Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/23

Rh Macedonian, Roman or German soldier who by a long course of military training had fallen into the degraded and wretched state of the irresponsible, slavish, sub-conscious self.

"The subwaking self dresses to fashion, gossips in company, runs riot in business-panics, revels in the crowd, storms in the mob, parades on the streets, drills in the camp, and prays in revival meetings. Its senses are acute, but its sense is nil. Association by contiguity, the automatic, reflex mental mechanism of the brute, is the only one it possesses.

"The subwaking self lacks all personality and individuality; it is absolutely servile. It has no moral law, no law at all. To be a law unto one-self, the chief and essential characteristic of personality, is the very trait the subwaking self so glaringly lacks.

"The subwaking self has no will; it is blown hither and thither by all sorts of incoming suggestions. It is essentially a brutal self.

"The primary self alone possesses true personality, will, and self-control. The primary self alone is a law unto itself,—a personality having the power of investigating its own nature, of discovering faults, creating ideals, striving after them, struggling for them, and by continuous efforts of will attaining to higher and higher stages of personality."

Suggestibility is a fundamental attribute of man's nature. We should, therefore, expect that man in his social capacity would manifest this general property; and such do we actually find to be the case. What is required is the bringing about of a disaggregation in the social consciousness. Such a disaggregation may either be fleeting, unstable, the type is that of normal suggestibility; or the disaggregation may become stable, the type is then that of abnormal suggestibility. The one is the suggestibility of the crowd, the latter that of the mob. In the mob direct suggestion is effective, in the crowd indirect suggestion. The clever stump orator, the politician, the preacher, fixes the attention of the crowd on himself, while interesting the hearers in his "subject." The orator, the preacher, or the demagogue, the politician, distracts the attention of the crowd by his stories, frequently giving his suggestion in some indirect and striking way, winding up the long yarn by a climax, requiring immediate execution of the suggestion.

The condition of limitation of voluntary movements is of paramount importance in suggestibility in general, since it brings about a narrowing down of the field of consciousness which of all other