Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/269

 SOCIAL CONTROL. IV.

SUGGESTION.

WE have seen how, by means of sanctions, legal, social, and supernatural, the stubborn will is bent to right action. We have now to consider how society without the use of any sanction can attain the same result. This calls for a study of suggestion.

Sentiments and ideas can be suggested as well as volitions. Why, then, it may be asked, is suggestion treated in connection with the will rather than with the feelings and judgment? The answer is that when society by means of reiterated suggestion, beginning with the plastic child mind and continuing through the whole period of character-making, graves deeply into the soul of the individual certain admirations or certain estimates, it is these latter that are the immediate stimuli to conduct, and hence subject matter of this series of studies. The role of sugges- tion in moral upbuilding will be described when we come to explain the sway of the feelings by social ideals and of the judg- ments by social valuations. Under "Suggestion," as an inde- pendent topic, we are called upon to consider only the direct shaping of conduct by social inclination, i. f., vis-a-vis modifica- tion of the will.

The marvelous control of the operator over the hypnotized subject shows how obedient a person in a neuropathic condition may become to impressions from without. But it is likely that most people, quite apart from the hypnotic state, experience a shock when something is suggested. The onset of a perception, idea, or emotion has a real force, and is stayed only by a certain

>tance. In children suggestibility is high a fact which was

d upon by the genius of Guyau and made the corner stone

of a scheme of moral education. 1 As the mind develops, how-

1 GUYAU, Kducation and Heredity \ chapters i an

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