the nobles. The estates of the Austrian Netherlands per- 302 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY sistently opposed the execution of his schemes, the clergj being especially active in stirring up popular indignation. ... In Hungary there was so dangerous an agitation that in January, 1790, Joseph had to undo almost every- thing he had attempted to accomplish in that country during the previous nine years; he succeeded only in maintaining the decrees by which he had abolished serf- dom and established toleration. Thus his last days were rendered miserable by the conviction that his career had been a failure." Let a con- An abrupt, Jovian intervention is, therefore, not always fou htout ^° beneficent as it promises to be. It is infinitely more trouble to convert a people than to win over a monarch, but the results are more lasting. Though large bodies move slowly, they rarely recoil. The submitting of on- ward measures to million-headed Demos looks clumsy indeed, and yet it is democratic societies that to-day are the most consistently progressive. So, it may be better for society to rely on its own powers than to be forced ahead by a reforming Numa or Solon. The presence of an authority having the right to decide for all, cuts the nerve of propagandist zeal and interrupts the education of the people. Therefore, better free speech and free press than the enlightened autocrat. That monarch does best who, instead of introducing social reforms offhand, provides those educational agencies that build his people up to the point where they can reform matters for them- selves. Then it does Experience shows, moreover, that, if struggle goes on out afrrah *° ^ finish, there is often no root of bitterness left, and no possibility of the resurrection of error. In this coun- try, the fight for public education, for religious freedom, INTERFERENCE AND CONFLICT 303 for separation of church and state, against imprisonment for debt, and against the property qualification of the suffrage went on to a finish, and hence it is impossible to reopen those questions here. Persecution is another inviting "short-cut" to una- Persecution nimity; but sometimes it is not so short after all. For g^^e^'con" persecution interrupts the other processes that are work- flicts ing in your favor. Once resort to violence, and you can no longer persuade. Persecution causes the persecuted to draw together, encourage one another, and associate only with one another. It closes them to the influences of reason and interest that otherwise would work upon them and win them over. Spain's attempt to drive the Moriscos into orthodoxy made them a sullen, disaffected mass which finally had to be deported, to the lasting injiuy of the country.' In Alsace-Lorraine, Germany chose the attractive method of influencing the struggle of German with French. In Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia adopted the coercive method of insuring the victory of German over Danish. The result is progress in the former case, defeat in the latter. The fact is, in all cul- ture struggles, resort to brute force invigorates the thing aimed at. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Antiochus's rash attempt to force Hellenism upon the Jews brought on the Maccabean revolution, and made the Jews impervious to the Greek culture. Lati- mer's prophecy to Ridley when he was led out to be burned under Bloody Mary, " We shall this day light such a candle in England as shall not soon be put out," is veri- fied in the anti-Catholic bias of England to this day. Russia's ruthless endeavor to drive the Juggernaut car of ' Lea, "The Moriscos of Spain." 304 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY her civilization over the little peoples — the Esthonians, Letts, Poles, Finns, and Georgians — has been a ghastly failure. Thepsy- It is not that the persecuted are right. Martyrdom choiogy of proves the truth of nothing. Any body of homogeneous people cruelly persecuted for some innocent thing will produce martyrs. If a tyrant commands men who shave to let the beard grow, there will presently arise a little fanatical sect of "shavers," and here and there one will bum at the stake rather than give up the razor. The martyr spirit, then, is a mark not of truth, but of collective reaction. This is why religious persecution, though it sometimes succeeds (Spain, Bohemia, France, the extirpa- tion of Buddhism in Hindustan), is always a harder task than the persecutor anticipated. Moreover, he runs the terrible risk of interfering on the wrong side after all. The tragic consequences of the Church's persecution of Roger Bacon are thus stated by White : ' — ■ " Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world had ecclesiasticism allowed the gift. He held the key of treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. With his dis- coveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained ! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone ; it was done to this age also. The nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the thirteenth. But for that interference with science the nineteenth century would be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached before the twentieth century, and even after it. Thousands of precious lives shall be lost, tens of ' "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom," I, 390- INTERFERENCE AND CONFLICT 305 thousands shall sufifer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken dealing with Roger Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth. "In two recent years sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales of scarlet fever ; probably quite as many died in the United States. Had not Bacon been hindered, we should have had in our hands by this time the means to save two-thirds of these victims; and the same is true of typhoid, typhus, cholera, and that great class of diseases of whose physical causes science is just beginning to get an inkling. Put together all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived, and they have not done so much harm to Christianity and the world as has been done by the narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted Roger Bacon, and closed the path which he gave his life to open." Example, Observation, Trial. — A farmer may favor one of two rival reapers, (i) because leading farmers champion and introduce it, (2) because observation of the experi- ence of others shows its superiority, or (3) because he has tried both and found it the better. These three are the leading factors in silent struggles, whether of two models of bicycle, two styles of house decoration, two types of sport, two standards of journalism, or two ideals of manhood. There is, however, a tendency for silent struggle to siient con- become vocal. Rival authorities appeal to argument; br^k°^t'° the persecutor uses reasons as more effective with some intodis- than force; example is reenforced by persuasion; obser- <="'='°° vation leads to formal comparison; calculation takes the place of trial. The rival arguments, reasons, persuasives, comparisons, and calculations amount to discussion. 3o6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SUMMARY Incompatible beliefs or practices propagated from different points in time or space eventually come into conflict witli each other. The conflict may be either of two types — silent conflict or dis- cussion. Silent conflict presents three cases — prestige against prestige, prestige against merit, merit against merit. The regress of a belief or practice is not the reverse of its previ- ous progress, but the obverse of the progress of its successful rival. Possible factors in the issue of a silent conflict are authority, per- secution, example, observation, and trial. Authority may decide conflict speedily, but its settlement is not always lasting. Persecution is costly and checks the milder influences that help to settle a conflict. Silent conflict tends to pass over into discussion. EXERCISES 1. Show the social psychology under the maxim, "Nothing suc- ceeds like success." 2. Show that conflict — whether silent or vocal — between pres- tiges, tends to broaden out ; between merits, tends to narrow down. 3. What is the chief cause of the death of institutions in a dy- namic society? In a progressive society? 4. Is there more place for authority in settling public questions than in settling private questions ? 5. Ought the conflict between tjrpes of water filtration or sewage disposal or armor plate to be settled by the voters or by authority ? What class of public questions should be settled by the voters? 6. Is it persecution to punish a man for relying on Christian Sci- ence or " absent treatment " when his wife or his child is seriously ill? 7. Is it wrong to punish those who persist in folly that hurts only themselves, or merely inexpedient ? CHAPTER XVin DISCUSSION Sometimes a struggle can be summarily closed by in- Discussion yoking some authority acknowledged by both sides; for ^^f'^'^^"^' example, the Pope on dogma, Tyndall on spontaneous conflict generation, the Prince of Wales on some point of eti- quette. Oftener, however, it is discussion that settles a struggle when it reaches an acute stage. For discussion hurries conflicts to a conclusion. Sixty years ago the silent struggle between man and woman became vocal, and the result has been a hasty removal of many barriers that hemmed in woman, and a rapid improvement in her social position. In the United States, African slavery would, no doubt, have died out in time by the silent opera- tion of economic and moral forces, but discussion greatly hastened its end. Since, about a generation ago, a few bold spirits began to ask "Why?" in public, the religious tabu on theatre, dancing, card-playing, secular literature and art, has loosened more than in all the previous interval since the Puritan Commonwealth. So, the disapproval of drinking has developed more in the seventy years since Father Mathew began the temperance agitation, than in the two centuries before. Hence, all losing sides dread Doomed discussion, for it shortens their lease of life. Silence is dko^sion^ for them a kind of reprieve. Their instinct, then, is to choke off discussion at all hazards. The geocentrists got the Papal Index for nearly two hundred years to forbid 307 3o8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY the faithful from reading "all books which affirm the motion of the earth." The Index of the books abso- lutism forbids to be printed or circulated in Russia reads like a list of the monumental works of modern research and thought. The tottering Old Regime in France per- secuted and hounded the Encyclopedists. The German monarchists long sought to withstand the rising tide of social democracy with a "law of associations and meet- ings." The French miUtarists endeavored to gag discus- sion of the Dreyfus case. In the lower South after 1835 all open criticism of slavery was prohibited, and on the border desperate means were taken to silence the abo- litionists.' In the state of Delaware and in the city of Detroit frantic attempts have been made by rich tax- dodgers to throttle single-tax speakers. Curative Conversely, the side that feels sure of its case does not power of free persecute. Therefore it is safe to infer that the cause discussion '■ which courts publicity and discussion has time on its side, whereas the cause that ducks, slinks, or applies the gag, ' The result is stated by Hart: "Nothing could have been more favor- able to the abolitionists than this succession of outbreaks, which flashed public attention upon Garrison, Birney, and Lovejoy, and placed their personal character in the strongest contrast to the means employed to silence them. Mob violence emphasized the fact that the abolitionists were not acting contrary to law, and it aroused the fighting spirit of thousands of people who knew very little about the controversy except that the abolitionists had something to say so important that it must be prevented by violence and murder." — " Slavery and Abolition," 249. " To assure the world that slavery was God-given, hallowed by the experience of mankind, enjoined by Scripture, the foundation of republican government, the source of all Southern blessings — and then to insist that it could be overthrown by the mere wind of doctrine — was a con- fession that it was really unstable and iniquitous. No great institution contributing to human enlightenment has ever needed to be protected by silence." — Ibid., 312. See also 234-237. DISCUSSION 309 ought to rest under suspicion. Seeing that no great wrong can long survive open discussion, we may char- acterize free speech, free assemblage, and free press as the rights preservative of all rights. Safeguard these funda- mentals, and the rest must come. This is why free gov- ernment, although it is by no means the same thing as popular government, is usually the vestibule to it. When discussion is free, all use of violence to change the per- sonnel or the form of government is criminal, seeing that a peaceful way lies open to the reformer. When, on the other hand, brute force is employed to prevent an imhappy people from organizing their minds into that spiritual structure we call public opinion, they have as much right to strike out destructively as the householder who wakes to find the fingers