Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/66

62 recognized superior, its prestige is submitted to for the same reason as that of a monarch or nobility was formerly bowed down to. Moreover, in times of equality (of the mediocre subconscious considered from the point of view of Social Psychology) men have no faith in one another, because of their mutual (subconscious, mediocre) likeness. This very resemblance, however, inspires them almost with an unlimited confidence in the judgment of the public. For it seems improbable to them that when all have the same amount of light, the truth should not be found on the side of the greatest number." "This appears logical" comments Tarde "and mathematical. If men are like units, then it is the greatest sum of these units which must be in the right. In reality this is an illusion, based on constant oversight of the rôle played by imitation. When an idea rises in triumph from the ballot-box, we should be less inclined to bow down before it, if we realized that nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of the votes that it polled were but echoes. Unanimities should be greatly distrusted. Nothing is a better indication of the impulse of imitation." In other words, with the increase of mental disaggregation in a crowd of (subconscious) mediocrities individuality and the critical self are at a minimum, the subconscious self is left unprotected, a target to the arrows of suggestion. Social suggestibility is at its maximum, and the body-­politic is thrown into hysterical convulsions of mob-frenzies, into maniacal, nationalistic excitement with fixed paranoidal delusions of national grandeur, demoniacal obsessions of world-dominion, resulting in homicidal and suicidal world-wars.

What then is the remedy for all those human sufferings, virulent mental epidemics, and other severe social maladies that plague mankind in its aggregate capacity? Only one answer is given by science, by Biology, Sociology, and Social Psychology: ''Fortify the resistance of the individual by freedom of individuality and by the full development of personality. Immunize the individual against social, mental plagues by the full development of his rational reflective self, controlling the suggestible, automatic subconscious with its reflex consciousness.'' Put no barriers to man's self expression, lay no chains on man, put no taboos on the human spirit. Do not, like the savage, run man's mind and skull into ugly shapes and distorted moulds of social traditions. Liberate man's spirit from the dark, narrow, and oppressive, social dungeon. Full freedom of individuality and cultivation of the critical rational self constitute the essential conditions of a healthy social consciousness. The full development of a synthetic unity of the conscious