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        Ingoing and outgoing nerve currents with their various end reactions may be modified by the nerve centers. Nerve currents' may be intensified, decreased in energy, or even entirely inhibited by central ganglia or by their mutual interaction and interferences. Sherrington and other physiologists have by a number of experiments formulated some of the important principles of such physiological activities. A law of inhibition or interference early formulated by Ziehen may suffice: " If an excitation of a definite intensity (m) take place in one cortical element (b), and another excitation of a different intensity take place at the same time in another cortical element (t) which is connected by a path of conduction with element (b), the two intensities of excitation may modify each other."

        Although such modifications frequently occur, it nevertheless remains true that the inferior nerve-centers are of a reflex nature. No sooner is the nerve-energy of a lower center set free than at once it tends to discharge itself into action. Thus every sensation, perception, feeling, emotion, thought, or belief, if left uncontrolled, tends to be translated into some appropriate movement, action, or reaction. The physiological process of setting free the nerve energy in a central ganglion, or in a system of central ganglia, is accompanied by activity in the simpler, but more organized, more integrated nerve centers, and by the lower psychic functions of simple sentience, sensibility; and in the more complex, but less integrated, less organized centers; by the higher psychic functions of consciousness, such as sensations, precepts, images, ideas, and emotions.

        The inhibited states belong to the great number of possible states with their reactions out of which selection is made by the critical thought and will-centers. These mental states, images, ideas, and feelings with their end-reactions, out of which selection is made, Galton aptly terms "the antechamber of consciousness." They are on the margin of consciousness, and are partly of a conscious and partly of a subconscious character. To quote from Galton: "Although the brain is able to do fair work fluently in an automatic way, and though it will of its own accord, strike out sudden and happy ideas, it is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without past or present effort. The character of this effort seems to me chiefly to lie in bringing the contents of the antechamber more nearly within the ken of consciousness, which then takes comprehensive note of all its contents, and compels the logical faculty to test t[?]  seriatim before selecting the fittest. for a summons to the pres[?] of the chamber. The thronging of the antechamber is, I am convinced, beyond my control." 

        Mental activity in its rational or integrative aspects whether logical, moral, or aesthetic, is essentially selective in character. The logical process draws definite conclusions from given premises; the moral man or the ethical thinker regards definite relations in behavior response to definite relations in the environment as right or wrong; while the artist or the one who enjoys artistic work appreciates definite relations and combinations as the artistic and the beautiful. Even ordinary life where the process of selection is not so rigid as in the arts, sciences, and philosophy, still the process of attention for the maintenance of rationality is a severe judge in the rejection of unfit streams of thoughts and ideas that may present themselves in the antechamber of consciousness, as Galton terms the state of the mind. In a train of ideas, few ideas of the total mass that offer themselves are accepted, or utilized by the guiding, controlling consciousness to acted upon in the life adjustments of the organism. This holds true not only of the material needs, but more especially of the spiritual interests of man. The higher the level of mental activity, the more finite, the more precise, the more rigid the selective process becomes. The stream of consciousness, as it rushes along, selects, synthesizes or, physiologically speaking, integrates those trains of ideas which help most effectually to reach the destination, or, in other words, are especially fit for the purpose in hand.

        This selective will-activity of the highest nerve-systems, given in the will-effort of selection, forms the very nucleus of man's rational life. These superior selective "choice and will centers," localized by Ferrier, Wundt, Bianchi and others, in the frontal lobes, and by others in the upper layers of the cortex, on account of their selective and inhibitory functions, may be characterized as selective and inhibitory centers par excellence.

        From an evolutionary, or teleological standpoint, we can well realize the biological function or importance of this guardian-consciousness. The external world bombards the living organism innumerable stimuli. From all sides thousands of impressions come crowding upon the senses of the individual. Each impression with appropriate receptors has its corresponding system of reactions which if not modified or counteracted, may end in some harmful or fatal result. It is not of advantage to the organism of a highly complex organization to respond with reactions to all impressions coming from the external environment. Hence, that organism will succeed best in the struggle for existence that possesses some selective, critical inhibitory "choice and will" centres. The more organized and the more sensitive and delicate those centres are, the better will the organism succeed in its life existence. The guardian consciousness wards off, as far as it is possible, the harmful blows given by the stimuli of the external environment. In man, this same guardian consciousness keeps on constructing, by a series of elimination and selection, a new environment, individual and social, which leads to an ever higher and more perfect development and realization of the inner powers of individuality and personality.