of a burglar closing on his throat. Discussion presupposes mental contact, hence is fav- Growing ored by modern facilities for communication, — press, ™P'P"=°e^ telegraph, cheap travel, cheap books, free libraries, etc. sion These substitute discussion of principles and policies for petty gossip, and attention to general concerns for atten- tion to private, family, or neighborhood concerns. There is to-day a far greater amount of fructifying discussion than ever before, and it touches more topics, plays over more of life. That "nowadays no subject is sacred" means that every belief, practice, and institution is called upon to justify itself. Male sexual license, the indis- soluble marriage, the marriage bond itself, are required to furnish reasons. It is coming to be recognized that there is nothing of concern to human beings which may not profitably be discussed in the right spirit, by the right persons, at the right time. This is why the downfall of 3IO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY an effete dogma, the abandonment of an unwise policy, a harmful practice, a vicious custom, or a wasteful process, is prompter now than ever before. This explains the miracles of transformation we witness in human relations and arrangements. It is because that great radical, Dis- cussion, invades every department of life and hurries to a close long-smouldering conflicts, that ours is such a revolu- tionary epoch. "Age of endless talk," sneers the cynic, forgetting that, but for the copious talk and print, it could not be an age of reason and redress. Well has it been said : — Talk is the " It is safe to suppose that one-half of the talk of the ^^^' , world on subiects of general interest is waste. But the changer of j o opinion Other half certainly tells. We know this from the change in ideas from generation to generation. We see that opinions which at one time everybody held became absurd in the course of half a century, — opinions about religion and morals and manners and government. Nearly every man of my age can recall old opinions of his own, on sub- jects of general interest, which he once thought highly respectable, and which he is now almost ashamed of having ever held. He does not remember when he changed them, or why, but somehow they have passed away from him. In communities these changes are often very striking. The transformation, for instance, of the England of Cromwell into the England of Queen Anne, or of the New England of Cotton Mather into the New England of Theodore Parker and Emerson, was very extraordinary, but it would be very difficult to say in detail what brought it about, or when it began. Lecky has some curious observations, in his ' History of Ration- alism,' on these silent changes in new beliefs apropos of J-/XOV^UOOXV-/i'N 311 the disappearance of the belief in witchcraft. Nobody could say what had swept it away, but it appeared that in a certain year people were ready to bum old women as witches, and a few years later were ready to laugh at or pity any one who thought old women could be witches. 'At one period,' says he, 'we find every one disposed to believe in witches; at a later period we find this predis- position has silently passed away.' The belief in witch- craft may perhaps be considered a somewhat violent illustration, like the change in public opinion about slavery in this country. But there can be no doubt that it is talk — somebody's, anybody's, everybody's talk — by which these changes are wrought, by which each genera- tion comes to feel and think differently from its predeces- sor. No one ever talks freely about anything without contributing something, let it be ever so little, to the unseen forces which carry the race on to its final destiny Even if he does not make a positive impression, he counter- acts or modifies some other impression, or sets in motion some train of ideas in some one else, which helps to change the face of the world. So I shall, in disregard of the great laudation of silence which filled the earth in the days of Carlyle, say that one of the functions of an educated man is to talk, and, of course, he should try to talk wisely." ' In areas where, after al\, feeling or instinct, not reason, when con- decides, discussion can do little to accelerate the issue. t''°™''syis ' fruitful De gustibus non est disputandum. Barren are discussions of Italian opera and German opera, asstheticism. Whit- man's poetry, Whistler's "arrangements," race amalga- mation. For here the matter is one of taste, and a com- mon basis is lacking. The best type of discussion is that •Godkin, "Problems of Modern Democracy," 221-224. 312 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY between parties who agree as to ends and differ only as to means, because we have feelings about ends but are cold-blooded in choosing means. "Shall we by law pro- hibit child labor?" Compare two friends of children dis- cussing this, one a believer in state action, the other a believer in trade union action, with the discussion of it between a philanthropist and a factory owner. "Shall we retain the Philippines?" Compare discussion of this between two men whose aim is the welfare of the natives, with the discussion between one of these men and an exploiter whose maxim is, "The Philippines for the Americans!" "Shall we announce from the pulpit the results of the Higher Criticism?" yields a very different discussion between two lovers of truth than between one who cares only for truth and one who cares only for dogma. "Shall we adopt the direct primary?" is a much more fertile topic if discussed by two friends of good government than if discussed by a friend of good government and a corrupt boss. When means or methods are in question, we appeal to the judgment; when ends are in question, we aim at the feelings. Thus, the pro- hibitionist tries to inspire disgust for the saloon. His opponent endeavors to arouse resentment against "inter- ference with personal liberty." When con- Without a common basis discussion becomes wran- '™fit?^'^ gling, the effort not to win over opponents, but to win neutrals. Hence, ridicule and vilification, coining of epithets, catch phrases, and slogans. Hence, appeals to passion and prejudice, such as "Do you want your daugh- ter to marry a nigger?" "Vote as you shot — against the South!" "Vote for the Liberal and you vote for the Boer!" "Who will haul down the flag?" "God- DISCUSSION 313 less" public schools! "Freedom of contract." "Drey- fusards." "Little Englanders." An inventory of the stock appeals of a political campaign shows how inapt is the phrase "campaign of education." The really profit- able discussion of political questions is that which occurs before the subsidized newspapers and the hired spell- binders have filled the air with dust. The reason why theological controversy so fatally de- Theory of scends into polemic is that all discussion of things supernal * f ' ^°°P' t^ •/ o J: cal polemic contains the seeds of degeneration. It is owing to this that we hear of an odium theologicum, but not of an odium scientificum. Theologians are certainly as just and kindly men as scientists, but after they have marshalled in vain their texts and their reasonings, they have noth- ing else to appeal to. When the scientist has exhausted his ammxmition without effect, he can go after fresh evi- dence. It is not easy to settle by observation the ques- tion of the open Polar Sea, the sources of the Nile, or the canals on Mars; but it is child's play compared with getting decisive facts on the question of the nature of the Godhead, or the future state of unbaptized infants. Compare the battle between trans-substantiationists and con-substantiationists, homo-ousians and homoi-ousians, with the debate between the Neo-Lamarckians and the Neo-Darwinians. When the naturalists found they could not decide the question without more facts, they declared a truce and went to cutting off the tails of successive genera- tions of mice ! Sometimes, as in the struggle between two prejudices, The path of tastes, or prestiges, both disputants wrangle; but, when desperation a merit is pitted against a prestige or a sentiment, one side argues while the other vituperates. This is plainly 314 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY seen in the debates on the social recognition of negroes, the recognition of the labor unions, the regulation of corporations, the taxation of site values, and women suffrage. In the discussing of vivisection, compulsory vaccination, the segregation of vice, the legal control of prostitution, the census-taking of disease, etc., one side appeals to reason, the other to sentiment. Beyond wrangling lie the appeals that rally the partisans of either side, and the passing of the struggle from the realm of social psychology into that of pugilistics.' ' The fatal trend is shown in "Truthful James's" account of the row "That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow." "Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society, Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones. " Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there, From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare; And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules. Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules. " Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault, It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault; He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown, And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town. " Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent To say another is an ass, — at least, to all intent; Nor should the individual who happens to be meant Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent. " Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen. And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more. " For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage In a warfare with the remnants of the palaeozoic age; And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin. Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in." — Bret Haete, "Poems." DISCUSSION 315 The efiScacy of discussion in abbreviating conflicts Breaking up depends on the access of people to its influence. When 1"^°"^^ folks are matted together into impermeable strata, classes, hastens or commimities, the ferment of discussion operates only ^ssimUation on the exterior of the mass. Chinatown, French Canada, Liberia, the Ghetto, the slums, the Black Belt in the South, the Hungarian districts in Pennsylvania, the Men- nonite villages in North Dakota, — these reveal what hap- pens when social islands are formed. As pulverizing a lump of lime hastens its slaking, as comminuting food aids digestion, as splintering wood accelerates its com- bustion, so there is a speedier termination of the conflict between the peculiar and the general when social lumps are broken up. Such has been the effect of stirring a Gentile leaven through the Mormon communities. Out- side the cotton belt, slavery brought the white and black races into close personal contact and hastened the civilizing of the blacks. Since emancipation there has been a marked tendency to segregate,' resulting in spots in condi- tions almost Liberian. The French Canadian is inaccessible to modem ideas at home, but he succumbs in the Massa- chusetts factory town where discussion and example have a fair chance at him. The effects of a trade union in detaching the immigrant from his clan organizations and exposing him to the play of Americanizing influences is thus set forth by Colonel Wright :^ "In every trade union. The trade however conservative, there are members who will occa- ^"°°i^„. sionally get the floor and advise their hearers to vote high izer of the wages and shorter hours at the ballot box. As the groups '"^'g^^"-* »See "America's Race Problems," 115, 123-124, 128, 136-137. 'U. S. Bulletin of Labor, Januar>', 1905, "The Influence of Trade Unions on Immigrants," 6. 