CHAPTER 4 IMITATION

BUT before searching for the social causes of suicide, a final psychological factor remains, the influence of which must be determined because of the great importance attributed to it with respect to the origin of social facts in general and of suicide in particular. This factor is imitation.

That imitation is a purely psychological phenomenon appears clearly from its occurrence between individuals connected by no social bond. A man may imitate another with no link of either one with the other or with a common group on which both depend, and the imitative function when exercised has in itself no power to form a bond between them. A cough, a dance-motion, a homicidal impulse may be transferred from one person to another even though there is only chance and temporary contact between them. They need have no intellectual or moral community between them nor exchange services nor even speak the same language, nor are they any more related after the transfer than before. In short, our method of imitating human beings is the same method we use in reproducing natural sounds, the shapes of things, the movements of non-human beings. Since the latter group of cases contains no social element, there is none in the former case. It originates in certain qualities of our representational life not based upon any collective influence. If, therefore, imitation were shown to help in determining the suicide-rate, the latter would depend directly either in whole or in part upon individual causes.

I

But before examining the facts, let us determine the meaning of the word. Sociologists so commonly use terms without defining them, neither establishing nor methodically circumscribing the range of things they intend to discuss, that they constantly but unconsciously allow a given expression to be extended from the concept originally or apparently envisaged by it to other more or less kindred ideas. Thus, the idea finally becomes too ambiguous to permit discussion. Having no clear outline, it is changeable almost at will according to momentary needs of argument without the possibility of critical foreknowledge of all its different potential aspects. Such is notably the case with what is called the instinct of imitation.

This word is currently used to mean simultaneously the three following groups of facts:

1. In the midst of the same social group, all the elements of which undergo the action of a single cause or number of similar causes, a sort of levelling occurs in the consciousness of different individuals which leads everyone to think or feel in unison. The name of imitation has very often been given the whole number of operations resulting in this harmony. It then designates the quality of the states of consciousness simultaneously felt by a given number of different persons leading them so to act upon one another or combine among themselves as to produce a new state. Using the word in this sense, we mean that this combination results from reciprocal imitation of each of them by all and of all by each. “In the noisy gatherings of our cities, in the great scenes of our revolutions,” it has been said, best appears the nature of imitation thus defined. There one sees best how men in union can mutually transform one another by their reciprocal influence.

2. The same name has been given the impulse which drives us to seek harmony with the society to which we belong, and, with this purpose, to adopt the ways of thought or action which surround us. Thus we follow manners and customs, and—as legal and moral practices are merely defined and well-established customs—we usually act thus when we act morally. Whenever we are ignorant of the reasons for the moral maxim we obey, we conform solely because it possesses social authority. In this sense the imitation of manners is distinguished from that of customs, depending on whether our models are our ancestors or our contemporaries.

3. Finally, we may happen to reproduce an act which has occurred in our presence or to our knowledge, just because it has occurred in our presence or because we have heard it spoken of. It has no intrinsic character of its own causing us to repeat it. We copy it just to copy it, not because we think it useful nor to be in harmony with a model. Our conception of it automatically determines the movements which recreate it. Thus we yawn, laugh, weep, because we see someone yawn,, laugh or weep. Thus also the thought of homicide passes from one to another consciousness. It is ape-like imitation for its own sake.

Now these three sorts of facts are very different from one another.

To begin with, the first cannot be confused with the others, because it involves no act of genuine reproduction, but syntheses sui generis of different states or at least of states of different origins. The term “imitation” cannot therefore be used in speaking of it without losing all clear meaning.

Let us analyze the phenomenon. A number of men in assembly are similarly affected by the same occurrence and perceive this at least partial unanimity by the identical signs through which each individual feeling is expressed. What happens then? Each one imperfectly imagines the state of those about him. Images expressing the various manifestations emanating, with their different shades, from all parts of the crowd, are formed in the minds of all. Nothing to be called imitation has thus far occurred; there have been merely perceptible impressions, then sensations wholly identical with those produced in us by external bodies.4 What happens then? Once aroused in my consciousness, these various representations combine with one another and with my own feeling. A new state is thus formed, less my own than its predecessor, less tainted with individuality and more and more freed, by a series of repeated elaborations analogous to the foregoing, from all excessive particularity. Such combinations could also not be called facts of imitation, unless the name were accepted for all intellectual activity through which two or more similar states of consciousness appeal to one another by their likeness, then blend and fuse in a compound absorbing them but different from them. True, all definitions of words are permissible. But this, it must be recognized, would be extremely arbitrary and could thus be only a source of confusion, since it leaves the word none of its customary meaning. One should say creation rather than imitation, since this combination of forces results in something new. This is indeed the only procedure by which the mind has the power of creation.