(1) Fixation of the Attention.

(2) Monotony.

(3) Limitation of Voluntary Activity.

(4) Limitation of the Field of Consciousness.

(5) Inhibition.

 

          (I) Normal suggestibility varies as indirect suggestion and inversely as direct suggestion.

        This fleeting, evanescent character of the split explains why suggestion in the normal state, why normal suggestibility requires immediate execution as one of its indispensable conditions. We must take the opportunity of the momentary ebb of the controlling consciousness and hastily plant our suggestion in the soil of reflex consciousness. We must watch for this favorable moment, not let it slip by, otherwise the suggestion is a failure. Furthermore, we must be careful to keep in abeyance, for the moment, the ever-active waves of the controlling consciousness. We must find for them work in some other direction; we must divert, we must distract them. That is why normal suggestibility requires the additional conditions of distraction and of immediate execution. For in the waking state the waking, controlling consciousness is always on its guard, and, when enticed away, leaves its ground only for a moment. In normal suggestibility the psychic split is but faint; the lesion, effected in the b[...?] consciousness, is superficial, transitory, fleeting. In abnormal suggestibility, on the contrary, the split is deep and lasting,—it is a severe gash. In both cases, however, we have a removal, a dissociation of waking from the subwaking, reflex consciousness, suggestion becoming effected only through the latter. For suggestibility is the attribute of the subwaking, reflex consciousness.

        A comparison of the two laws discloses the same relation. The two laws are the reverse of each other, thus clearly indicating the presence of a controlling inhibiting conscious element in one case, and its absence in the other. In the normal state we must guard against the inhibitory, waking consciousness, and we have to make our suggestion as indirect as possible. In the abnormal state, on the contrary, no circumspection is needed; the controlling, inhibitory waking consciousness is more or less absent, the subwaking, reflex consciousness is exposed to external stimuli, and our suggestions are therefore )the more effective, the more direct we make them. Suggestibility is a function of disaggregation of consciousness, a disaggregation in which the subwaking, reflex consciousness enters into direct communication with the external world, The general law of suggestibility is:

        "I wanted to get an insight into the very nature of the subwaking self; I wished to make a personal acquaintance with it. 'What is its personal character?' I asked. How surprised I was when, after a close interrogation, the answer came to me that there can possibly be no personal acquaintance with it,—for the subwaking self lacks personality."

        "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 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 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 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 deft 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 tp the long yarn by a climax, requiring immediate execution of the suggestion.

        The suggestion given to the entranced crowd by the "master" or hero spreads like wild fire. The suggestion reverberates from individual to individual, gathers strength, becomes overwhelming, driving crowd into a fury of activity, into a frenzy of excitement. As the suggestions are taken up by the mob and executed, the wave of excitement rises higher and higher. Each fulfilled suggestion increases the emotion of the mob in volume and intensity. Each new attack is followed by a more violent paroxysm of furious, demoniac frenzy. The mob is like an avalanche, the more it rolls, the more menacing and dangerous it grows. The suggestion given by the hero, by the ringleader, by the master of the moment, who simply gives expression to the subconscious passions of the mob, is taken up by the crowd, and is reflected and reverberated from man to man, until every soul is dizzied, and every person is stunned. In the entranced crowd, in the mob, every one influences and is influenced in his turn; every one suggests and is suggested to; until the surging billow of excitement and mob-energy swells and rises, reaching a formidable height.

        Let the crowd, the mass or the mob, be indicated by m and its energy by E, the energy of another mass m₁ be E₁. On account of the interaction of the masses the result will be m multiplied by m₁ or mm₁ and their energies EE₁; the energies of masses m, m₁, m₂, give rnm₁m₂ or EE₁E₂. If the masses are equal, the energies are respectively E, E², E³, and so on. While the masses grow by equal increments of m, the energies increase by the factor E. The masses are respectively: m, 2m, 3m, 4m, 5m, and so on, the corresponding energies are: E¹, E², E³, E⁴, E⁵. Mob-energy rises as the powers of the mass. We may say then that while the masses increase in arithmetical progression, the energies of the masses increase in a geometrical progression.* In other words, the masses grow as the logarithms of their energies. In short, if M is the mass of the mob, then M = Log E.*

        If m is 10 and E is 10, then a mass of 2m gives an energy of 10 ², a mass of 3m yields an energy of 10 ³, a mass of 4m gives an energy of 10 ⁴, or 10,000, a mass of 5m gives an energy of 10 ⁵ or 100,000. While the mass increases in an arithmetical progression of 10, the mass energy grows in a geometrical progression of 10. Briefly stated, the mass grows as the logarithm of mass-energy.