3i6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY of Slovaks gather around after the business is over to have these things explained to them, many get their first real idea of what the ballot and election day mean, and the relation of these to the Government itself. In their own home countries the two essential, if not only, elements of the peasant and agricultural laborer's mind is to believe and obey, or follow. Advantage is taken of this fact here by clan politicians, as well as the clan leader in every de- partment. Once the leader can make these people believe in him, he thinks for the entire group, and insists that their duty consists in following his lead implicitly. Necessarily, the trade union, in order to get them to break away from the leader that opposed the imion on industrial lines, would be compelled to urge them to consider their own personal and group interests as wage workers; to think and act for themselves along lines where they know the real conditions better than any one else, and certainly better than their leader in a child insurance society, or something else as remote. Here, too, are the first germs of what may be called departmental thinking implanted in their minds — that is, that while a leader may be worthy of their confi- dence in one thing, it does not necessarily follow that he is so in some other class of interests. "It is doubtful if any organization other than a trade union could accomplish these things, for only the bread- and-butter necessity would be potent enough as an influ- ence to bring these people out of the fixed forms and crystallizations of life into which they have been com- pressed. Certain it is that no other organization is attempt- ing to do this work, at least not by amalgamation, which is the only way assimilation can be secured among these various foreign elements. The drawing of these people away from DISCUSSION 317 their petty clique leaders and getting them to think for themselves upon one line of topics, namely, the industrial conditions and the importance of trade organization, result in a mental uplift. The only way they can pull a Slovak away from his leader is to pull him up until he has gotten above his leader along the lines of thought they are work- ing on." In discussion three phases of conflict may be observed, Three corresponding to the possible relations between two in- P'^^f °f , vocal con- compatible beliefs or desires.' flict I. A denies or opposes B, hut B does not deny or oppose A. — This is seen when A is an established dogma or institution, B an innovation. The book that gave the world the heliocentric theory crept forth with a grovelling preface to the effect that Copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the earth's movement not as a fact, but as a hypothesis ! Galileo sought to reconcile the discoveries of his telescope with the Scriptures, and when he brought out his Dialogo signed a stultifying preface in which the Copernican theory was virtually exhibited as a play of the imagination. Boscovich, obedient Jesuit that he was, said : "I regard the earth as immovable; nevertheless for sim- plicity in explanation I will argue as if the earth moves; for it is proved that of the two hypotheses the appearances favor this idea." The theologians, on the other hand, exaggerated the incompatibility of heliocentrism with their system. They declared that the former "vitiates the whole Christian plan of salvation," "casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation," "tends toward infidelity," " is of all heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous. Argument against the immortality 'See Tarda, "La logique sociale," 138-141. 3i8 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves." The author was denounced as "heretic," "infidel," and "atheist." In the same spirit the theologian denounces early geology as "infidel," while geology professes no antagonism whatever to the Church. The mass of belief behind infant science is so little that priests, eager to crush science while it is yet weak, accentuate the contradiction between them ; while science, conscious of its weakness, avoids conflict and pleads only to be let alone. The same attitude is seen in certain of the early Fathers who sought to propitiate their Pagan neighbors by emphasizing the agreements between Greek Philosophy and the Christian belief. So the "rights of man" professed nothing subversive at first; while the privileged orders instantly declared war on them. So new tastes timidly introduce themselves alongside the older needs; but conservatives promptly oppose "the new- fangled foreign luxuries" as Cato denoimced Greek works of art and Asiatic refinements. 2. A and B mutually deny and oppose one another. — This is the phase of fiercest contention, when the new feels strong enough to throw off the mask and declare its downright incompatibility with the old. Then Luther succeeds Erasmus ; Le Place, GaUleo ; Voltaire, . Des- cartes; Strauss, Reimarus; Huxley, Darwin; and Danton, Mirabeau. Astronomy, finding a current in its favor, no longer pretends to furnish confirmation for dogmas which respond only with anathemas. Science declares war on the traditional cosmogony and boldly admits that theology and science cannot be reconciled. So democracy takes the field against privilege, and labor DISCUSSION 319 avows that it aims at nothing less than securing for the laborer "the whole produce." 3. A does not deny or oppose B, but B denies or op- poses A. — The confidence in the methods of science at last becomes so great that theology no longer dares accen- tuate its contradiction. It strives to compromise with science, clutches eagerly at "scientific" proofs/ and seeks to rebuild its shattered dogmas in the region as yet un- subdued by advancing science. Divines eagerly "recon- cile" Genesis and Geology, but geologists go on with their work careless whether the two are reconciled or not. Theology forms all sorts of amalgam with science; but science declines even to discuss, and passes by in silent scorn the horde of bastard theories. So, nowadays, selfish privilege no longer openly opposes democracy, but cham- pions "imperialism." Capitalism no longer flouts the demand for legislation to protect labor, but pleads "con- stitutional limitations." Men no longer denounce woman as "strong-minded" and "unwomanly" when she asks for equal opportunities, but profess that the hampering restrictions upon her are in the interest of woman her- self ! Such are the phases to be noticed in a particular logical Discussion duel. But the product of one of these duels becomes the ^^H^^ starting-point of the next, so that there is a certain evolu- tion tion of discussion to be discerned in the history of a civi- ' Speaking of Hoffmann's "scientific" theory of the action of the devil in causing Job's boils, White says: "This effort at a gMMJ-scientific explanation which should satisfy the theological spirit, comical as it at first seems, is really worthy of serious notice, because it must be con- sidered as the beginning of that inevitable effort at compromise which we see in the history of every science when it begins to appear triumphant." — Op. cit. II, 62. 320 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY lization. The cause and course of this evolution cannot be better stated than in the words of Tarde : ' — "It is only after the mental discussion between contra- dictory ideas within the same mind has ended, that any verbal discussion is possible between two men who have solved the question differently. Similarly, if verbal, written, or printed discussions between groups of men, and groups that are ever widening, take the place of verbal discussion between two men, it is because the more limited discussion has been brought to an end by some relative and temporary agreement, or some sort of unanimity. These. groups are first split up into an endless multitude of little coteries, clans, churches, forums, and schools, which combat one another; but at length, after many polemics, they are welded into a very small number of great parties, religions, parliamentary groups, schools of philosophy, and schools of art, which engage one another in mortal combat. Was it not thus that the Catholic faith became gradually established? In the first two or three centuries of the Church's history, countless discussions, always intense and often bloody, were waged among the members of each local church, ending in their agreeing upon a creed; but this creed, disagreeing in certain par- ticulars with those of neighboring churches, gave rise to conferences and provincial councils, which solved the difficulties, excepting that they occasionally disagreed with one another, and were forced to carry their disputes higher up, to national or oecumenical councils. . . . The unity of legal codes has long since been accomplished in an analogous manner : countless local customs have arisen, settling thousands of individual discussions concerning '"Social Laws," 125-132 passim. DISCUSSION 321 rights (though not all, as the court records prove) ; these customs, coming into conflict with one another, have been reconciled by certain sectional customs, which have finally been replaced by uniform legislation. The unity of science, operating slowly over a wide field, through a succession of discussions, alternately settled and reopened, among scientists and scientific schools, would give rise to similar reflections. . . . "The objection may possibly be raised that as races The secular become more civilized they tend more and more to dis- ^^^tJof cussion, and that, far from taking the place of private discussion discussion, our publi discussions, polemics of the press, and parliamentary debates only add fuel to them. But such an objection would be without force. For if savages and barbarians discuss little (which is fortunate, since most of their discussions degenerate into quarrels and combats), it is because they scarcely speak or think at all. When we consider the very small number of their ideas, we ought to be surprised that they clash so often, relatively speaking; and we should marvel to find men with so few different interests so quarrelsome. On the other hand, a thing which we ought to wonder at, but which we scarcely notice, as a matter of fact, is this : that in our own civilized cities, despite the great current of ideas sweeping over us in conversation and reading, there are, on the whole, so few discussions, and these so lacking in warmth. We should be amazed to find that men who think and talk so much contradict one another so seldom, to see that they accomplish so much and clash so little ; just as we should wonder at seeing so few carriage accidents in our streets, which are so animated and crowded, or at seeing so few wars break out in this era of complex and far-reaching 322 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Law of de- velopment of discus- international relations. What is it, then, that has brought lis into agreement on so many points? It is the three great productions that have been gradually wrought out by centuries of discussion ; namely, Religion, Jurisprudence, and Science. . . . " To sum up. The strife of opposition in human society, in its three principal forms — war, competition, and dis- cussion — proves obedient to one and the same law of development through ever widening areas of temporary pacification, alternating with renewals of discord more centrally organized and on a larger scale, and leading up to a final, at least partial, agreement." SUMMARY Discussion is the illuminating flame into which smouldering con- flicts burst. All losing sides dread discussion and try to stamp it out. A people that enjoys free discussion is likely to conquer all the other freedoms it can profitably use. Discussion is sterile in matters that do not admit of being decided by the reason. It is profitless when the appeal is to passion and prejudice rather than to reason. There is a well-marked path by which intellectual battle descends into physical collision. Social lumps cannot become incandescent in the flame of discus- sion till they are broken up. With respect to the degree of aggressiveness of the combatants the conflict between new and old presents three phases. Discussion is subject to the same law of development as the other forms of opposition in society. DISCUSSION 323 EXERCISES 1. Why is discussion able to "hurry conflicts to a conclusion"? 2. What are the rules to be observed in order that discussion shall be enlightening and fruitful? 3. If two elements in a group differ as to ends and neither can influence the other in discussion, by what means can they be brought to abide peacefully together? 4. Show that the battle of new truth is sometimes against organ- ized dogmatism's desire to limit knowledge, sometimes against organ- ized conservatism's desire to limit action. 