This creation may be said to amount merely to an intensification of the original state. But first, a quantitative change need not fail to be a novelty. Moreover, the quantity of things cannot change without changing their quality; a feeling alters its nature completely on becoming two or three times as violent. We know in fact that the mutual reactions of men in assembly may transform a gathering of peaceful citizens into a fearful monster. What a strange imitation to produce such metamorphoses! A term so inadequate to express the phenomenon can have been used only by vaguely imagining that each individual feeling models itself after somebody else’s feelings. Actually, there are here neither models nor copies. There is a penetration, a fusion of a number of states within another, distinct from them: that is the collective state.

To be sure, the cause of this state might properly be called imitation if a leader were admitted always to have inspired the crowd with it. But not only has this assertion never even begun to be proved, and not only is it contradicted by very many cases, where the leader is clearly the product of the crowd rather than its informing cause; but, indeed, in so far as this directive action is real, it has no relation to what is called reciprocal imitation, being unilateral; thus there can be no question of imitation in this sense. We must guard most carefully against those confusions of meaning which have so obscured the subject. Similarly, if one said that an assemblage always contains persons who cling to the common opinion, not through spontaneous impulse but through its imposition upon them, this would undeniably be true. We even believe that there is no individual consciousness in such cases which does not feel such constraint to some degree. But since this constraint originates in the force sui generis investing common practices or beliefs, once they are constituted, it belongs to the second category of facts distinguished above. Let us examine this, therefore, and see how far it deserves to be called imitation.

At least it differs from its predecessor in implying a reproduction. In following a manner or observing a custom one does what others have done and do, daily. But the definition itself implies that this repetition is not owing to the so-called instinct of imitation, but on the one hand, to the sympathy constraining us not to wound the feelings of our fellows, lest we forfeit their intercourse, and on the other, to the respect we feel for collective ways of acting and thinking and the direct or indirect pressure exerted on us by this collectivity to avoid dissension and maintain in us this sense of respect. The act is not reproduced because it took place in our presence or to our knowledge and because we like the reproduction in and for itself, but because it seems obligatory to us and to some extent useful. We perform it not merely because it has been performed but because it bears a social stamp and because we defer to this necessarily on pain of serious inconvenience. That is, to act through respect or fear of opinion is not to act through imitation. Such acts differ little from those we agree upon whenever we innovate. They occur in fact because of a quality inherent in them—a quality which makes us consider them as necessary to do. But when instead of following customs we revolt, we are moved in the same way; if we adopt a new idea or an original practice, it is because of its intrinsic qualities making us feel that it should be adopted. Certainly, our motives are not the same in both cases; but the psychological mechanism is exactly the same. In each, an intellectual operation intrudes between the representation and the execution of the act, consisting of a clear or unclear, rapid or slow awareness of the determining characteristic, whatever it may be. Our way of conforming to the morals or manners of our country has nothing in common, therefore, with the mechanical, ape-like repetition causing us to reproduce motions which we witness. Between the two ways of acting, is all the difference between reasonable, deliberate behaviour and automatic reflex. The former has motives even when not expressed as explicit judgments. The latter has not; it results directly from the mere sight of an act, with no other mental intermediary.

It is thus clear what mistakes arise when two such different sets of facts are given the same name. Let us be on our guard; when we speak of imitation the phenomenon of contagion is implicitly understood, and reasonably enough we pass from one idea to the other very readily. But what is contagious in the accomplishment of a moral precept, in deference to the authority of tradition or to public opinion? Thus, while thinking that we have reduced two realities to one we have actually only confused very distinct ideas. In pathological biology, a disease is called contagious when it rises wholly or mainly from the development of a germ introduced into the organism from outside. Inversely, in so far as this germ has been able to develop thanks only to the active cooperation of the field in which it has taken root, the term “contagion” becomes inexact. Likewise, for an act to be attributed to a moral contagion it is not enough that the idea be inspired by a similar act. Once introduced into the mind, it must automatically and of itself have become active. Then contagion really exists, because the external act is reproduced by itself, entering into us by way of a representation. Imitation likewise exists, since the new act is wholly itself by virtue of the model it copies. But if the impression upon us of the latter takes effect only through our consent and participation, contagion is only figuratively present and the figure is inexact. For the reasons making us consent are the determining causes of our action, not the example before our eyes. We are its authors, even though not its inventors. Consequently, all these oft-repeated expressions about imitative propagation and contagious expansion are inapplicable and must be discarded. They deform instead of defining the facts; they obscure rather than clarify the question.

