Social Psychology
Chapter 8: The Laws of Conventionality Imitation
Edward Alsworth Ross
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THE primary generalization it is safe to make regarding conventionality imitation is:--
Mental states differ in ease of propagation.
Bodily movements spread readily
The Flagellants
Motor impulses appear to diffuse themselves with great facility. Instance the Flagellants who, in 1260 appeared movements spread 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 example worked so contagiously upon the minds of curious Flagellants 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 suggestion of example, died away in less than six months.
The dancing mania
About the year 1370 the dancing mania spread through The dancing European cities, and here again the example of the dancers mania worked suggestively until the bystanders, no longer able to resist the infection, threw aside their garments and joined the wild revel.
The Jumpers
About 1740 in Welsh revivals religious frenzy in some The persons happened to assume the form of jumping. Their
(122) example infected onlookers, and finally jumping became in that district the characteristic expression of religious ecstasy.[1] Similarly the hysterical laughter of penitents in the great Kentucky revival of 1799-1800 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 contagion of example following a particular narrow channel.
Epidemics of convulsions
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 remained 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 temporarily in private homes, the seizures became rarer and finally ceased. Says Fry:[2] "In a French convent a nun began to mew like a cat; other nuns began to mew likewise. The infection spread till all the nuns in the very
(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 counterirritant 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 convulsions spread amongst the girls till the factory had to be shut up."
National gestures
Marching rhythm is infectious, as we see from the swinging pace of the small boys following a company of soldiers. Indeed, in such a case, unless one puts his mind to it, one cannot but keep step. Yawning is epidemic, 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) 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.
Manner of speech
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, stammering, 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."
Onomatopoeia
Says Fry:[3] "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 differences 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:[4] " Our first articulate forefathers listened to the noises of the wind in their pine woods. . . . or heard
(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 acknowledge the bears as their dancing 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 spread of dishes and drinks
The appetites differ in infectiousness. Were it not that the taking of stimulants is everywhere more of a 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 gourmandism. 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) 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 sociability.
The sex appetite is tinder to the suggestive spark
In any case the sex appetite is more vibrant and suggestible 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.
Feelings are easily induced by suggestion because independent of bodily state
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
(127) zeal into a demoralized command, a new energetic head communicate a thrill and a stir to a run-down administrative department! In warfare the great infectiousness 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.
The man of action must be a moral dynamo
What lends hero value to the "man of action" is not his practical wisdom so much as his ability to kindle in others steadfastness and courage. This power of radiating 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: "lie succeeded in his enterprise owing to his immense strength of will, but also owing to the fascination he exercised on those surrounding him. To overcome 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) all suffrages. In later years, when he passed Southampton the bells were rung on his passage."
The itch of curiosity is communicable
Curiosity is extremely infectious. The story is told of two men strolling along a bustling street and discussing 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 working on 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.[5] " 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."
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Curiosity the first cause of many social currents
The rôle of curiosity in forming crowds is emphasized by Tarde [6] who plainly has his Parisians in mind. "All those throngs of people which end in bringing on revolutions in religion, government, art, and industry begin to collect under the sway of this sentiment.[7] 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."
Emotions are mor nimble than ideas
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Emotions spread more rapidly than ideas and opinions. We have means of sifting the latter, of parting chaff from wheat. Finding a proposition absurd or self-contradictory 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 Junius?" "Was Dreyfus guilty?" "Is the negro fit to vote?" Yet Germany experiences alternately anti-English and pro-English feelings, Italy antiFrench 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 feelings 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
(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.
An ideal is a better religious nucleus than a dogma
Admiration for a type of character is more communicable than a theological dogma, and hence the successful apostle preaches "Christ and Him crucified."The 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.[8]
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Imaginary characters radiate moral contagion
Says Fry:[9] "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 commission 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 responsibility of the Artist exceeds that of the Thinker
The masters of literature by inventing and portraying to the world imaginary characters produce through imitation very noticeable currents in moral history. Julie, Werther, Manfred, Rochester, Jane Eyre, Tom Brown, etc., have been the pattern of tens of thousands. Since
(133) this is so the disseminator of wrong ideals is altogether more dangerous to society than the disseminator of wrong opinions. Investigators and thinkers, working in the 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 personal ideals, may not be left entirely uncensored, seeing that any poison they emit circulates so rapidly.
The men honored are the men who will be imitated
The men society allows to succeed and to be honored are taken as models by the rising generation. Few of the young compare personal ideals and then choose the one 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 to the high-school graduates, heads the state delegation or delivers the Fourth of July oration.
Personal ideals elude analysis and criticism
Probably a simple idea, e.g., that Friday is unlucky, or a simple feeling, e.g., dislike of the negro, diffuses itself less readily than a complex thing like a personal ideal. Each 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) to have real worth, and these prepossess us in favor of the ideal, however false it may be.