5. Compare the methods of these foes of new truth : — a. The bigotry of the ignorant. b. The impatience of the temperamental conservatives. c. The alarmed self-interest of crafts, professions, or classes " in danger to be set at nought." CHAPTER XIX THE RESULTS OF CONFLICT Certain conflicts continue be- cause people differ in nature Or because people are born young The outcome of the duel between rival culture elements may be various. Some struggles last indefinitely because of inborn differences between human beings. This is akin to the unceasing warfare between highlanders and low- landers, or between nomads and sedentary populations, as in Arabia. Thus, it is likely that the great rival types of diet, that with sugar and that of sour, heavy foods in association with liquor, will persist because they correspond to differences of palate. Vowel languages and consonant languages seem to go with contrasted types of race psy- chology, and it is little likely that one group will finally replace the other. So long as one kind of man strives to rid himself of risk, while another type welcomes risk as a relish and a stimulus, the feud between gambling and anti- gambling will continue. It is not likely that the Presby-' terian Church will in the end absorb all the Methodists or the Methodist Church absorb all the Presbyterians, seeing that Presbyterian intellectualism and Methodist emotionalism appeal to different temperaments, and each is certain to find a following. So, in ethical opinion, one type of man leans toward the justice of the Old Testament, while another type is attracted by the brotherly love of the New Testament. Or, the struggle may continue because it is a duel between an illusion and a paradox. The world is round but seems flat, moves but seems stationary. Each new generation is 324 THE RESULTS OF CONFLICT 325 staggered at this dilemma, and, however early or impres- sively we teach the. doctrine of heliocentrism, there is a brief struggle in the pupil's mind between the authority of the text-book and the evidence of his senses. Now, in just the same way, the conflict between self-indulgence and temperance is always breaking out afresh, because it is a paradox to say that the way to be happy is to quit when you still want more. The illusion of Epicureanism fights always with the paradox of Stoicism, for what seems more absurd on its face than weeding out your desires instead of trying to gratify them all? In the reform of public morals the champions of physical force never surrender to the believers in moral suasion, for what looks more foolish than improving the conduct of men by the tedious method of persuasion when you can threaten them with the mailed fist? It is because the path of life is so thickset with these pitfalls of illusion that it is necessary to maintain a distinct profession — the clergy — to teach people the beneficent moral paradoxes that save them from these pitfalls. In the second place, struggles may terminate ; but here we can distinguish three cases. In the first case, one side is silenced or convinced. This Conflicts can be compared to a warfare resulting in the extermina- ^J^^^J^^ tion of one belligerent by the other. In silent conflict the tion of one use of the preposition has triumphed over the declension ^^^^^'^ ""^ ending of the noun and the use of the auxiliary verb over the inflection ending of the verb. Short hair for men has triumphed over long hair; and for the women of the Germanic peoples, the flowing dress of southern Europe has prevailed over the close-fitting dress congenial to the northern races. Thus have been exterminated armor, 326 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Or by their coming to- gether on a middle ground knee-breeches, the spinning-wheel, the morality play, the Christmas carol. In the sphere of vocal conflict there is the victory of the principle of public trial, of equality of all before the law, of the freedom of the press, of religious toleration; the utter extermination of astrology, mesmer- ism, the doctrine of "signatures," the "special creation" hypothesis, the "chosen people" dogma, the doctrine of Divine Right, the policy of free banking, the practice of judicial torture, the principle of imprisonment for debt. In the second case, the struggle ends because a middle ground is found upon which both parties can stand. This is analogous to the warfare ending in the assimilation and amalgamation of the combatants. The ancient duel be- tween fatalism and free will terminates in the acceptance of the scientific determinism which insists that every volition must have its cause in the self, yet recognizes no decree of an outside fate, and admits that the self that wills may be a purified self wrought out by a ceaseless endeavor to realize a personal ideal. The battle between centrali- zation and local government dies down in the general recognition of the fact that the nature of the particular function decides whether it can best be discharged by a local unit, or ought to be passed up to the general govern- ment. The controversy between romanticists and natural- ists issues in the agreement that, while the writer must treat his material in strict fidelity to real life, he has an infinite field to choose his material from, and he has no excuse for producing a work that is repulsive or demoralizing. In political economy the rivalry between the abstinence and the productivity theories of interest ends in the recognition that two reasons are as necessary to a theory of interest as two blades to a pair of scissors; that the reluctance to tition of ter- ritory THE RESULTS OF CONFLICT 327 save causes interest to be demanded for the use of capital, and the productivity of that capital enables the interest to be paid. The fight between natural science and the ancient classics for the dominant place in the college curriculum is quieted by bringing to the front a third group, the social sciences (history, civics, economics, soci- ology) , which contribute a certain discipline neither of the other groups can impart. In the third case, the struggle ends because specializa- Or by a par- tion takes place. This is akin to warfare that terminates by partition of territory between the parties. In the com- petition between sail and steam it is found that wind power is still the cheapest agency for moving coarse, slow freight. Once it was supposed that the locomotive would completely oust the stage-coach ; but there are sixty-odd stage routes maintained to-day in the state of California, and the stage-coach is still by far the cheapest method of trans- porting a small number of passengers over a mountain route. Far from being vanquished by the railroad, the inland waterway finds in the moving of heavy freight, like stone, coal, lumber, and brick, a field of usefulness in which it is perfectly able to hold its own. Likewise, in the com- petition between steam power and water power, hard coal and soft coal, large industry and small industry, steam railroad and electric interurban, it is finally discovered that, instead of fighting to the death, each of the rivals has a field in which it is secure from the pursuit of the other. Only the common border of these two fields is debatable land. The interference between "admittance" and "admission" ends when one is used for the act of letting in, the other for permission to come in. The clash between "visit" and "visitation" is settled when the latter 328 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY term is reserved for the more formal and ofRcial act. In vocal conflict we see the long rivalry between the patriar- chal and the contract theories of social genesis die away as one is seen to hold for the genetic grouping, the other for the congregate grouping. The battle between intui- tionism and utilitarianism ends as soon as the theory of evo- lution makes it clear that, on the one hand, natural selec- tion will fix in human nature other-regarding impulses ; on the other hand, that such impulses can refer only to con- duct promoting the survival of the social group or the species. Evolution, likewise, divides the honors between optimism and pessimism by insisting with the optimists that the processes of adaptation tend continually to bring the species into harmony with its environment, and ad- mitting with the pessimists that these processes are so slow that men may be very poorly fitted to be happy amid the artificial conditions imposed by the growth of their numbers and their wants. No question Sometimes the division is unscientific, and later on the it ^'settled'' discussion breaks out again. Is the Bible errant or iner- light rant ? Solved by declaring it to be infallible for religious truth. But the progress of the Higher Criticism seems to make this distinction no longer tenable. The struggle between Church and State appeared to be settled by the ingenious distinction between "temporal" and "spiritual" power. Let the State deal with the body, the Church with the soul. But this demarcation no longer serves when the State confronts such problems as the civil control of mar- riage, the freedom of the press, the care of dependents, and the promotion of education. So, the slavery com- promises in the Federal Constitution, and the acts of Con- gress finally proved unable to repress conflict, and men THE RESULTS OF CONFLICT 329 came to realize that "the Union cannot endure half slave and half free." SUMMARY Not all duels between rival elements of culture terminate. Some persist because society always includes great diversities of taste, temperament, and mental habit. Others persist because experience establishes some truths which seem paradoxical to the young. When duels terminate they end in three different ways. Some end because one side is annihilated by the other. Some end because a more comprehensive principle or policy is found which includes and supersedes them both. Finally, some end because each side has found a position from which it cannot be dislodged. EXERCISES 1. Why is it that almost invariably truth or wisdom is found to be with neither extremist in a controversy but somewhere between the extremists? 2. Why is a law or institution apt to be the offspring of a com- promise; a reigning belief, moral standard or personal ideal, the survivor of a logical duel? 3. Show that some institutions — e.g., the jury system — are sub- ject to endless controversy because their faults lie nearer the surface than their merits. 4. Show that some discussions run on because the ulterior con- sequences of a policy — say outdoor poor relief — contradict its immediate results, or because its advantages — say the institutional care of children — admit of readier formulation than its dis- advantages. 5. Show that some conflicts are protracted because one side can state its case more freely than the other — e.g., indissoluble marriage vs. divorce. CHAPTER XX UNION AND ACCUMULATION' As culture grows the conflicts be- tween new and old be- come more acute Alternative to the advance of culture by conflict and substitution is advance by union and accumulation. This is, in fact, the prior process. Accumulation precedes substitution, since there can be no replacement until there has been occupancy. For instance, no struggle between new and old can occur until some progress has been made. Then the answers already given to questions block the way to better solutions, and conflict ensues. Early re- ligious thinking issued in myths rather than dogmas, and, since there was room for all of them, they did not interfere. Early observations on natural phenomena dispelled darkness rather than disproved errors. Not until a rank growth of speculations had sprung up was it necessary to conduct a vast discussion in order to over- throw a Ptolemaic system, a sacred cosmology, or a theory of the special creation of species. "When the art of war first arose, every new weapon or drill or tactic could be added to those already in existence, whereas, in our own day it is seldom that a new engine of war or a new military regulation does not have to battle for some time with others which its introduction has rendered useless. In the be- ginnings of industry, in its pastoral and agricultural forms, every newly cultivated plant and every newly domesti- cated animal were added to the feeble resources of field 'See Tarde, "Laws of Imitations," 173-184. 330 UNION AND ACCUMULATION 331 and bam, of garden and stable, and did not, like to-day, replace other domestic plants and animals of almost equal worth. At that time, likewise, every new astronomical or physical observation which lit up some hitherto obscure point in the human mind took an undisputed place side by side with anterior observations which it in no way con- tradicted." * Nearly every segment of social culture has a side that Every fabric admits of accumulation by the union of the new with the ?! '^"''"'■* •' has two sides old, and another side that admits only of the replacement — oneex- of the old by the new. When two civilizational spheres — ^^^^ ^^^ ^ such as Occident and Orient — come to penetrate each other, each can borrow much from the other without ex- periencing disturbance or opposition of any kind. There comes a time, however, when no further borrowing can take place without discarding something already in hand. At this point begin interference and conflict. In language the vocabulary goes on enlarging indefi- nitely, while the grammar soon reaches a point where fiu-ther growth can take place only by substitution. " Religions also, like languages, have two aspects. They Rigid and have their dictionary of narrative and legend, their starting- pJ^*J? f^^ point, and their religious grammar of dogma and ritual. The former is composed of Biblical or mythological tales, of histories of gods and demigods, of heroes and saints, and it can develop without stop; but the latter cannot be extended in the same way. After all the main conscience- tormenting problems have been solved according to the peculiar principle of the given religion, a moment comes when no new dogma can be introduced which does not partly contradict established dogma; similarly, no new 'Tarde, "Laws of Imitations,'' 174. 