Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/49

Rh words the plane of cleavage in structural organic societies is along the lines of the conscious and the subconscious with consequent dissociation of the two. Hence, the ever present danger of predominance of abnormal suggestibility, and precipitation in a general state of social hypnosis. Social suggestibility and social somnambulism form the main traits of structural, organic societies.

From this standpoint we may well understand why Tarde and many other sociologists lay so much stress on social imitation and even somnambulism as the very nature of society; for imitation is but another term for what may be more fundamentally described as suggestibility.

As a matter of fact when the great sociologist, Tarde, comes to examine more closely the basis of social imitation, he falls back on social hypnotization as the nature of social life. This social hypnotization, as we have found, depends on the stage of the social dissociation of the upper, controlling self from the lower, suggestible, subconscious self, or mass-subconsciousness. "The social, like the hypnotic state" writes Tarde "is only a form of dream (Tarde should rather say trance-state), a dream of command and a dream of action. Both the somnambulist and the social man are possessed by the illusion that their ideas, all of which have been suggested to them, are spontaneous. . . . Because this magnetization (or hypnotization) has become more general or mutual we err in flattering ourselves that we have become less credulous and docile, less imitative than our ancestors. This is a fallacy, and we shall have to rid ourselves of it." Tarde comes to the conclusion that "Society is imitation, and imitation is a kind of somnambulism." There is a good deal of truth in Tarde's view of social life. What Tarde does not realize is the fact that his generalization holds true only of organically constituted societies, but not of all societies, and it is certainly not true of humanistic communities. Tarde's sociological generalization is but part of the truth. The definition of society in terms of hypnotization or somnambulism holds true of societies in which social dissociation is present. In other words, in structural, organic societies there is a weakening, or lack of development, or inhibition of the upper, critical self from the lower suggestible self with the consequent manifestation of subconscious elements and predominance of subconscious activities. This condition, as we have pointed out, and which cannot be emphasized too much on account of its importance, holds good in most, if not all societies, known to us from history, societies in which the