        A knowledge of the subconscious and of the laws of suggestibility are of vital consequence in Social Psychology in general and in Social Pathology in particular. As the great Sociologist, Tarde, points out: "To understand thoroughly the essential social fact, as I perceive it, knowledge of the infinitely subtle facts of mind is necessary,—the roots of what seems to be even the simplest and most superficial kind of sociology strike far down into the depths of the most inward and hidden parts of Psychology and Phy[siology?]."

        In surveying human life in its organized capacity, from the lowest to the highest forms of social organizations in the great wealth of their manifestation, economic, tribal, totemic, sex and family relationship, marriage, art, morals, religion, magic, beliefs, practices, rites, taboos, and other social phenomena, the student of Social Psychology cannot help being impressed with the important rôle played by the instinctive, automatic, reflex consciousness, or the subconscious with its normal and abnormal suggestibility in the protean forms and activities taken by the metamorphic and anamorphic social spirit of aggregate humanity. If there is truth in Aristotle's dictum that man is a social or rather a gregarious animal, or in that of Tarde's and others that man is an imitative animal, there a deeper truth in the more fundamental view, which really includes all others, that man is by nature, or by his subconscious nature, a suggestible animal.

        (V) The greater the uniformity of the constituent units of social mass, the greater the mass-energy, and the more powerful the effects of social suggestibility. In other words, social suggestibility is directly proportional to the uniformity of the social aggregate.

        Ross further realizes the import in the domain of social psychology of the factors and conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility as developed in my "Psychology of Suggestion." Thus he writes: "Sidis goes further in declaring 'If anything gives us a strong rise of our individuality, it is surely our voluntary movements. We may say that the individual self grows and expands with the increase of variety and intensity of its voluntary activity; and conversely, the life of the individual self sinks, shrinks with the decrease of variety and intensity of voluntary movements.' Here, perhaps, is the reason why individuality is so wilted in a dense throng."  .  .  . "A crowd self will not arise unless there is an orientation (fixation) of attention, expectancy, narrowing of the field of consciousness that excludes disturbing impressions."

        "With the growing fascination of the mass for the individual, his consciousness contracts to the pin point of the immediate moment, and the volume of suggestion needed to start on its conquering career becomes less and less. He becomes automatic, in a way unconscious. The end is a tranced impressionable condition akin to hypnosis.  .  .  .The crowd self is ephemeral. .  .   .The crowd is unstable.  .  .  . The crowd self is credulous .  .  . Rational analysis and test are out of the question. The faculties which we doubt with are asleep .  .  . The crowd self is irrational  .  .  . His (man in the crowd) actions are near to reflexes .  .  . The crowd self show simplicity .  .  .  Finally, the crowd self is immoral.  .  .  ."

        "Intimidation" says Tarde "plays an immense part in society under the name of 'respect.' Every one will acknowledge this, and although the part is sometimes misinterpreted, it is never in the least exaggerated. Respect is neither unmixed fear nor unmixed love, nor is it merely the combination of the two, it is a fear which is beloved by him who entertains it." All taboos, covering the vast field of human life, religion, magic, family, marriage relationships, articles of diet, details of modes of living, rules of behavior, involving the minutiae of life of primitive societies, savage, barbarian and civilized, all the codes of law, religious, ceremonial, legal, political, all customs and rites and beliefs which control the human race in the course of its evolution, take their origin in self and fear. According to anthropological research all human institutions with all their taboos are based on fears of perils, often of an extremely superstitious nature, perils of soul and body, fears of impending evil of the supernatural before which gregarious man quails in terror of his life. The impulse of self-preservation and the fear-instinct are at the basis of social organized life activities. The taboos, the laws, the rules of gen[s]es, tribes, and nations, from the lowest to the highest, are upheld by a vague terror and sacred awe which society impresses on man by threats of ill-luck, fearful evil, and terrible punishments befalling sinners and transgressors of the tabooed, of the holy and the forbidden, charged with a mysterious, highly contagious, and virulently infective life-consuming energy. As the English anthropologist, Frazer, puts it: "Men are undoubtedly more influenced by what they fear than by what they love." The Bible lays special stress on the fear of God as the font of wisdom. The Biblical love is saturated with fear of the supernatural. Lack of obedience to commandments, in modern religions lack of faith, is threatened with fearful tortures and eternal damnation in hell. Throughout the course of human evolution, through the institutions of gentile savagery and barbarism to political class-civilization, social organization was taboo-intimidation based on self-preservation and fear. Organized society inspires its individual units with abject terror of the least trespass of custom, rule, rite and taboo. "Brute force" as the English anthropologist well puts it "lurks behind custom in the form of what Bagehot has called 'persecuting tendency.' " Society enmeshes the individual in a close and strongly woven network of taboos, customs, commandments, and traditions, all maintained by force and fear.