332 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY rite, inasmuch as it is an expression of dogma, can be freely introduced when all the dogmas have already been expressed in ritual. Now, after the creed and ritual of a reUgion have been defined, its martyrology, hagiography, and ecclesiastical history never fail to grow richer, and this even more rapidly than before. Moreover, the saints and martyrs and devotees of a mature religion not only do not contradict one another in the conventionality and orthodoxy of all their acts, thoughts, and even miracles, but mutually reflect and indorse one another. ... If the religion is primarily narrative, it is highly variable and plastic; if it is primarily dogmatic, it is essentially unchangeable. In Graeco-Latin paganism there is al- most no dogma, and since ritual has, therefore, almost no dogmatic significance, its symbolism is of the more distinctively narrative kind. It may represent, for ex- ample, an episode in the life of Ceres or Bacchus. Under- stood in this way there may be no end to the accumulation of different rites. If dogma amounted to almost nothing, narrative was almost everything in ancient polytheism. Therefore it had incredible facility for enrichment." Compare the plastic religion formed thus upon a body of myths with a monotheistic religion like Islam or Catholi- cism, in which mutually consistent and supporting dogmas and sacraments and rites are so articulated into a solid system that no change can be brought about save in the face of the greatest resistance. Rigid and Science is extensible on the side of observations and plastic sides measurements, but not on the side of hypotheses, theories, of science ' j r j j and generalizations. "As long as science merely enumer- ates and describes facts, sense-given data, it is susceptible of indefinite extension. And science begins in this way UNION AND ACCUMULATION 333 by being a collection of non-related as well as non-con- tradictory phenomena. But as soon as it becomes dog- matic and law-making, in turn, as soon as it conceives of theories that are able to give to facts the air of mutual confirmation instead of merely mutual non-contradiction, as soon, indeed, as it unwittingly synthesizes the data of sensation under intuitive mental forms which are implicit general propositions called time, space, matter, and force, then science becomes, perhaps, the most incapable of extension of all human achievements. Scientific theories undoubtedly become more complete, but this happens through mutual substitution and through periodically fresh starts, whereas observations and experiments go on accumulating. Certain leading hypotheses that re- appear from one age to another — atomism, dynamism (modem evolution), monadology, idealism (Platonic or Hegelian) — are the inflexible frames of the swelling and overflowing mass of facts. Only, among these master thoughts, these hypotheses or inventions of science, there are certain ones which receive increasing confirmation from one another and from the continual accumulation of newly discovered facts which, in consequence, no longer merely restrict themselves to not contradicting one an- other, but reciprocally repeat and confirm one another, as if bearing witness together to the same law or to the same collective proposition." Law is extensible on the side of rulings, decisions, and Rigid and statutes which carry it into special fields or apply it to new p'^*"^ *"^^ classes of cases ; but not in the reasoned system of principles which makes up a jurisprudence. A doctrine like that of ultra vires, or caveat emptor, or contributory negligence, or fellow-servant, cannot be amended in the least without letting loose a hurricane of protest. 334 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY The state Industry Art The non- accumulable elements are the superior and con- trolling Compare also the extensibility of administrative bureaus and functions with the resistance to change offered by organic law and fundamental political ideas. Again, the instruments and products of industry can be accumu- lated, but the scale of wants is modified chiefly by substitu- tion. Consider, for instance, by what hard battles have libraries and universities come to challenge the attention of society, rather than cathedrals like those of the Middle Ages. Think of the struggle that was necessary to create the want that has called into being the splendid gymna- siums and athletic fields in our colleges ! Likewise, works of art multiply, but the ideals that inspire these works cannot be altered without precipitating a conflict of new with old. Nevertheless, it is the non-accumulable social products that are the more essential. They are governing beliefs, concepts, needs, aspirations, which are to the accumulable products what form is to matter. The genius of a language is in its grammar, not its vocabulary ; the core of religion is in its dogmas or ideals, not its myths and observances ; the kernel of science is its laws and theories, not its ob- servations. Law means a system of principles, not a mass of rulings or statutes. The art of an epoch means a group of harmonious reigning ideals, not the accumulation of poems and paintings. Says Tarde : " Is it true that the sides of social thought and conduct that cannot be in- definitely extended (grammars, dogmas and theories, principles of justice, political policy and strategy, morals and aesthetics) are less worth cultivating than the side that can be indefinitely extended (vocabularies, mythologies, and descriptive sciences, customs, collections of laws, industries, systems of civil and military administration) ? UNION AND ACCUMULATION 335 "On the contrary, the side open to substitution, that which after a certain point cannot be extended, is always the more essential side. Grammar is the whole of language. Theory is the whole of science, and dogma of religion. Principles constitute justice; strategy, war. Govern- ment is but a political idea. Morality is the sum of industry, for industry amounts to neither more nor less than its end. The ideal is surely the all of art. What are words good for but for building sentences, or facts but for making theories ? What are laws good for but to unfold or consecrate higher principles of justice? For what use are the arms, the tactics, and the different divi- sions of an army but to form part of the strategical plan of the general in command? Of what use are the multiple services, functions, and administrative departments of a state but to aid in the constitutional schemes of the states- man who represents the victorious political party? . . . " Only it is much easier to move forward in the direction Advance on of possible acquisitions and endowments than in that of ^y/^^ necessary substitutions and sacrifices. It is much easier easier than to pile up neologism upon neologism than to master one's °"^^ ^ "^' own tongue and, thereby, gradually improve its grammar ; to bring together scientific observations and experiments than to supply science with theories of a more general and demonstrated order ; to multiply miracles and pious prac- tices than to substitute rational for outworn religious dogmas ; to manufacture laws by the dozen than to con- ceive of a new principle of justice fitted to conciliate all interests." For this reason, it is usually only the pressure of great masses of new acquisitions that precipitate at last those conflicts in the upper ranges of thought that bring about 336 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY More and more, con- flicts are precipitated by the pres- sure of ac- cumulated materials great changes in the tenor of a civilization. Multitudes of astronomical observations finally make the geocentric theory imtenable and the heliocentric theory alone tenable. The minute study of sources regarding an epoch in church history undermines at last the illegitimate ecclesiastical pretensions based on the forged Donation of Constantine, or the spurious Isidorean Decretals. The piling up of innumerable points about the text of the Pentateuch im- peaches eventually their Mosaic authorship and discloses the actual history of Israel. An immense number of observations on the order and upbuilding of the earth's strata in the end enables geology to free minds from the spell of Usher's chronology. The ceaseless accumula- tion of observations and statistics regarding the increase of the unfit will at last break down the dogma of " personal liberty" in its application to the propagation of their kind by epileptics and feeble-minded. SUMMARY As culture grows and becomes articulated the new is more and more liable to interfere with the established. Nevertheless every fabric of culture is plastic in some respects and rigid in other respects. Religion is plastic so far as it remains myth but resistant so far as it has become dogma. Science can be readily extended on the side of data, but not on the side of law, generalization, and theory. It is easy to discriminate or extend the application of legal princi- ples; but it is hard to introduce a new legal principle. Growth is easier on the plastic than on the resistant side of a culture fabric; but in every case the latter is the superior and con- trolling side. UNION AND ACCUMULATION 337 EXERCISES 1. Why is it that only the higher religions resist free inquiry? 2. What should be the chief basis of religious fellowship — agreement in belief or agreement in ideal ? Why ? 3. Differentiate the plastic and the rigid sides of botany, of psy- chology, of economics. 4. Is it better to assail a false dogma or to undermine it by mar- shalling and interpreting the adverse facts ? 5. Show different ways of proceeding against such dogmas as " Art for art's sake," " Measures, not men," " The home is woman's sphere." for collective action CHAPTER XXI COMPROMISE Returning now to the conflict mode of advance, we note that often it is necessary, before a conflict has reached its natural termination, for a group to take collective action or to assume a collective attitude on the matter. These premature decisions, these ad interim attitudes, involve the phenomena of compromise. Compromise Only in Certain fields is it needful thus to anticipate the occurs only natural issue of a duel, to forestall, as it were, the social m matters ' ' ' which call verdict. Occasion for compromise does not appear in the struggle between steam and sail, fashion and rational dress, homeopathy and allopathy, romanticism and realism. In such cases the issue is decided by numberless individual hesitations and decisions. But where collective action of some sort is imperative — whether it be the revision of its polity or creed by a church, the drawing up of its demands by a labor organization, the formulating of an opinion by a scientific body, or the framing of a policy by govern- ment — discussion will be fierce and compromise will be frequent, owing to the fact that the disapproving minority is bound by the group action as well as the approving majority. It is the anxiety of elements or sections in the commonwealth lest they be overridden by an undesired collective policy, that lends such heat and virulence to political discussion. It is their energy of remonstrance and reprisal in such event that makes compromise a charac- 338 COMPROMISE 339 teristic form of political action. Thus, the equal suffrage principle is compromised by giving the ballot to women in municipal elections, or to tax-paying women only. The "saloon" or "no-saloon" issue is, after all, no impasse while there are such halfway houses as Sunday closing, early closing, and state dispensary. If debate and com- promise are not so characteristic of non-political groups, it is because in these the aggrieved minority may withdraw or secede when the yoke of the majority is too heavy on them ; whereas in political groups the minority has no such recourse. Sometimes compromise is the only solution of an inde- Compromise terminate discussion, i.e., a social deadlock. In a social ^"^3^^"^^ club, a fraternal order, a trade union, a church, or a nation, social dead- two parties may appear, either of which will secede rather °^ than allow the other party to carry its point. The com- promiser who in such a case finds some tenable middle ground and thereby averts the break-up of the group is justly hailed as "saviour of society," "great pacificator," "constructive statesman," etc. Oftener, however, the compromise is not a basis of final oftener, settlement, but merely a provisional arrangement pend- |>°J^«ve'^' 't ' ■/ ^ opinion into missed from the attention of society and the conclusion, social tra- entering the current of tradition, passes quietly down ^°^ from generation to generation along with other trans- mitted beliefs and standards. The settled aversion of our own society to gladiatorial combats, polygamy, chattel slavery, the judicial use of torture, the press gang, the use of flogging in the navy, or the official tampering with private correspondence can be traced in every case to a more or less general discussion, that issued in a principle or maxim or canon that, since then, has been accepted without question. SUMMARY The formation of a public opinion is best observed during a dis- cussion that must close at a certain date. The starting point of the process is the primary impression made on individual minds. The process itself consists in the deepening, modifying or effacing of this primary impression by arguments, appeals, the force of num- bers, the influence of authorities, the opinion of specialists, and the example of social superiors. 2A 354 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY An election is a means of registering the predominant types of opinion. In the fashioning of such opinion some individuals have had ten thousand times the influence of others. Universal suffrage therefore by no means implies the rule of the average man. After a discussion is completed the resulting public opinion, em- bodied in structure, law, morals, or policy, is passed down through the generations and social attention turns to other matters. EXERCISES 1. Why is it that the single-idea party becomes a many-idea party when it approaches success? 2. Why should this be untrue in the case of an association formed for a special and limited purpose and not for general purposes? 