In short, if we are to think clearly we cannot use one and the same name for the process by which a collective sentiment develops among a gathering, for the process causing our adhesion to common or traditional rules of behavior, and, finally, for the one causing Panurge’s sheep to cast themselves into the water because one of them began it. It is one thing to share a common feeling, another to yield to the authority of opinion, and a third to repeat automatically what others have done. No reproduction occurs in the first case; in the second it results only from logical operations, judgments and reasonings, implicit or explicit, but themselves the essence of the phenomenon; and thus reproduction cannot be the definition. It becomes all embracing only in the third case. There it is all-comprehensive; the new act is a mere echo of the original. Not merely does it repeat, but this repetition has no cause for existence outside itself, only the total of characteristics which make us imitative creatures under certain circumstances. The name of imitation must then be reserved solely for such facts if it is to have clear meaning, and we shall say: Imitation exists when the immediate antecedent of an act is the representation of a like act, previously performed by someone else; with no explicit or implicit mental operation which bears upon the intrinsic nature of the act reproduced intervening between representation and execution.

So, when we ask what is the influence of imitation on the suicide-rate, we must use the word in this sense.8 If its sense is not thus defined, we risk mistaking a purely verbal expression for an explanation. In fact, when a way of acting or thinking is called an act of imitation we mean that imitation explains it and thus think we have told everything by uttering this magical word. Actually, only in cases of automatic reproduction does it have this quality. There imitation itself may be a sufficient explanation, because all that takes place results from imitative contagion. But when a custom is followed, a moral practice conformed to, the reasons for docility are found in the nature of this practice, the special qualities of the custom and the feelings they inspire. Thus when imitation is mentioned apropos of this sort of act, nothing is explained; we are told simply that the fact we reproduce is not new, that is, that it is reproduced, without being told at all why it was produced nor why we reproduce it. Much less can this word take the place of analysis of the complex process whence come collective sentiments and of which we have been able to supply only a conjectural and approximate description above. Thus the misuse of the term may be thought to offer a solution or partial solution of these questions, whereas it has merely succeeded in concealing them.

Only on condition of defining imitation thus, shall we also have the right to consider it a psychological factor of suicide. Actually, so-called reciprocal imitation is a highly social phenomenon, since it is cooperative elaboration of a common sentiment. The repetition of customs and traditions is similarly a result of social causes, being due to the obligatory nature and special prestige investing collective beliefs and practices by virtue of the very fact of their being collective beliefs and practices. Insofar, therefore, as suicide is admittedly disseminated by one or the other of these methods, it would be dependent on social causes and not on individual conditions.

Having thus defined the terms of the problem, let us examine the facts.

II

The idea of suicide may undoubtedly be communicated by contagion. The corridor has already been mentioned where fifteen invalids hung themselves in succession and also the famous sentry-box of the camp at Boulogne, the scene of several suicides in quick succession. Such facts have often been observed in the army: in the 4th regiment of chasseurs at Provins in 1862, in the 15th of the line in 1864, in the 41st, first at Montpellier, then at NÎmes, in 1868, etc. In 1813 in the little village of Saint-Pierre-Monjau, a woman hanged herself from a tree and several others did likewise at a little distance away. Pinel tells of a priest’s hanging himself in the neighborhood of Etampes; some days later two others killed themselves and several laymen imitated them. When Lord Castelreagh threw himself into Vesuvius, several of his companions followed his example. The tree of Timon of Athens has become proverbial. The frequency of such cases of contagion in prisons is likewise affirmed by many observers.

Certain facts, however, usually referred to this class and ascribed to imitation seem to us to have a different origin. Such is notably the case with what has sometimes been called the suicides of the besieged. In his History of the War of the Jews against the Romans, Josephus relates that during the assault on Jerusalem some of the besieged committed suicide with their own hands. More especially forty Jews, having taken refuge underground, decided to choose death and killed one another. According to Montaigne, the Xanthians, besieged by Brutus, “rushed about pell-mell, men, women and children, with such a furious longing to die, that nothing can be done to fly from death which they did not do to fly from life; so that Brutus had much difficulty in saving a small number of them.” It does not appear that these mass suicides originated in one or two individual cases which they merely repeated. They seem to spring from a collective resolve, a genuine social consensus rather than a simple contagious impulse. The idea does not spring up in one particular person and then spread to others; but is developed by the whole group which, in a situation desperate for all, collectively decides upon death. Such is the course of events whenever a social group, of whatever nature, reacts in common under the influence of a common pressure. The agreement is no different because of being arrived at in a passionate impulse; it would be substantially the same if it were more methodical and deliberate. One cannot therefore properly speak of imitation.

