Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/41

Rh rope around his neck, probably as an emblem of the hangman and the criminal. We have hardly made an improvement by shifting the rope to the neck of the helpless citizen. We may possibly be forced to come round to the ancient Greek practice by putting once more the rope round the neck of the legislator,—and tighten it too. Traditions, laws, taboos, statutes, commandments, rules, regulations, ordinances, manners, and fashions, all enacted by an inordinate philanthropic zeal for the good and improvement of society and race, press heavily on individuality and originality, forcing them down into the general mire of mediocrity. The home, the school, the church, the club, business, profession, trade, and union, all insist on strict, correct conformity to standard; all demand authoritatively implicit obedience and submission to rule and regulation.

The individual is so effectively trained by the pressure of taboo, based on self and fear, that he comes to love the yoke that weighs him down to earth. Chained to his bench, like a criminal galley slave, he comes to love his gyves and manacles. The iron collar put around his neck becomes a mark of respectability, an ornament of civilization. Tarde finds that society is based on respect, (respectability I should say), a sort of an alloy of fear and love, fear that is loved. A respectable citizen is he who is fond of his bonds, stocks, and shekels, and comes to love his bonds, stocks and shackles of fears and taboos. In fact, he attacks and fights those who wish to free him from his social, religious, and political fetters. Some criticize justly the militaristic regime with its heavy weight of obedience and strict discipline, pressing on the individual. What is the burden of militarism compared with the endless screw of the socio-static press ceaselessly and pitilessly forcing individuality into the narrow, crooked moulds of social mediocrity and respectable commonplace?

In "The Psychology of Suggestion" I pointed out an important law in Social Psychology, namely, that greatness of individuality is inversely proportional to the mass of the social aggregate. Great genius appeared not in the empire of Assyria, Babylonia, or Persia, but in the small city-states of Greece and Judea. It is not immense modern China that gives great men, but the small states of Chinese feudalism. This Law of Mass versus Individuality falls in line with my work on the subconscious and its conditions of dissociation: Limitation of Voluntary Activity, Monotony, and other conditions, requisite for the weakening and final disaggregation of the primary, upper self from the lower, subconscious self leave the latter bereft of control and critical sense.