3. Show how unlike is the rule of public opinion to the rule of the mob. 4. What are the good and bad points in the guidance of public opinion by the " better classes " ? 5. What are the good and bad points in its guidance by the moral and intellectual ^lite? 6. What are the good and bad points in its guidance by the experts? CHAPTER XXIII DISEQUILIBRATION There is, as we have seen, a tendency for the contra- Why an dictions implicit in the contents of the social mind to ^''"^^""" find their way to the surface. Conflicts break out, rage, reached and terminate by the victorious belief or practice enter- ing the stream of tradition and passing down to later generations. Why, then, is there not finally a removal of all incongruities, a settlement of all conflicts? Why should not a cultiure finally reach a self-consistency such that its elements are in logical accord; such that the various interests in human life and in society receive from it due recognition and fall therefore into a kind of harmony? This, in fact, is just what tends to occur. An equilibrium is perpetually being established, but it is liable to be ruptured : — (i) By fresh contacts with other cultures, effected Theinflu- through conquest, commerce, travel, or improved com- f"^^^"^* munication. Thus, after the Romans had achieved a culture crude and rather rustic culture, it was greatly transformed by heavy borrowings from the superior culture of Greece. After these cultures had come to terms and a rough syn- thesis had been effected, the mind of the classic world was thrown into confusion by the spread of Christianity, an exotic that had bloomed on the Hebrew stalk. After this great complex of factors had been wrought by theo- logians into an outwardly harmonious system, a leaven 3SS 3S6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY was introduced from Arabic civilization through contact with the Moors, which resulted in the burst of Scholas- ticism in the thirteenth century. Two centuries later the Revival of Learning brought on an immense flooding and fertilizing of the European intellect with the Greek cul- ture of the Renaissance. In the nineteenth century the Western mind has received no slight impression from the treasures of Indian literature and philosophy. The yet more recent acquaintance with the Japanese culture is Hkely to leave lasting results in the sphere of art. But one outcome of these successive incorporations is that the Western culture now extends to so much of the human race that it can find no other equal cultiire to mate with. The opportunities for the fruitful marriage of diverse thought-systems appear to be well-nigh ex- hausted. The little rudimentary or arrested cultures that travellers still light on in out-of-the-way corners can, of course, contribute nothing. The only fecund crossing in prospect is that of Orient with Occident, and there is little likelihood that the reaction of the East upon the West will meet the expectations formed before sociology demonstrated the eccentric and barren character of the Oriental civilization. Equipped with that incomparable instrument, the scientific method, the Western intellect will probably go on its way with little heed to what the East offers it. Apparently, the human race is on the verge of a planetary culture that must be fruitful by way of par- thenogenesis, unless, peradventure, some stimulating in- tellectual commerce be struck up with the folk on Mars ! The trend toward a vast comprehensive system in which the intellectual product of every people and every epoch finds due recognition and place is evidenced not only by . UlbEt^UlLlUKATlON 357 the reign of the eclectic spirit, but also by the shifting of several branches of knowledge from the dogmatic to the comparative basis, viz., comparative religion, comparative jurisprudence, comparative morality, comparative politics, comparative art, and the comparative study of the family. (2) By mutations in the form or circumstances of society. Shifting of Growth of population, growth of wealth, altered relations founjarions to other societies, the conjugation of societies through conquest or federation ' react variously upon the articu- lated body of culture. Which tends to prevail, rural life or urban life? Is local redistribution of population going on? Is selection altering the mental and moral traits of the population? Is population overtaking or falling be- hind subsistence? Are industrial activities gaining on warlike activities, or vice versa ? Is the drift towards centralization or away from it? Is wealth concentrating or spreading? These basal demographic and economic changes leave their mark in the higher sphere. One might term it the influence of the social body upon the social mind. If, for example, the underlying forces are equalizing, we hear of democratic religion, democratic art, democratic morals and manners and sports and dress and education. If society should realize the plutocratic type, the change, no doubt, would be read plainly in legal philosophy, in moral standards, religion, art, Hterature, social customs, and institutions. (3) By the welling up of inventions and discoveries from The afflux gifted individuals. Since advance by borrowing is com- "^ '"''«°t'°°s ing to an end, this welling up of happy initiatives from geniuses is the only lasting reliance for progress. What it means to us to-day can be realized by comparing our ' See Ross, "Foundations of Sociology," 207-254. 358 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY situation with that of the classic civilization. By the time of Hadrian the opportunities for fresh culture-contacts in the Graeco-Roman world were practically exhausted. No new ferments were to be found. Lacking the originative spirit, — probably because the superior family stocks were extirpated in the civil and social wars of the Greeks and Romans, — society came to a standstill. Says Seeck : ' "From Augustus to Diocletian the equipment of the legionary remained the same. No improvement of tac- tics, no new means of warfare, was developed in the course of three centuries. . . . Neither in agriculture nor in technique nor in administration does a single new idea of any significance come to light after the first cen- tury. Literature and art, too, are confined to a sterile imitation which becomes ever more empty and feeble. . . . The Neo-Platonic philosophy and the development of Christian dogma are the only achievements which relieve this era from complete futility." Happily, the Occident is seething with inventions and discoveries, and there is no reason to fear the coming of the stationary state. The fecundity of our time is partly due to the fact that origination, instead of being acci- dental and haphazard, is becoming regular and systematic. Improvement is now a conscious aim. More and more, organized society furnishes the collections, the laboratories, the ateliers; maintains the investigators, experimenters, and explorers. The technique of origination is coming to be understood. One device is to apply in the back- ward fields the exact methods that have yielded rich har- vests elsewhere. Another is specialization. Another is the focussing of attack on a specific question instead of •"Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt," I, 271^272. DISEQUILIBRATION 359 groping. Much, too, is owed to that intellectual com- merce and that ef&cient organization of science by which the find of any one is promptly communicated to all other workers, who immediately make it the basis of operations for a fresh campaign. From Rio Janeiro to Helsingfors and from Cambridge to Madras the assailants of the same problem are coming to an understanding and a con- cert that constitute them virtually a tract in the great brain of humanity. It is in the nature of invention to be individual and The laws ot impredictable. Nevertheless, there are certain general "^^™*'°° truths touching the appearance of even so lawless a thing as invention.* The higher the degree of possibility, the sooner the inven- tion is likely to he made. The inventions (or discoveries) in a particular field — Degrees of and often those in different fields — are in a chain of de- po^^'^^'^'ty pendence which obliges them to occur in a series. Each ushers in a train of possibles. Now, when no intervening invention needs to be made, an invention may be said to be in the first degree of possibility. "When it is contingent on another yet to be made, it is in the second degree of possibility. And so on. Now, when an invention or discovery reaches the first degree of possibility, it is ripe. Thus, after Kepler announces the laws of planetary move- ment, the discovery of the principle of universal gravitation is in order at any moment. After Galileo has proclaimed the laws of the pendulum, its use in time-keeping needs but a single stride. The electric telegraph is due any time after Ampere's discoveries. The invention of Crookes' tubes brings the X ray into the foreground of possibility. • Tarde, "La logique sociale," ch. IV. 360 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Degrees of difBculty How society can promote invention After the discovery of the Hertzian waves, a few short steps bring wireless telegraphy upon the scene. The less the difficulty of an invention, the sooner it is likely to be made. An invention Is not an outright creation, but, in most cases, a fresh combination of known factors. Thus, the combination of the idea of the elasticity of steam with that of circular-linear motion produces the steam-engine; of this with the rail — ■ already in use for colliery cars — yields the locomotive. The combination of certain prin- ciples in optics with certain principles in acoustics gives the undulatory theory of light. Now, the difficulty of making the combination of ideas for any particular in- vention will depend upon the number of persons who possess these ideas, and on the frequency in this number of individuals with the intellectual capacity necessary to combine the ideas into the invention. There is no way of affecting the latter condition, for the genius is in no wise a social product ; but organized society can affect the former condition. A universal system of gratuitous instruction with special aid and opportunities for those who show unusual power amounts to an actualizing of all the potential genius in a population, and is the only rational policy for insuring a continuous and copious flow of inventioiis. It is hardly necessary to point out that only a stimulating, equipping education can mature geniuses. A regime that prunes, clips, and . trains minds levels genius with medi- ocrity. A schooling devised primarily to produce good character, or patriotism, or dynastic loyalty, or class sentiment, or religious orthodoxy may lessen friction in society, but it cannot bring genius to bloom. For this the prime essentials are the communicating of known truths and the imparting of method. Owing to the intrusion of alien elements from the sources A lasting just described, an achieved equilibrium of culture cannot of"ui^™™ last. Sooner or later it is upset and, tmtil the added ele- neither pos- ments can fall into some kind of harmony with the rest, desirable there is confusion. In Israel, after the era of prophets, a certain system of life and thought was worked out, but, after some centuries, the teachings of Jesus rocked it to its base. By the middle of the eighteenth century a con- sensus had been reached regarding the tests of the excel- lence of a literary work. But the canons set up by the Augustans were swept into limbo by the unfettered genius of the Romanticists. The compact synthesis and harmonious adjustment effected by Thomas Aquinas in the knowledge of his age satisfied for a time. But heliocentrism, prehistoric archeology, the geologic record, and evolutionism have shattered it into ruins. Under the old guild regime industry was subjected to a system of regulations designed to safeguard the public interests and the craft interest against the reckless pursuit of in- dividual advantage. But the coming of the factory drew industry to new seats and ushered in a period of disorgan- ization and unrestrained competition. Some interpret the incongruities and contradictions The contra- visible in our culture as proof of the indifference of the ^1,0^°!