rise to discussion and individual consciousness as contrasted with group consent. So far as there is collective consciousness in regard to disputed issues it is the collective consciousness of subgroups rather than the larger group. In the present political state, such issues as the tariff, the size of the income tax, the claims of labor give rise to more or less definite subgroups as well as individual reactions. The issue, moreover, must be felt to be a vital issue in order to produce any marked consciousness of participation; it cannot seem a dead issue or a trivial issue. The causes which stimulate loyalty are those that are felt as momentous to the safety and prosperity of the group. This can easily be illustrated in any group-the labor union, the political state, the business corporation.

Secondly, the consciousness of identification varies with opposition to the cause. Loyalty is likely to be merely dormant until the common cause is challenged. The devotees of a religion may be comparatively indifferent until persecution, the violation of the religious conscience, sets in. And then we have the marvels of martyrdom where the contagion of courage and faith stimulates even the comparatively weak to sublime sacrifice. People may speak indifferently and even critically of their nation until its life is threatened; and then the flood tide of emotion and heroism rises to meet the crisis. The love of family may dwindle to a mere "of course" until loss of the family bond is threatened, and then a mother's sacrifice knows no bounds. So strong becomes the feeling of solidarity in times of crisis to the group, that the utmost impatience and even vindictiveness is felt toward members who fail to participate in the loyalty and sacrifice. This has been abundantly illustrated in national wars as regards the attitude to the conscientious objector and still more to the wilful slacker. The greater the danger to the group, the greater the intolerance to dissenters who attempt to follow their individual judgment. Crises always take on a religious character and the devotion to the group becomes mystical or sacramental. Individual abandon to the cause becomes complete by those who participate in the group consciousness. This, of course, does not apply to those who share

in the group conduct from fear of the group. They may still remain individuals, apart in their consciousness, even though dominated by the group.

Thirdly, the group consciousness varies with the number of participants. Men find it easier to renounce their individual and class claims in the crowd under the inspiration of a common cause than as individuals. The consciousness of being one in a mass tends to inhibit individuality and to intensify the abandon to the cause. Hence the importance of mass meetings for stimulating enthusiasm as opposed to individual canvassing or printed communications. The intensity of the totem bond grows by the contagion of the mutual excitement in the dances, mutilations, and various ceremonies carried out. Conversions take place from the hypnotic excitement of the religious occasion when even hardened sinners yield. Courage spreads to the indifferent through army discipline and through the participations of millions in common danger. Two observations may be ventured in connection with the consciousness of this identification of the individual with the group. One is that the intellectual meaning varies inversely with identification, i.e., it is greatest when the individual is most wide-awake, in other words when he differentiates himself from the mass; and it decreases as the individual becomes submerged-approaching its vanishing point as our individuality is lost in the group. On the other hand, feeling or the emotional meaning is in inverse relation to intelligence. It is greatest in moments of self-effacement, such as the state of patriotic excitement and religious rapture, and decreases with the intellectual scrutiny of our relations to the group. Hence those who wish to inhibit individual reflection and action and to secure abandon to a cause strive to produce a crowd effect. They make use of symbols and formulae, fraught with feeling; they use music; they shout; in short they try to produce the maximum of emotional excitement that so they may take us off our guard and sweep our customary scruples out of the way. It is so that conversions are produced; so people are made to part with their money for a cause; so their fighting blood is roused, when calm individual thought might decide otherwise.

TYPES OF PARTICIPATION

If we now study social participation from the point of view of the control of the group over the mental processes of the individual, we may distinguish three types. In the first place, the participation may be automatic-the individual accepting unquestioningly and unthinkingly the customs and beliefs of the group. A great deal of our common life is ordinarily thus accepted. It is thus that we take our etiquette and, for the most part, the fashions. We accept similarly a whole body of conventional belief-the science, religion, and institutions of the day. Among customridden peoples the past is accepted because it is old and venerable and presided over by ancestral spirits. Among convention-ridden peoples, the current beliefs and practices are accepted because they are the thing. Most of us, and all of us to a great extent, are swayed by the authority of the group. We take things because they are approved and standardized for us. We live second hand. We are rarely masters, we are mostly slaves, of destiny. This is what Rousseau means in the opening sentence of his Social Contract: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains." But Rousseau was mistaken in affirming that man is born free. Freedom is something he must win in the school of society; and the chains are part of the discipline of man that he may learn to walk-not alone, but a free man, a free creator among comrades, if that time ever comes.