        Of all the mental epidemics that befall aggregate humanity and its subconscious activities, the worst are the mob feelings of the militaristic type The subconscious activities are not rationalized and humanized, they are in fact more brutalized than ever, inasmuch as under the aegis of military law and under the tacit understanding that necessity knows no law, there is no pity and no mercy in war. The worst of crimes are committed for the benefit of the army and the militant nation. The individual in he army becomes used to holding human life in contempt, in fact the greater the slaughter, the greater is his merit; and the more medals, ribbons, and honors of hero-worship are showered on him, the more he becomes, after a time, indifferent to all sorts of himan suffering and loss of human life. We find this difference in the warlike Assyrians who enjoyed the impaling and flaying alive of their prisoners, and in the case of the military Spartans in the treatment of their unfortunate Helots, more specially in the imperial warlike world-conquerors, the Romans, in their love of the brutalities of gladiatorial combats and the popular delight in the shedding if blood on the arena. Thus Lecky in describing Roman society, says: "The gladiatorial games form indeed one feature which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilization,—men and women who not only professed, but very frequently acted upon a high code of morals, should have the carnage of men as their habitual amusement, that all this should have continued for centuries with. scarcely a protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly normal, while it opens fields of ethical inquiry of a very deep, though painful character." The great Roman phrase-monger and moralizer Cicero, glorifies gladiatorial games. "When guilty men" proclaims Cicero "are compelled to fight, no better discipline against suffering and death can be presented to the eye." It is instructive for us to learn as well as to ponder on the fact that "the very men who looked down with delight, when the sand of the arena reddened with human blood, made the arena ring with applause when Terence in his famous line: ‘Homo sum, Nihil humani alienum puto’ proclaimed the brotherhood of man." If any protests against those edifying gladiatorial games and ancient forms of movie shows of the arena appeared at all, they came not from the intellectual and ideological classes, but from the despised Jews and from those pariahs of the ancient world, the unwarlike, peace-loving, humble, early Christians who lived by the apparently absurd rule of Christianity: "Love your enemies and return good for evil." There is, however, one feeble protest on record, but it is not from imperial Rome,—it is from the mother of human progress and humanistic civilization, from ancient Athens. "When an attempt was made to introduce the games into Athens, the philosopher Demonax appealed successfully to the better feelings of the people by exclaiming: 'You must first overthrow the altar of pity!' "

        If we ridicule the mediaeval crusade mania, let us compare it with what took place in our own times, in the first quarter of the twentieth century. At the outbreak of the war for the alleged defense of the Fatherland the excitement of militaristic mania in the central empires of Europe reached a formidable height. There were parades, processions, the carrying high of banners and flags, the preaching of hatred and singing of "Hass" and the patriotic national hymn—"Deutchland ueber Alles"; there were Leagues of Defense and Leagues of Security, and all sorts of societies for fighting the war to a finish and for winning the war. The plague did not spare scientists, philosophers, and theologians; such men as Wundt, Haeckel, and Harnack were affected alike with the lowliest chimney-sweeps and craziest asylum inmates,—all cursed and threatened perfidious England and the treacherous allies, all were obsessed by the fervor of national defense of the imperilled Fatherland. The patriotic crusade of the Fatherland-defense did not spare anyone; the young and the old, the learned and the ignorant. the conservatives and the radicals, the capitalists, the workman, and the international socialists were all alike affected by this terrible mental epidemic. If anyone happened by chance to escape the plague and give a word of warning he was promptly accused o disloyalty, interned, imprisoned, immured in a cell for years of torture It seemed as if the insane asylums had opened wide their gates and let loose their populations to hold frenzied meetings, and parade the streets in processions of wild excitement with banner, flag, and drum for the salvation of the country. Thus a German medical eye-witness of all those militaristic orgies expressed himself in private: "The streets are now full of the unbalanced and the insane; this is their hour.  .  .  .  The war will afford a free arena for every instinct and every form of insanity."