^ are social mind to logic. The inference is wrong. Man's not due to love of logic is only too apparent. The attempt to correct ^^^ ° mortal theological error by civil penalty, the Christian countenancing of the African slave trade on the groimd that it brought the blacks within reach of the faith that would save their souls, the endeavor to reproduce in roomy colonies the social system of the crowded mother country, the precipitate extension of the franchise to the negro 362 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY freedman in deference to the doctrine of equality, the confidence that if a literary education is good for a white race it will benefit non-industrial races, — these show how logic can triumph over humanity and common sense. The contradictions that come to light tend to be eliminated by the desire for congruity which is increasingly felt as a people develops socially. The grammar of a language, a system of theology, a legal code, a political constitution, a philosophy, or a science, though it be the joint product of many minds, exhibits, in most cases, a logical consist- ency that is astonishing. If, then, our time is full of contradictions, it is because our culture is not allowed to achieve an equilibrium. The steady afSux of new examples, inventions, and discoveries produces confusion. Our culture is like an edifice that, while it is being torn down piecemeal and rebuilt, imites discordant styles of architecture. Constitutional monarchy, with its figurehead king, who " reigns but does not govern," is plainly an instance of new wine in an old bottle. If the Russian government will not set to work the ice-breaker Ermak — an epitome of exact, matter-of- fact, applied science from a Philadelphia ship-yard — imtil it has been solemnly blessed and sprinkled by a squad of priests, it is because in Russia meet mediaeval faith and modern mechanism. If the Japanese do not see the in- congruity of killing their foes by machinery and attributing the result to the intervention of the spirits of their ancestors, it is because only within our lifetime has naval warfare come to be virtually an extra-hazardous branch of engineering. If we Americans are blind to the contradictions between what our schools do and what we expect of them, it is because the old idea of education as book learning sur- DISEQUILIBRATION 363 vives into a time when the aims of the school system have greatly changed. Nevertheless, a transition epoch is a halcyon time for Times of individuality. For with the growth of the social mind in f/^^i^iiibra. / ° tioti give the content it is a question what will be the fate of personal individual a individuality. Will there be more room for spontaneity '^^^'^'^'' and choice, or is the individual doomed to shrivel as the transmitted culture becomes huger and more integrated? As that cockle-shell, the individual soul, leaving the tranquil pool of tribal life, passes first into the sheltered lake of some city community, then into the perilous sea of national life, and at last emerges upon the immense ocean of humanity's life, does it enjoy an ever widening freedom of movement, or does it, too frail to navigate the vaster expanses, become more and more the sport of irresistible currents ? On the one hand, it may be urged Does the that, as one rises clear of bodily wants and promptings, the™o"fa°* one's self-determination contracts, one's life is more and mind cramp more moulded by conceptual rather than impulsive ^u'typ' factors; that is to say, by ideas, ideals, beliefs, world views, and the like. The growing preponderance of such factors subjects a man more to his social environment, for these are just the things that are easiest taken on by imitation or stamped in by education. You say the stock of possessions to choose from grows with each generation. True, but nevertheless the incompatible ideas and ideals become fewer, because one of the incompatibles exter- The integra- minates the other. Consider, moreover, how the diversity ^°^J^ in the cultural elements offered one becomes less, owing to the march of adaptation.. Spelling becomes definite ; idio- matic flexible speech falls under the tyranny of grammar and of style. The dictionary expands, but the number of 364 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY synonyms declines as meanings become more shaded and precise. A religious ferment emancipates souls, but out of it dogmas soon crystallize and close in on the mind. In time unrelated dogmas are compared and sifted, and the complementary ones are erected into an imposing theology, like that of St. Thomas or Calvin, which from foundation to turret stone offers the believer no option. So from the discussions of jurists emerge general principles which transform a mass of incongruous, even contradic- tory, customs and statutes into a system of jurisprudence from which inharmonious elements have been expelled, and which utterly dominates the ordinary intellect. Like- wise, im-unified generalizations about the external world, each trailing off into the unknown with many inviting paths of suggestion, are integrated and the gaps filled in until there exists a body of articulated propositions called a science; and the generalizations of the various sciences find a still higher synthesis in systems of philosophy. Thediversi- On the Other hand, there is certainly a progressive cuUuxe ° diversification and enrichment of culture which offers one a greater number of options and permits him to indulge his individual fancy. The great variety of sects seems harbinger of the day when there will be as many creeds as there are believers. Science, of course, being a verified transcript of reality, can be but one ; but, just as a widening circle of light enlarges the ring of darkness, a growth of the known gives fresh opportunities to speculate about the unknown. The widening scope for the play of in- dividuality is seen in the coexistence in our Occidental culture of a greater number of types of music, styles of painting or architecture, forms of literature, theories of life and conduct. Since these appeal to the needs of diverse DISEQUILIBRATION 3O5 temperaments, it is unlikely that the spirit of unifi- cation will bring about the triumph of one over the rest, or their coadaptation into one form. The Protestant will not absorb the Catholic, nor the Methodist the Pres- byterian. Italian and German opera, classic painting and impressionistic, lyric and dramatic poetry, realistic fiction and romance. Stoicism and Epicureanism, the "woman" ideal and the "lady" ideal, will persist side by side, because they meet the needs of different people. Just as a developed society partly compensates for the cramping of specialism by offering the individual a greater variety of vocations to select from, so a developed culture affords multifarious opportunities from which each can choose what is congenial to his nature. SUMMARY The elements in a culture ever tend toward but rarely reach an equilibrium. Their reciprocal adjustments are continually disturbed by bor- rowings or inventions or the influence of social changes. Our Western culture has become so comprehensive that there are no alien bodies of culture likely to have a marked effect upon its development. Its future course is likely to be determined by the character of the inventions and discoveries that will be made. The numerous incongruities and absurdities in our culture do not prove the social mind illogical. They result from the hasty incor- poration of new unassimilated elements. In a time of disequilibration individuality has freer play than in a settled time. The equilibration of culture means the confinement of the mind in some directions, its emancipation in other directions. 366 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY EXERCISES 1. Cite instances of the fruitful application in one field of inves- tigation of methods that have succeeded in other fields. 2. Take a science like chemistry or physiology and describe the system of meetings, bulletins, monthlies, quarteriies, and annuals by which the find of any one anywhere is soon made known to all workers everywhere. 3. Why is little in the way of gift or stimulus to be expected from the Oriental cultures? 4. What requirements have been imposed upon our school system that book learning cannot absolve? S- Account for the incongruity between the prevalent military notion of city government and its actual character as civic house- keeping. [See Addams, "Newer Ideals of Peace," chs. ii, iv, vii.] 6. Explain why the public resents peccadillos as crimes and treats crimes as peccadillos. [See Ross, " Sin and Society, " chs. i and ii.] 7. Is there reason for thinking that the progress of Western cul- ture narrows one's options in believing and judging, but multiplies one's options in doing and enjoying? INDEX Abnormal suggestibility, 21-30. Accumulation, 330-336. Adams, quoted, 222 n. Addams, quoted, iii, 112, 114, 147. Administration, red tape in, 207, 208. Administrative agencies, judicial over- throw of, 212. AflBnity, 6-g. Age, of Chinese officials, 219; of revolutionary leaders, 219; of naval officers, 221 n.; of industrial captains, 221 n. ; of judges, 222. Age and conservatism, 217-224. Allen, quoted, 162. Americanism, 241-243. Americanization, of immigrants, 36, 140, 241-243, 315-317; of Porto Ricans, 138-140. Americans, 210-213, 221, 265, 266. Amos, quoted, 206. Ancestor worship, 217. Animism, 202, 203. Appetites, infectiousness of the, 125, 126. Aristocracy, 159-164, 170-172, 189, 194, 281. Aristocracy of achievement, the, 169- 175- Armenians, 240. Arrested development, 209, 250. Arts, the, 287-289, 294, 364, 365. Asiatic immigration, 265, 266. Assimilation, 240-243, 315-31 7- Association, 3, 4, 11. Atavism, 198. Attention, 44, 54, 55. 346, 353. Authority, 287, 299, 303, 348. Bacon, 304, 305. Bagehot, quoted, 37, 199, 209, 234- 238. Barnes, quoted, 220 n. Baudrillart, quoted, 167, 169. Beauty, ideals of female, 134-136; pecuniary standards of, 116. Bent, quoted, 107. Birth-rate, 265, 266. Bodley, quoted, 160 n. Boers, conservatism of the, 150-153. Booms, 59, 78. Boscovich, quoted, 317. Bose, quoted, 28-30. Bourgeois standards, 111-116. Boutmy, quoted, 154 n., 210. Brooks, quoted, 97-99. Bryce, quoted, 38-41, 100, 155, 191, 232, 238, 240, 244, 267, 348. Buckle, cited, 224 n. Burke, quoted, 279, 280. "Cake of custom," 209. Campaign, 346-351. Capitals, 183-187. Catholicism, 6-9, 162, 320, 332. Censorship, moral, 126, 133. Ceremony, 209, 272. Chesterton, quoted, 118, 131 n. Children, rights of, 148, 149. Children's crusade, the, 69. Chinese, 14, 219, 232, 250, 266. Christianity, early, 66-68, 183. Cincinnati mob, the, 55 n. Cities, mob mind in, 58-61 ; hysteria in, 87, 88. City, the, as radiant point, 181-189. Clannishness, 228, 239. Classes, 156-164, 351. Coe, 15; quoted, 16, 27, 52-54, 91. Collective habits, stability of, 256- 262. Commercialism, 103, 11 2-1 15. Common Law, tiie, 211-213. Competition, 255, 256, 262, 288. Compromise, 319 n., 326, 338-344. 367 368 INDEX Compromisers, 339, 340. Conflict, silent, 296-305; vocal, 307- 317; phases of, 317-319; evolu- tion of, 319-322; results of, 324- 329- Conservatism, 115, 150-156, 201- 203, 209-213, 217-252, 286, 362. Conservatism and age, 217-224. Constantine, quoted, 208. Constitutionalism, 206, 280. Consumption, competitive, 99-106. Contradictions in culture, ,361, 362. Control, institutions of, 270-273. Conventionality, nature of, 110-119; laws of, 121-145 ; radiant points of, 147-194; compared with custom, 196, 197. Conventionality imitation, compared with custom imitation, 196, 197, 275-283. Cook, quoted, 282. Cooley, quoted, 4, 23 n., 30-33, 175. Cosmopolitanism, 276, 277. Country, the, 60, 88, 181-188, 226, 227. Courts, conservatism of, 210-212. Craze, the, 65-80. Creed, evolution of, 205, 320. Criminal festivals, 258-260. Criticism, 289. Crowd, the, 43-64. Crowd self, the, 54-56. Cult of progress, 242. Culture, 330-336, 363-365; the de- scent of, 157. Culture contacts, 244-250, 355, 356. Curiosity, 128, 129. Currents, social, i, 129. Custom, 79, 149. Custom imitation, characteristics, 196-215; conditions affecting, 217- 252; fields of, 254-273; relation to conventionality imitation, 275- 283. Dancing mania, the, 121. Davenport, quoted, 47 n. De Lesseps, 127. Deliberation, social, 346, 347. Deliberative bodies, 57. Democracy, 39, 99, 162, 172-174, 189-192. 265, 292, 302, 351, 352. De Tocqueville, quoted, 189. Dialects, influence of, 227, 228. Dicey, quoted, 343. Dill, quoted, 34, 166. Discussion, 47, 57, 270, 307—322, 338^ 340; effect i early society, 38; in small societies, 41 ; building of, 83-92. Individualization, 17, 251. Inequality, the passion for, 97-99. Interference, 296. Interpsychology, 3. Invention, 285, 357-360. Islam, 244, 245, 269 n. Islands, conserving influence of, 226, Isolation, physical, 224-227; lin- guistic, 227, 228; social, 228. James, quoted, 43, no. Japanese, 157, 158, ig6, 356, 362. Jastrow, quoted, 181. Jeans, quoted, 221 n. Jenks, quoted, 202, 217 n., 246, 277, 279. Jewish Messiahs, 77. Jews, 228, 241. Jones, quoted, 58, 78. Joseph II, 300-302. Judges, 210 n., 222-224. Judson, quoted, 214. Jugglery, Indian, 28—30, Jumpers, the, 121. Juvenile testimony, 15. Keller, quoted, 229. Kipling, quoted, 218 n. Kirghiz, 200. Koran, 233, 238. Language, 204, 331, 364. Law, 203, 206, 270, 271, 333, 364. Laws of crazes, the, 76-80; of con- ventionality imitation, 121-145. Lawyers, 223, 224. Leadership, 6, 8, 32, 33, 46, 47, 57, 192, 291, 348-351. Le Bon, quoted, 127, 207. Legal procedure, 206. 