We might say as much of several other similar facts. Thus Esquirol reports: “Historians declare that the Peruvians and Mexicans, rendered desperate by the destruction of their religious worship … killed themselves in such numbers that more perished by their own hands than by the swords and muskets of their barbarous conquerors.” In a wider sense, to justify the appeal to imitation, numerous suicides must not only be shown to occur at the same time and place. For they may be due to a general state of the social environment resulting in a collective group disposition that takes the form of multiple suicide. Finally, it would perhaps be interesting, to make the terminology precise, to distinguish moral epidemics from moral contagions; these two words used carelessly for one another actually denote two very different sorts of things. An epidemic is a social fact, produced by social causes; contagion consists only in more or less repeated repercussions of individual phenomena.

Once admitted, such a distinction would certainly reduce the list of suicides imputable to imitation; yet they are, it is true, very numerous. Perhaps no other phenomenon is more readily contagious. Not even the homicidal impulse is so apt to spread. Cases where it spreads automatically are less frequent, and the role of imitation especially is generally less prominent; contrary to common opinion, the instinct of self-preservation would seem less strongly rooted in consciousness than the fundamental moral sentiments, since it shows less resistance to the same influences. But granted this, the question proposed at the beginning of this chapter is unsolved. It does not follow a priori from the fact that suicide may be communicated from person to person that this contagious quality has social effects, that is, that it affects the social suicide-rate, our object of study. Undeniable as it is, it may have only individual, sporadic consequences. The above observations accordingly do not solve the problem; but they make its extent clearer. If, as has been said, imitation is really an original and specially fecund source of social phenomena, it should show its influence especially in suicide since no field exists over which it has more sway. Suicide will, thus help us to verify by decisive experience the reality of the wonderful power ascribed to imitation.

III

If this influence exists, it must appear above all in the geographic distribution of suicides. In certain cases, the rate characteristic of a country or locality should be transmitted, so to speak, to neighboring localities. We must thus consult the map. But methodically.

Certain authors have felt that they might appeal to imitation whenever two or more contiguous departments showed an equally strong tendency to suicide. Yet this diffusion within a single region may well spring from an equal diffusion of certain causes favorable to the development of suicide, and from the fact that the social environment is the same throughout the region. To be assured that imitation causes the spread of a tendency or idea, one must see it leave the environments of its birthplace and invade regions not themselves calculated to encourage it. For, as we have shown, imitative propagation exists only where the fact imitated, and it alone, determines the acts that reproduce it, automatically and without assistance from other factors. A criterion less simple than that often accepted is therefore needed to prove the share of imitation in the phenomenon under investigation.

First of all, no imitation can exist without a model to imitate; no contagion without a central hearth in which it necessarily displays its maximum intensity. Nor can the suicidal tendency justifiably be declared to pass from one part of society to another unless observation uncovers the existence of certain centers of radiation. By what tokens shall they be known?

First, they must have greater aptitude for suicide than all surrounding points; they must show a deeper tinge on the map than neighboring regions. Since, as is natural, imitation acts simultaneously with causes truly productive of suicide, cases must be more numerous there. Secondly, for these centers to play the part ascribed to them and justify reference of events occurring outside their sphere to their influence, each must be something of a cynosure for outlying districts. Clearly, it cannot be imitated without being seen. If attention swerves elsewhere, no matter how many the suicides, they will be as good as non-existent because ignored; so they will not be reproduced. Peoples’ eyes can be thus fixed only on a point of importance to the regional life. In other words, phenomena of contagion are bound to be most pronounced near capitals and large cities. They may even be more anticipated there because in this case the propagative power of imitation is assisted and reenforced by such other factors as the moral authority of great centers, which at times gives such expansive power to their ways of acting. There, accordingly, imitation must have social effects if anywhere. Finally, since as is commonly held, other things being equal, the power of example weakens with distance, surrounding regions should be less afflicted the further they are from the focal hearth, and inversely. The map of suicides must at least satisfy these three conditions to have its contour even partially ascribed to imitation. There will always be occasion to question also whether or not this geographical disposition is not due to a parallel distribution of living conditions conducive to suicide.

Having established these rules, let us apply them.

The customary maps, where, so far as France is concerned, the suicide-rate is indicated only by departments, are inadequate for this investigation. They do not actually permit the observation of the possible effects of imitation where they must be most perceptible, among the different portions of a single department. Moreover, the presence of a district (arrondissement) more or less fertile in suicides may artificially raise or lower the departmental average and thus cause an apparent discontinuity between the other districts and those of neighboring departments, or even, contrariwise, conceal a real discontinuity. Finally, the influence of great cities is too much obscured in this manner to be easily perceived. So we have drawn a map by districts specially for the study of this question, referring to the five-year period 1887-1891. Its study has given most unexpected results.