Sex charm follows the conventional female type
There is good ground for believing that even so elemental a thing as sex charm is the sport of conventional standards 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:[10]
"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 conformation of the face is of secondary weight only. A wellknown instance of this ideal of the early predatory culture is that of the maidens of the Homeric poems.
The preferred female type is an incident of pecuniary emulation
This ideal suffers a change in the succeeding development, when, in the conventional scheme, the office of the high-class wife comes to be a vicarious leisure simply. The ideal then includes the characteristics which are supposed to result from or to go with a life of leisure consistently enforced. The ideal accepted under these circumstances 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-
(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."
How a conventional ideal of beauty becomes externalized in an isolated population
Another illustration of the docility with which sex attraction will flow in a conventional channel is the process of conjugal selection which some anthropologists have invoked in order to account for the genesis of a facial type in an isolated population. According to Ripley:[11] It is is easy to conceive of artificial selection in an isolated so- ciety whereby choice should be exercised in accordance with certain standards of beauty which had become
(136) generally accepted in that locality. We have but to suppose 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-races 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?
The radiation of will
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 born 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 draws other imitations in its wake
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:[12] " 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
(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 bondage the Greek slave from whom he was learning philosophy and literature and appreciation of the fine arts. Who is capable of being at once a disciple of Epictetus and his master? The Frankish 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 moment imitate them and oppress them.
The Tardean law
Tarde has formulated the following law of conventionality imitation.
Imitation proceeds from within outward, from internals to externals.[13]
Tarde thus illustrates his thesis: "In the sixteenth century 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 Europe, 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 century, 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 unearthed and transfigured had subjugated her conquerors."
Power brings influence
On the same principle, the ascendency of British capital and enterprise in Chili causes British ways to be imitated
(138) and creates a demand for British goods. The party of nation that has the power is likely to get imitated in externals. This is one reason why "Trade follows the flag." The capture of lucrative markets hinges sometimes 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 Afghans. Alexander's conquests would not have been followed 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 disastrous to civilization had not their successes been preceded by several centuries of defeat by Roman arms and consequently 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, language, schools, manners, and entertainment was a consequence of the impression of superiority made upon them by European warfare, science, industry, and administration. The ascendency of American arms and government in Porto Rico brought about a furore of Americanization. Says a writer in The Outlook: [14] -
Spontaneous Americanization of Porto Ricans since 1900
"Three years is a short time in which to work visible changes in the life of a people, but that changes have taken place during that time in the dress, manners, and 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
(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 bareheaded, with flowers in their loosely done black hair; some wore mantillas; all of them had their faces powdered to a pasty whiteness. Whatever charm their personal 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,
(140) 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."
Nothing succeeds like success
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 rôle of military success and political domination 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 unlikeness in the response of our aliens to their American environment. Immigrants from a big and powerful people, like the English or the Chinese, Americanize less rapidly than representatives of the smaller peoples, like the Norwegians 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 rôle 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.
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Why externals are archaic
When different religions are in contact, they are likely to borrow dogmas from one another before they borrow 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.[15]
The form is durable, the spirit is adaptable
Think how legal fictions permit the spirit of the legal system to change without disturbing the form, how interpretation alters the spirit of the written constitution, how primitive religious rites and symbols remain, but are adapted to the age by progressive refinement in the mode
(142) 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 innocently 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 exterior of social life that abounds in fossils
Since the replacement of the inner element, by borrowing or by development, goes on more rapidly than the replacement of the outer element, we come upon numerous " 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
(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 intercollegiate 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 prankish children, and in the " Eeny-meeny-miny-mo " of the playground lives on some incantation that once made spirits obey and men tremble.
Reverential imitation of superiors precedes competitive imititation
Other evidence of his principle is produced by Tarde when he says:[16] "Do we ever see one class which is in contact with, but which has never, hypothetically, been subject to the control of, another determine to copy its accent, its dress, its furniture, and its buildings, and end by embracing its principles and beliefs? This would invert the universal 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
(144) 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 Athenian eupatrides, or to the French nobility of the old régime preceded the envy, i.e., the desire to imitate them externally, 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 cannot expand beyond the sphere of the ideas or ideals they express
It is a corollary of the principle we are considering that the imitation of ideas precedes the imitation of the arts that express them. Thus Romanticism in thought preceded Romanticism in literature; people had been prepared for 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 acceptance 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.
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The fundamental beliefs spread the farthest
This law explains why beliefs fuse sooner than languages, manners, or customs. The Delphic Oracle attained authority in all Greece long before the assimilation brought 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 elimination of inferiors or variants is so much greater among religions, in consequence of their invasive power, that there are fewer of them.
SUMMARY
Movements and 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 book s, plays, pictures, etc.
Feelings are more readily 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 purpose 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?
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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 Girt tends to get realized in flesh and blood.
7. Study closely some raw immigrant family and see if the process of their Americanization agrees with Tarde's law.
