Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/171

 INTERPRETATION OF SAVAGE SOCIETY 157

the teacher, the artist and other specialists, represent classes of men who have or profess special skill in dealing with crises. Among the professions whose connection with crisis is least obvious are perhaps those of teacher and artist. But the teacher is especially concerned with anticipating that most critical of periods in the life of the youth when he is to enter manhood and be no longer supported by others; and art always arises as the memory of crisis.

Of course a crisis may be so serious as to kill the organism or destroy the group, or it may result in failure or deterioration. But crisis, as I am employing the term, is not to be regarded as habitually violent. It is simply a disturbance of habit, and it may be no more than an incident, a stimulation, a suggestion. It is here that imitation plays a great role. But it is quite certain that the degree of progress of a people has a certain relation to the nature of the disturbances encountered, and that the most progressive have had a more vicissitudinous life. Our proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention," is the formulation in folk- thought of this principle of social change.

The run of crises encountered by different individuals and races is not, of course, uniform, and herein we have a partial ex- planation of the different rate and direction of progress in differ- ent peoples. But more important than this in any explanation of the advanced and backward races is the fact that the same crisis will not produce the same effect uniformly. And in this connection I will briefly indicate the relation of attention and crisis to (i) the presence of extraordinary individuals in the group, (2) the level of culture of the group, and (3) the char- acter of the ideas by which the group-mind is prepossessed :

I. Whatever importance we may attach to group-mind and mass-suggestion, the power of the attention to meet a crisis is primarily an individual matter, or at least the initiative lies with the individual. The group, therefore, which possesses men of ex- traordinary mental ability is at an advantage. The fleeing animal, for instance, is always a problem, and the resilience of wood is probably always observed, but the individual is not always pres- ent to relate the two facts, and invent the bow and arrow. If he