What is first noticeable is the presence toward the North of a large area, the greater part of which occupies the place of the former Ilede-France, but which enters deep into Champagne and extends into Lorraine. If it were due to imitation, its focus would have to be in Paris, the only conspicuous center of the entire area. Indeed, it is usually imputed to the influence of Paris; Guerry even declared that starting from any point in the periphery of the country (with the exception of Marseilles) and moving toward the capital, suicides are found to increase more and more the nearer one comes. But if the map by departments might seem to confirm this view, the map by districts thoroughly belies it. The Seine, indeed, is found to have a suicide-rate less than all neighboring arrondissements. It has only 471 per million inhabitants, while Coulommiers has 500, Versailles 514, Melun 518, Meaux 525, Corbeil 559, Pontoise 561, Provins 562. Even the districts of Champagne far surpass those most adjacent to the Seine: Reims has 501 suicides, Epernay 537, Arcis-sur-Aube 548, Château-Thierry 623. In his study, Le suicide en Seine-et-Marne, Dr. Leroy had already noted with surprise that the district of Meaux had relatively more suicides than the Seine. Here are his figures:

And the district of Meaux was not alone in this respect. The same author tells us the names of 166 communes of the same department where suicide at this time was more frequent than in Paris. A strange center, to be so inferior to the secondary centers it is supposed to nourish! Yet with the exception of the Seine no other center of radiation can be discovered. For it is still more difficult to make Paris a satellite of Corbeil or Pontoise.

A little further north appears another area, less evenly distributed but still deeply shaded; it corresponds to Normandy. If it were due to contagious expansion, it would therefore have to have Rouen as its center, the provincial capital and a very important city. Now, the two points of this region where suicide is most widespread are the district of Neufchâtel (509 suicides) and that of Pont-Audemer (537 Per million inhabitants) ; and they are not even contiguous. Yet the moral constitution of the province can certainly not be due to their influence.

Far to the South-East, along the Mediterranean shores, we find a strip of territory reaching from the farthest limits of the Bouches-du-Rhône to the Italian frontier, where suicides are also very numerous. Here there is a genuine metropolis, Marseilles, and at the other end a great center of fashionable life, Nice. Yet the most stricken districts are those of Toulon and Forcalquier. No one will say, however, that Marseilles is influenced by them. On the west coast likewise, Rochefort alone stands eut with its rather dark shade from the elongated mass of the two Charentes, though a much larger city, Angoulême, lies within them. In general, there are a great many departments where it is not the district of the principal town which leads the way. In the Vosges we have Remirement and not Ìpinal; in Haute-Saône, Gray, a stagnant or semi-stagnant town, and not Vesoul; in Doubs, Dôle and Poligny, not Besançon; in Gironde, not Bordeaux but La Réole and Bazas; in Maine-et-Loire, Saumur instead of Angers; in Sarthe, Saint-Calais instead of Le Mans; in Nord, Avesnes instead of Lille, etc. Yet in none of these cases does the district which thus surpasses the metropolis include the most important city of the department.

It would be interesting to continue this comparison, not only from district to district but from commune to commune. Unfortunately, a map of suicides by communes cannot be made for the entire country. But in his interesting monograph Dr. Leroy performed this task for the department of Seine-et-Marne. Having classified all the communes of this department according to their suicide-rates, beginning with the highest, he reached the following results: “La Ferté-sous-Jouarre (4,482 inhabitants) the first important town on the list, is the 124th; Meaux (10,762 inhabitants), is 130th; Provins (7,547 inhabitants) is 135th; Coulommiers (4,628 inhabitants) is 138th. Comparison of the rank of these cities representing their place in the series even suggests, curiously enough, a common influence upon them all. Lagny (3,468 inhabitants) and so near Paris is only the 219th; Montereau-Faut-Yonne (6,217 inhabitants), 245th; Fontainebleau (11,939 inhabitants), 247th…. Finally Melun (11,170 inhabitants), principal town of the department, is only the 279th. On the other hand, examining the 25 communes at the head of the list, one will find all but 2 of very small population.”

Outside of France we shall make identical discoveries. The part of Europe most infested with suicide is that including Denmark and central Germany. Now in this vast zone the country leading all others by far is the Kingdom of Saxony; it has 311 suicides per million inhabitants. The Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg follows next (303 suicides), while Brandenburg has only 204. These two little states, however, are far from being centers of importance in Germany. Neither Dresden nor Altenburg set the tone for Hamburg or Berlin. Of all the Italian provinces, likewise, Bologna and Livorno have proportionally most suicides (88 and 84); Milan, Genoa, Turin and Rome follow only at a distance according to averages reached by Morselli for the years 1864-1876.

