Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/463

 THE PROVINCE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 447

special functionaries have become associated with them, indicate that they have had a powerful influence on the attentive processes and the mental life of the group. Shadows, dreams, swooning, intoxication, and epilepsy represent another class of phenomena arresting the attention and causing reflection and readjustment, together with the development of ideas of causation and of a special class of functionaries who act as interpreters of the phe- nomena. Still another set of crises arises in connection with the conflict of interest between individuals, and between the individual and group-habits. Theft, assault, magical practice, and any and all invasion of the rights of others are the occasion of the formu- lation of legal and moral practice, and of the emergence of a class of persons specially skilled in administering the practice.

The mediation of crises of this nature leads, on the one hand, to the development of morality, religion, custom, myth, invention, art, and, on the other hand, to medicine man, priest, lawgiver, judge, physician, artist, philosopher, teacher, and investigator. It leads also to the formation of special classes and castes, to the concentration of knowledge, wealth, power, and technique in the hands of particular classes and persons, and to the use of special opportunity on the part of the few to manipulate and exploit the many. Viewed merely as incidents, both the crises and the prac- tices growing up about them are a part of the history of institu- tions, but when viewed from the standpoint of attention and habit, they are subject-matter of social psychology.

It is in relation also to crisis, or the disturbance of habit, that invention, imitation, and suggestion factors of the greatest importance in social evolution may be studied to the best advantage. The crisis discloses the inadequacy of the habit, the invention is the mental side of the readjustment, imitation is the mode of reaction to the new condition or copy provided through invention, and suggestion is the means by which the copies are disseminated. Language is so rich a mine for the social psy- chologist, and so important in the study of suggestion and imita- tion, because it is not only a register of the consciousness of the race, but is, more than any other medium, the means by which suggestion is operative, and by which the race-copies are handed