Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/464

 448 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

on from generation to generation. For this reason all culture and all the history of culture may be said to be implicit in language. Another incident of profound importance to the state of con- \ sciousness of the group is the emergence of a great personality. The man of genius is a biological freak, whose appearance cannot be anticipated or predetermined. All that we can say is that a cer- tain number of individuals characterized by unusual artistic or inventive faculty, great courage, will, and capacity for organiza- tion, or unusual suggestibility in respect to religious and philo- sophical questions, do occasionally appear in every group, and that they powerfully influence the life-direction and the conscious- ness of their groups. Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Aristotle, Peter the Great, Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare, have left ineffaceable impressions on the national life, and on the mental states of individuals as well. The fact that a school of thinkers at the present day grows up about a philosopher, or that a religious teacher may gather about him a group of fanatically faithful adherents, is a repetition of a principle of imitation which, appar- ently, has been in force since the beginning of associated life, and which in the history of all groups has tended to direct the thought and activity of the multitude into fixed channels. On the principle of Columbus' egg, one leads off and the others follow. The central Australian oknirabata is as influential in his smaller group as Aristotle in a larger, until the advent of the white man breaks up his influence. The Chinese are today carrying out prin- ciples of conduct inculcated by Confucius and Mencius, no crisis of sufficient importance having intervened to break up the old habits and establish new ones. The manner in which copies for belief and practice are set by the medicine man, the priest, the political leader, the thinker, the agitator, the artist, and, in general, by the uncommon personality, as well as the more spontaneous manifestations of suggestion and hypnotism in public opinion and mob action, are to be studied from the standpoint both of indi- vidual and of group-consciousness.

Still another incident of importance to the consciousness of a group is contact with outsiders. The Japanese are a most instruct- ive example of the effect of foreign copies on a people sufficiently