In short, all the maps show us that suicide, far from being grouped more or less concentrically around certain centers from which it radiates more and more weakly, occurs in great roughly (but only roughly) homogeneous masses and with no central nucleus. Such a configuration indicates nothing with respect to the influence of imitation. It merely shows that suicide is not restricted to local circumstances varying from city to city, but that its determining conditions are always of a certain general nature. There are here neither imitators nor imitated, but relative identity in the effects, due to relative identity in the causes. And this is readily understandable if, as is foreshadowed by all the preceding remarks, suicide depends essentially on certain states of the social environment. For the latter generally retains the same constitution over very considerable areas. Thus, wherever it is the same, it naturally has the same consequences without contagion having anything to do with it. This is why the suicide-rate in a given region usually remains at very much the same level. On the other hand, since its generating causes can never be quite evenly distributed, inevitably it occasionally shows more or less important variations, from one place to another, from one district to a neighboring district such as those we have indicated.

The proof that this explanation is true is that the suicide-rate changes abruptly and completely whenever there is an abrupt change in social environment. Never does the environment exert influence beyond its natural limits. Never does a country very predisposed to suicide by special conditions cast its influence over its neighbors by dint of mere example, unless the same or similar conditions exist there to the same extent. Thus in Germany suicide is endemic and its ravages have been mentioned; we shall show later that Protestantism is the chief cause of this exceptional aptitude. Yet three regions are exceptions to the general rule; the Rhenish provinces with Westphalia, Bavaria and especially Bavarian Swabia, and finally Posnania. These alone in all Germany have less than 100 suicides per million inhabitants. On the map they seem like three lost islands and their clear areas contrast with the surrounding darker shades. They are all three Catholic. Thus the very intense suicidal current which flows about them, has no influence upon them; it stops at their frontiers simply because it fails to find conditions favorable to its development beyond. Likewise the entire South of Switzerland is Catholic; all Protestant elements are in the North. From the contrast of these two districts on the map of suicides, one would think that they belonged to different societies. Although they are everywhere contiguous and in uninterrupted relations with one another, each maintains its individuality with respect to suicide. The average is as low on one hand as it is high on the other. Likewise, within northern Switzerland, Lucern, Uri, Unterwalden, Schwyz and Zug, Catholic cantons, have at most 100 suicides per million, though surrounded by Protestant cantons having many more.

Another experiment might be attempted which should, we believe, confirm the above proofs. Moral contagion can be spread in only two ways: either the event which serves as a model is spread orally by what we call public report, or the newspapers disseminate it. Generally the latter are blamed; undoubtedly they do form a powerful diffusive instrument. If imitation plays a part in the development of suicide, therefore, suicides should vary with the importance that newspapers have in public opinion.

Unfortunately this importance is quite hard to determine. Not the number of papers but rather that of their readers is the measure of the extent of their influence. In a relatively decentralized country like Switzerland, papers may be numerous because each locality has its own and yet, since each is little read, its power of propagation is slight. On the contrary, a single journal such as the London Times, the New York Herald, the Petit journal, etc., affects an immense public. It even seems that the press can hardly have the influence attributed to it without a certain centralization. For where each region has its own way of life, less interest is felt for what passes beyond its small horizon; distant facts are less observed and, consequently, are read more carelessly. Thus there are fewer examples to stimulate imitation. Quite otherwise is the case where a wider field of action is open to sympathy and curiosity by the levelling of local environments and where, accordingly, great papers daily report all important events of their own and neighboring countries, distributing the news in all directions. The accumulating examples reenforce each other. But, of course, one cannot compare the reading public of the different European newspapers and especially evaluate the more or less local character of their news. Yet without being able positively to prove our statement, we doubt that France and England are inferior in these two respects to Denmark, Saxony and even the various districts of Germany. Yet suicides are far fewer in the two countries first named. Nor can it be supposed that within France far fewer papers are read south than north of the Loire; but the difference with respect to suicide between these two regions is known. Without wishing to attach more importance than it deserves to an argument that we cannot rest on established facts, we nevertheless believe it has enough probability to merit some attention.

IV

In short, certain as the contagion of suicide is from individual to individual, imitation never seems to propagate it so as to affect the social suicide-rate. Imitation may give rise to more or less numerous individual cases, but it does not contribute to the unequal tendency in different societies to self-destruction, or to that of smaller social groups within each society. Its radiating influence is always very restricted; and what is more, intermittent. Its attainment of a certain degree of intensity is always brief.

But a more general reason explains why the effects of imitation are imperceptible in statistics. It is because imitation all by itself has no effect on suicide. Except in the very rare instances of a more or less complete “fixed idea,” the thought of an act is not sufficient to produce a similar act itself in an adult, unless he is a person himself specially so inclined. “I have always noticed,” writes Morel, “that, powerful as the influence of imitation is, neither it nor the impression left by the recital or reading of an unusual crime proved strong enough to provoke similar acts among persons of perfectly sound mind.” Likewise, Dr. Paul Moreau de Tours thought his personal observations proved that contagious suicide occurs only among individuals strongly predisposed to it.