While it is a fact that we are dominated by the group, the fact is not a justification of such control. The ideal for humanity is rather that we should bring our conscious personal reactions and thus enrich the common fund of life. But this is more easily said *han done. Life is overlaid with group opinion and group standards before we are mature enough to think. The prestige of the authority about us, backed as it is by the entire pressure of group conviction, overawes us and impresses the habits of the group upon us until we become social automata. We fall unconsciously into the ways of evaluating and judging that are socially approved. It is easier to follow the herd than to assert one's individuality. Society, moreover, from the beginning has put a premium on

conformity and discourages dissenters by all the means at its disposal. It praises loyalty as the supreme virtue. After ages of social selection it is a wonder that there is any individuality left. And indeed the mass of human beings are content to follow the lead whether of custom or fashion. They fall into step whether in institutions or in crowds.

The first instinct of the group, as of the individual, is selfpreservation. Hence its strong emphasis on conformity. It took untold ages to build up social restraint and back of it is the jungle. And the jungle returns whenever social restraint lapses. Hence the group is always nervous about individual innovations. Its chief interest is stability and order, the conserving of the values of the past and handing them on. Its motto in case of doubt is that it is expedient that the individual should die rather than the whole people perish. If the group cannot accomplish the end of suppressing nonconformity by legal punishments and so dispose of the refractory individual, it does so none the less effectively by social sanctions. It bribes the individual by preferment when he furthers group interest and dazzles him with future glory. If he persists, on the other hand, in his individualistic way, he is ostracized. His opportunities for advancement are barred. He must lead a lonely existence. To its mundane means of restraint, it generally adds the supernatural sanction-a glorious heaven for conformists.

In its punishment of nonconformity, society does not distinguish between nonconformity that is atavism and nonconformity that is progress. Jesus of Nazareth was crucified between two thieves. It is nonconformity which society punishes in its blind zeal for self-preservation. The merits do not matter as a rule. The greater the danger seems to the existing order, the more relentless it is in suppressing the individual. The motto of society is "Safety first." Yet progress must be bought at a risk. There will always be the antinomy between the demands of security and those of progress. As Bernard Shaw puts it: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

It is true that of late we have gone a long way in breaking down old customs. There is today but little reverence for authority in the old sense, but instead we are slaves of the herd, of crowd sentiment. And while we have thus a consciousness of being more free and independent and boast our superiority to the past, we may as a matter of fact be even more of slaves. Our tolerance today is probably no deeper seated than that of former generations. We are tolerant perhaps in what they condemned. But they too built the tombs of the prophets of the past. If our prejudices are really affected our pride in nationality and race or our class interests our passions flare up as quickly as theirs, and more so because of our lack of permanent sanctions. Real emancipation must come not from substituting the authority of the crowd for the authority of custom but from the cultivation of greater thoughtfulness in human beings. It means the substitution of utility, of welfare, of enlightened experience for blind conformity.

Such emancipation does not mean the breaking with the past nor walking aloof from men. It means, on the contrary, a profound sympathy with human striving through the ages. While the Prophet proclaims: "Ye have heard those of old say. but I say unto you," the same Master of men has also said: "Think not that I am come to destroy but to fulfill." For the striving of the past is pregnant with the future. It is only man's deadness and idolatry of the past that must be broken through. Even when a man fancies himself most original, it is easy for the critic to point out his indebtedness. The true pioneer, the creator in any field, does indeed participate in the real striving of the race. He shares its life blood. He brings into clearness its deepest motives-motives incrusted by convention and often hidden from society which vents its wrath on those which guide it into the light, because the light perchance destroys their gossamer illusions. After all, those who carry on the pioneer work of the prophets of the past are truer to them than those who build their tombs and crucify those which are sent.

It is, moreover, not merely a matter of intellectual, moral, or aesthetic enrichment that we should cultivate individuality and open-mindedness. But it is even a matter of group safety. Blind