37° INDEX Lemaitre, quoted, 20S. Literacy, effect of, 231. Loyalty, 266, 267. McMaster, quoted, 50-52. Macaulay, quoted, 340-343. MacGahan, quoted, 200. Mahafiy, quoted, 182, 225. Mahan, quoted, 194. Maine, quoted, 199, 278. Majorities, as radiant point, 189-192. Mammon worshippers, 11 2-1 14, 175- 179. "Man of action,'' the, 127. Manual labor, stigma on, iii, 112. Mark Twain, quoted, 349. Marriage, 147, 148, 287. Martyrdom, 303, 304. Maspero, quoted, 204. Mead, quoted, 262. Measurement, 288. Merit, 297—299. Mexico, labor in, 263. Migration, effect of, 243. Migration mania, 73. Mill, quoted, 271. Millerism, 70. Miracles, 27, 28. Missionary work, 36. Mob, the, 49-61. Mob folk, 83, 86, 87, 92. Mob mind, 63-81; prophylactics against, 83-92. Monarchy, 184, 302. Morality, 56, 90, 273, 275, 276, 277, 293- Morris, quoted, 247-250. Moss, quoted, 105 n. Mott, quoted, 35, 36. Mountains, conserving influence of, 225-227. Miinsterberg, quoted, 173, 242 n. Nation, Mrs., 71. National drinks, 125. National gestures, 123. Nationalism, 187, 276, 277. New Engla»d, 154. Newspaper, the, 85, 86, 231, 352. Nicolay and Hay, quoted, 75, 76. Nitobe, quoted, 158. Nordau, quoted, 22-25. Normal suggestibility, 18-27. Numbers, influence of, 40, 41. Obedience, 33, 34, 136, 297. Old men, conservatism of, 217-224. Onomatopoeia, 124, 125. Oriental civilization, 209, 356. Origination, 285, 357-360. Ornament, 96, 97. Ownership of property, 89. Palmer, quoted, 149, 160 n. Panics, financial, 59, 76. Paradox, 324, 325. Paragraphesis, 86. Parents, influence of, 33, 197, 198. Paris, 183-186. Pecuniary civilization, 175-179. Pecuniary success, 112-115. Persecution, 241, 303-305. Pittsburg, 176 n. Plutocracy, 175-179, 357. Polemic, theory of the, 313. Porto lUco, 138-140. Pound, quoted, 206, 211-213. "Power," the, 53, 66-68. Power-holders, as radiant point, 166- 169. Prestige, 30-34, 270-273, 277-283, 288, 291, 296-298. Progress, 94, 237, 238, 286, 287, 309- 3". 357-360- Protestantism, 6-8, 162, 225, 226, 351- Provincialism, 167, 179, 184-187. Public, the, 63-65, 346-348. Public opinion, secret of, 38-40 ; rule of, 65; formation of, 346-353. Pulitzer, quoted, 176. Quakers, 68, 69. Race feeling, 239-241, 268. Race suicide, 266. Race traits, 3, 13. Rational imitation, 174, 175, 285-294. Red tape, 207, 208. Religion, i, 6-8, 91, 92, 204, 205, 268, 269, 272, 331, 332, 364. Revival, the religious, 50-54, 78, 79. INDEX 371 Rich, the, as radiant point, 175-179. Ripley, quoted, 135. Ritual, increasing precision of, 304, 205. Roberts, quoted, 260-262. Roman emperors, example of, 166. Romans, 217 n., 355, 358. Rome, 34, 167. Roosevelt, quoted, 221 n. Rules of Order, the, 57. Rural community, mob mind in the, 60, 61. Russian imperialism, 240, 241. Sabbathai 2^vi, 77. Sacred books, influence of, 238. Saxons, of Transylvania, 239 n., 255 n. School, the, 231, 232. Schreiner, quoted, 151-153. Science, 157, 289-294, 317-319, 321, 332. 333. 358, 361. 364- Sedentariness, conservative influence of, 243. Seeck, quoted, 358. Self, the, 26, 27, 43; 44. Self-individualization, 96-100. Sex appetite, the, 126. Sex charm, 134-136. Sex relations, 268. Sexes, unequal suggestibility of, 16, 17- Shakers, 66, 67. Shakespeare, quoted, 19-21. Sheffield, quoted, 219, 232, 250. Sidis, quoted, 26, 43, 45, 48, 72, 77. Slavery, 5, 6, 287, 308, 315, 328, 361. Smart set, the, 177, 178. Smith, cited, 211 n. Snobbery, 97-99, 116, 162-164. Social ascendency, 4-8. Social cause, i, 3. Social current, i, 2, 129. Social gravity, 147-164. Social plane, 1-3. Social psychology, nature and scope, 1-9; differentiated from sociology, 2; usefulness, 3, 4; divisions, 4-6. Sociology, relation to social psy- chology, -i. Sombart, quoted, 104-106. Specialization, 327, 328, 349, 358. "Spirit," the, 66-68. "Spirit of the age," the, 118, 119. Sports, 86, 87. Stampedes, 73. Standard of living, 262-266. Starr, quoted, 97. State, the, 206, 224, 246, 250, 334, 338. 344, 351- Stephens, quoted, 73, 74. Stimulants, use of, by women, 117, n8. Stoicism, 149, 225, 226. St. Simon, quoted, 168. Successful, the, as radiant point, 169- 175- Suggestibility, 11-41; in the crowd, 43-55 ■> i"* citj' and country, 60, 61, 87, 88; in the early church, 66- 68; in mediaeval society, 69, 70. Sumptuary laws, loi, 102. Superior, the social, as radiant point, 147-164, 193. 194- Superstition, 292 n. Survivals, theory of, 142, 143, 254, 256. Taine, quoted, 170-172, 184-186. Talk, 310, 311. Tarde, quoted, 37, 129, 136, 143, 159, 168, 183, 193, 320-322, 330- 335. 346. Tarde's law, 137. Taylor, quoted, 6. Teacher, the, 85, 231. Temperament, 15, 324. Theological controversy, 313. Theology, 291, 313, 317-319. Thomas, quoted, 17. Tiflis, 13s, 240. Time element, in suggestion, 35, 36; in formation of mob, 49; in de- velopment of craze, 76; in fashion, 104-106; in formation of public opinion, 346-348, 350, 351. Toleration, 236, 241, 308. Toleration Act, the, 340-343. Trade union, 315-317. Tradition, 8, 196-252, 269, 353. Traditionalism, 199-203, 227, 228, 23i-=33. 238-241, 243, 251. Traditional society, 275. Transcaucasia, 240. 372 INDEX Tulip mania, the, 'Ji-Jj. Turks; 245. Uniformity, psychic, 1-9. Union, logical, 330-336. Universities, 173, 174, 1S3, 431, 233, 334- Veblen, quoted, 95, 102, 115, 116, "7. 134- Verification, 290. Volitions, contagiousness of, 136. Volume of suggestion, 37-41. Voluntary associations, 90. Voluntary movement, and suggesti- bility, 43. 44- Walker, quoted, 243 n. Wants, the descent of, i;6. Ward, quoted, 245, 246. Warfare, effect of, 245-230. War spirit of '61, the, 75, 76. Watterson, quoted, 177. Weil, quoted, 263. Wesley, quoted, 122 n. "Western" spirit, the, 214. White, quoted, 291 n., 304, 319 n. Witchcraft, 37, 311. Woman, conservatism of, 230. Womanliness, standards of, 117, 118. Women, 16, 17, 134-136, 319. Women's Crusade, the, 71. Workingmen's standards, 111-115. Wright, quoted, 315-317. Yogi, 28-30. T HE following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books on kindred subjects By EDWARD A. ROSS Professor of Sociology in the University of Wisconsin, formerly of the University of Nebraska. SOCIAL CONTROL A Survey of the Foundations of Order. Part I. The Grounds of Control. Part II. The Means of Control. Part III. The System of Control. The author seeks to determine how far the order we see about us i^ due to influences that reach men and women from without, that is, social influences. His thesis is that the personality freely unfolding under conditions of healthy fellowship may arrive at a goodness all its own, and that order is explained partly by this tendency in human nature and partly by the influence of social surroundings. The author's task, therefore, is first to separate the individual's contribu- tion to social order from that of society, and second, to bring to light everything that is contained in this social contribution. FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY The Scope and Task of Sociology — The Sociological Frontier of Economics — Social Laws — The Unit of Investigation in Sociology — Mobmind — The Properties of Group-Units — The Social Forces — The Factors of Social Change — Recent Tendencies in Sociology — The Causes of Race Superiority — The Value Rank of the American People. The author lays a foundation for a social science that shall vidthstand the severest tests, and formulates the principal truths about society. In the belief that the time is past for one-sided interpretations of society, the effort is made to group together and harmonize the valu- able results of all the schools. Both the above are in "The Citizen's Library " of Economics, Politics, and Sociology, edited by Richakd T. Ely, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Politick Economy, University of Wisconsin. Each, cloth, ismo, leather back, $ 1.23 net Published by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Sixty-four and Sizl7-six Fifth Avenue, New York WORKS ON SOCIOLOGY AND BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST Outlines of Sociology By Prof. LESTER F. WARD. Cloth, 301 pages, i2mo, $2.00 A sketch of the broad outlines of sociology intended to bring out its true character. The Principles of Sociology An Analysis of the Phenomena of Association and of Social Organi- zation. By FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, Professor of Sociology in Columbia University. Cloth, xoaii+476 pages, 8vo, $3.00 net The Theory of Socialization A Syllabus of the Principles of Sociology. By Professor FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS. For the use of College and University Classes. With References to "The Principles of Sociology." Paper, 61 pages, 8vo, $ 0.60 net The Elements of Sociology By Professor FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS. A scientific and reason- ably complete statement of sociological theory for the use of students. Cloth, 253 pages, ismo, $ i.io net Readings in Descriptive and Historical Sociology Edited by FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS. Cloth, 553 pages, 8vo, $ 1.60 net Inductive Sociology A Syllabus of Methods, Analysis and Classifications, and Provisionally Formulated Laws. By Professor FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS. Cloth, 302 pages, 8vo, $ 2.00 net Pure Sociology A Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society. By LESTER F. WARD, LL.D., Professor of Sociology in Brown University. New York. First Edition, 1903 ; Second Edition, 1907. Cloth, 606 pages, 8vo, $4.00 net Text-Book of Sociology By J. Q. DEALEY, Associate Professor of Social and Politica! Science in Brown University, and Prof. LESTER F. WARD. New York, 1905. Cloth, J26 pages, izmo, $ 1.30 net The Elements of Sociology By FRANK W. BLACKMAR, Professor of Sociology and Econo- mics in the University of Kansas. New York, 1905. Half leather, 454 pages, $ 1.2s net ON SOCIALISM Socialists at Work By ROBERT HUNTER, Author of « Poverty." Cloth, i2mo, S 1.50 net "It is a very remarkable book. I know of no other comparable source of information about the history and present condition of the Socialist movement around the world. It is not only wonderfully complete but wonderfully interesting. The style is admirable, so calm and convincing and reasonable that I shoidd think even those that have no sympathy with Socialism would find it an attractive work and for all sociologists it is invaluable. I should like to con- gratulate Mr. Hunter and you." — Charles Edward Russell. New Worlds for Old By H. G. WELLS. Cloth, S1.50 The Boston Herald says editorially that the value of the book lies in the fact that it reflects the point of view of a man with a vision, who is also enough of a socialist and an evolutionalist to know that the process of realizing it must be one requiring infinite patience. SoCiallSni : a summary and Interpretation of Socialist Prindpln, By JOHN SPARGO. New York, 1906. History of Socialism By THOMAS KIRKUP. London. First Edition, 1892. Third Edition, 1906. Cloth, J64 pages, 8vo, $2.25 net THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS, POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY Under the General Editorship of RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D.. LL.D, Director of the School of Economics a.nd Political Science; Professor of Political Economy at the UrU'oersity of Wisconsin^ t2mo. Half leather. $1.25 net, each MONOPOLIES A5D TRUSTS. By Richard T. Ely, Ph.D., LL.D. ODTLIHES OF ECONOMICS. By Richard T. Ely, Ph.D., LL.D., author of " Monopolies and Trusts," etc. THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTIOH. By John A. Hobson, author of *' The Evolution of Modem Capitalism," etc. WORLD POLITICS. By Paul S. Reinsch, Ph.D., LL.B., Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin. ECONOMIC CRISES. By Edward D. Jones, Ph.D., Junior Professor of Com- merce and Industry, University of Michigan. GOVERNMENT IN SWITZERLAND. By John Martin Vincent, Ph.D., As- sociate Professor of History, Johns Hopkms University. POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1846-1861. By Jessk Macy, LL.D., Professor of Political Science in Iowa College. ESSAYS ON THE MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By Charles J. Bullock, Ph.D., Williams College. SOCIAL CONTROL. A Survey of the Foundations of Order. By Edward Als- WORTH Ross, Ph.D. COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. By Paul S. Reinsch, Ph.D., LL.B., author of " World Politics," etc. DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS. By Jane Addams, head of " Hull House," Chicago. MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION. By M. N. Baker, Ph. B., Associate E ditor of " Engineering News." AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS. By Charles Zueblin, B.D., Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Chicago. IRRIGATION INSTITUTIONS. By Elwood Mead, C.E., M.S., Chief of Irri- gation Investigations, Department of Agriculture. RAILWAY LEGISLATION IN THE UOTTED STATES. By Balthasar H. Meyer, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy, University of Wisconsin. STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY. By Richard T. Ely, Ph.D., LL.D., author of " Monopolies and Trusts," etc. THE AMERICAN CITY : a Problem in Democracy. By Delos F. Wilcox, Ph.D., author of " A Study of City Government." MONEY : A Study of the Theory of the Medium of Exchange. By David Kinley, Ph.D., University of Illinois. THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. By Edward Alsworth Ross, author of " Social Control," etc. THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIOLOGY. By Frank W. Blackmar, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Economics in the University of Kansas. COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION. By Paul S. Reinsch, Ph.D., LL.B., author of " Colonial Government," " World Politics," etc. INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ORGANIZATION. ByS. E. Sparling. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS. By H. C. Taylor. NEWER IDEALS OF PEACE. By Jane Addams. SOME ETHICAL GAINS THROUGH LEGISLATION. By Mrs. Florence Kelley. THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. By J. A. Smith. WTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL POLICIES. By George Mygat Fisk, Ph.D THE MACMILLAN COMPANY R4-66 FIFTH AVEmrE, NEW TOBE