To be sure, as this predisposition seemed to him to depend essentially on organic causes, he found it hard to explain certain cases not referable to this origin without admitting combinations of quite improbable, fairly miraculous causes. How improbable that the fifteen patients above referred to were all simultaneously afflicted with nervous weakness! And so with the contagious events so often noticed in the army or in prisons. But the facts are easily explicable once it is acknowledged that the suicidal tendency can be created by the social environment. Then they may well be attributed not to a blind chance which from all points of the compass assembled in one barracks or penetentiary a fairly large number of persons all with the same mental affliction, but to the influence of the common environment in which they live. In fact we shall see that a collective state exists in prisons and in regiments disposing the soldiers and prisoners as directly to suicide as the most violent neurosis. An example furnishes the occasion which causes the impulse to break out, but it does not create the impulse and would have no effect if it did not exist.

With very rare exceptions, then, it may be said that imitation is not an original factor of suicide. It only exposes a state which is the true generating cause of the act and which probably would have produced its natural effect even had imitation not intervened; for the predisposition must be very strong to enable so slight a matter to translate it into action. It is not surprising, therefore, that the acts fail to show the stamp of imitation, since it has no influence of its own, and what it does exert is very slight.

A practical remark may serve as corollary to this conclusion.

Certain authors, ascribing to imitation a power it does not possess, have demanded that the printing of reports of suicides and crimes in the newspapers be prohibited. Such a prohibition might possibly succeed in slightly reducing the annual total of such acts. But it could hardly modify their social rate. The strength of the collective tendency would be unchanged, since the moral state of the groups would be unaffected by this. Weighing the doubtful and very slight possible advantages of such a measure against the serious objections to the suppression of all judicial publicity, the legislator may well hesitate to follow the advice of such specialists. Actually, what may contribute to the growth of suicide or murder is not talking of it but how it is talked of. Where such acts are loathed, the feelings they arouse penetrate the recital of them and thus offset rather than encourage individual inclinations. But inversely, when society is morally decadent, its state of uncertainty inspires in it an indulgence for immoral acts frankly expressed whenever they are discussed, and which obscures their immorality. Then example becomes truly dangerous not as example but because the revulsion it should inspire is reduced by social tolerance or indifference.

But what this chapter chiefly shows is the weakness of the theory that imitation is the main source of all collective life. No fact is more readily transmissible by contagion than suicide, yet we have just seen that this contagiousness has no social effects. If imitation is so much without social influence in this case, it cannot have more in others; the virtues ascribed to it are therefore imaginary. Within a narrow circle it may well occasion the repetition of a single thought or action, but never are its repercussions sufficiently deep or extensive to reach and modify the heart of society. Thanks to the almost unanimous and generally ancient predominance of collective states, they are far too resistant to be offset by an individual innovation. How could an individual, who is nothing more than an individual, be strong enough to mould society to his image? If we were not still reduced to conceiving of the social world almost as crudely as the primitive does the physical world; if, regardless of all scientific induction, we were not still reduced at least tacitly and unconsciously to admitting that social phenomena are not proportionate to their causes, we would not even pause to consider a conception which, though of biblical simplicity, is at the same time in flagrant contradiction to the fundamental principles of thought. We no longer believe that zoological species are only individual variations hereditarily transmitted; it is equally inadmissible that a social fact is merely a generalized individual fact. But most untenable of all is the idea that this generalization may be due to some blind contagion or other. We should even be amazed at the continuing necessity of discussing an hypothesis which, aside from the serious objections it suggests, has never even begun to receive experimental proof. For it has never been shown that imitation can account for a definite order of social facts and, even less, that it alone can account for them. The proposition has merely been stated as an aphorism, resting on vaguely metaphysical considerations. But sociology can only claim to be treated as a science when those who pursue it are forbidden to dogmatize in this fashion, so patently eluding the regular requirements of proof.

Bibliography.—Lucas, De l’imitation contagieuse, Paris, 1833.—Despine, De la contagion morale, 1870. De l’imitation, 1871.—Moreau de Tours (Paul), De la contagion du suicide, Paris, 1875.—Aubry, Contagion du meurtre, Paris, 1888.—Tarde, Les Lois de l’imitation (passim). Philosophie pénale, p. 319 and ff. Paris, F. Alcan.—Corre, Crime et suicide, p. 207 and ff.

Bordier, Vie des sociétés, Paris, 1887, p. 77—Tarde, Philosophie pénale, p. 321.

Tarde, Ibid., pp. 319-320.

In attributing these images to a process of imitation, would we mean that they are mere copies of the states they express? First, this would be a very crude metaphor, taken from the old inacceptable theory of perceptible types. Also, if we use the word imitation thus, it must be extended to all our sensations and ideas indiscriminately; for of all we may say, using the same metaphor, that they reproduce the object to which they refer. Thereupon all intellectual life becomes a product of imitation.