        Repetition and impressive, persistent suggestion finally brought about a lodgement of the virus in almost every individual of the social aggregate. Neither the learned nor the ignorant could escape the pressure of social suggestion. The way they tumbled one after another or rather one over another as victims to the fatal influence should have been a study of the utmost interest to the student of Social Psychology. Lay, literary and scientific periodicals were full of war literature. Versifiers sang of "the blood-red glory cross of war" while soldiers and sailors made love not only in halls and on the streets, but also in all the best sellers and novelettes. All the posters, all the pictures of every journal in the land were full of war, magazines teeming with photographs of soldiers and sailors and the valorous deeds of the heroes at the front. Who could resist the pressure of insistent war suggestion repeated day after day and month after month? There no let up on Sundays and holidays. The pulpit thundered war, congregations sang battle hymns.

        The populace became obsessed with a fury of war insanity, with craze of Victory-mania. Security leagues, unions, associations, clubs promote and advance something or other of a patriotic character to help winning the war were formed all over the country. The enthusiasm of national excitement went far beyond the bounds desired by the government, such as the activities of The National Security League which denounced members of Congress for not being red-blooded Americans, or for not showing one hundred per cent of Americanism, so that Congress in self-defense had to investigate and possibly suppress the activities of over zealous leagues. Leagues of all kinds of is description grew up rapidly and luxuriantly like mushrooms after a rain. Everyone attempted to outshine his neighbor, every one had to outdo his friend in doing his bit to help win the war. Posts, poles, trees, walls, and windows were plastered and placarded with leaflets, decals, and signs for tyhe defense of the nation and the glory of the country. Whoever happened to be skeptical, or not enthusiastic enough, was accused of being 'pro-German' and a spy, with consequences natural to such accusations. Every one tried to out-bawl his neighbor with declarations of loyalty, often of a spurious character.

        The trance became deepened, the subconscious emotions of fear anger, and aggression became more and more intensified, fanned as they were by the hot breath of propaganda and the bellows of the press, until the mass of the nation fairly quivered with the fever of enthusiasm and maniacal excitement, an overwhelming mass excitement which no individual could withstand. "Make the world safe for Democracy," "He who does not stand behind Me is disloyal and unworthy of Me" were slogans impressed on the subconscious mind of the public with all the suggestive force of law, press, bema, rostrum, pulpit, and movie, all waving on high old glory, calling crusadei to the battlefield of Democracy in honor of "Courage, Cooties, and Heroes," and for the glory of "the blood-red cross of war." Secretary Lansing has well summed up the general mental state in his appeal: "Let us, as loyal citizens of the Republic, serve in this mighty crusade against Prussianism." For such a mental state can only be paralleled by the crusade mania of the Middle Ages, the mania which cost Europe millions of men, killed and crippled, devastations of populations and countries, followed by the no less terrible epidemic of the Black Plague which ravaged Europe and Asia from end to end, with the destruction of half the human race.

        The bestialization produced by war and militant patriotism came openly to the front with all the horrors of savagery, rapine, deportation, atrocities, and the inhuman slaughter of millions of human beings for the glory of the Fatherland and Kultur and for "the making of the world fit for Democracy." Groups of scientists vied with each other in their supply of infernal machines and chemical poisons for wholesale slaughter of mankind. Poisons and poison-gases, more deadly than ever employed by savage man, poisons which even savages and barbarians scorned to use, were utilized triumphantly and jubilantly by Kultur and culture in their mad strife for supremacy. Man could not have fallen to a lower level of vice and depravity. To Aristotelian dictum was well justified in this strife of nations, in this ignoble world war: "A vicious man can do ten thousand times as much harm as a beast." The chivalrous motto of Alexander of Macedon "[in Greek],"was scorned by the generals of civilized nations. Atrocities of the most vicious kind were justified by the watchwords: "This is war!" "Might is Right." "Necessity knows no law." In this world-war nations fell to the lowest level of savagery. The frenzied, suggestible, gregarious, subconscious self, freed from all rational restraints, celebrated its delirious orgies, its corybantic bacchanalia, held its mad salto mortale over the grave of crucified humanity.

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* This law, first formulated in "The Psychology of Suggestion," is termed by Professor Giddings in his "Sociology" as "The Law of Extent and Intensity of Social Action." Giddings phrases the Law as follows: "The Law of Extent and Intensity of Social Action is: Impulsive social action tends to extend and intensify in geometrical progression."