In these particular cases, a manner or tradition may indeed be reproduced through mere ape-like imitation; but then it is not reproduced as a manner or tradition as such.

To be sure, everything not original invention is sometimes called imitation. As such, almost all human acts are clearly acts of imitation; for true inventions are very rare. But the term imitation then has no definite meaning, just because it means almost everything. Such terminology can only breed confusion.

It is true there is a so-called logical imitation (See Tarde, Lois de l’imitation, I. ed., p. 158); this reproduces an act because it serves a definite end. But such imitation obviously has nothing to do with the imitative impulse; facts due to one must be carefully distinguished from those due to the other. They have quite different explanations. On the other hand, as we have just shown, manner-imitation and custom-imitation are as logical as the others, although having their special logic in some respects.

Acts imitated because of the moral or intellectual prestige of the original actor, whether individual or collective, that serves as a model, belong rather to the second class. For such imitation has no automatic quality. It implies reasoning: one acts like a person possessing one’s confidence because his recognized superiority guarantees the propriety of his acts. One has the same reasons to follow him as to respect him. No explanation has therefore been given of such acts when they are said merely to have been imitated. What matters is the cause of the confidence or respect determining this obedience.

Yet imitation itself alone, as we shall see below, is a sufficient explanation only in rare instances.

For we must confess that we have only a vague idea of what it is. Exactly how the combinations occur resulting in the collective state, what are its constituent elements, how the dominant state is produced are questions too complex to be solved solely by introspection. Manifold experiments and observations would be required and have not been made. We know little as yet how and according to what laws mental states of even the single individual combine; much less do we know of the mechanism of the far more complicated combinations produced by group-existence. Our explanations are often mere metaphors. Our words are therefore not meant as an exact expression of the phenomenon; we have tried only to show that there is something else here than imitation.

See the detailed facts in Legoyt, op. cit., p. 227 ff.

See similar facts in Ebrard, op. cit., p. 376.

III, 26.

Essais, II, 3. [Translation from vol. I, p. 40, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, New York, 1934.—Ed.]

It will appear below that there is always and normally, in every society, a collective disposition taking the form of suicide. This differs from what we shall call epidemic by being chronic and a normal element of the moral temper of the society. Epidemics are also collective dispositions, but which rarely make their appearance, since they come from abnormal and usually transient causes.

See Appendix II

Op. cit., p. 213.—According to the same author, even the entire departments of Marne and of Seine-et-Marne surpassed the Seine in 1865-66. Marne, he declares, then to have had 1 suicide to 2,791 inhabitants; Seine-et-Marne, 1 to 2,768; the Seine 1 to 2,822.

Of course, there is no question of contagious influence. These are three principal towns in the districts, of nearly equal importance, separated by many communes of very different rates. All the comparison proves is that social groups of like dimensions and with sufficiently similar living conditions, have a like suicide-rate without necessarily influencing one another.

Op. cit., pp. 193-194. The very small commune at the head (Lesche) has 1 suicide to 630 inhabitants, or 1,587 suicides per million, four to five times as many as Paris. Nor are these cases peculiar to Seine-et-Marne. We are indebted to Dr. Legoupils of Trouville for the information concerning three tiny communes of the district of Pont-l’Evêque, Villerville (978 inhabitants), Cricqueboeuf (150 inhabitants) and Pennedepie (333 inhabitants). The suicide-rates calculated for periods ranging from 14 to 25 years are respectively 429,800 and 1,081 per million inhabitants.

Of course, it is true that large cities generally have more suicides than small ones or country districts. But the proposition is only broadly true and has many exceptions. Besides, the preceding facts which seem to contradict it may be reconciled with it. We need only agree that large cities are formed and develop under the influence of the same causes which themselves determine the development of suicide more than the cities do themselves. Thus these cities are naturally numerous in regions rich in suicides, but without having any monopoly in them; such cities are few, on the contrary, where suicides are few without the small number of the latter being due to their absence. Thus their average rate would generally be superior to that of country districts, though inferior to it in certain cases.

See Appendix III.

See Appendix III and for details of figures by cantons, Bk. II Chap. V Table XXVI.

Traité des maladies mentales, p. 243.

De la contagion du suicide, p. 42.

See especially Aubry, Contagion du meurtre, 1st ed., p. 87.

By this, we mean an individual stripped of all power possibly acquired by collective confidence or admiration. Clearly, a functionary or a popular man embodies not merely his individually inherited powers but social powers resulting from the collective sentiments of which they are the object, which give him influence over the progress of society. But only in so far as he is more than an individual does he possess this influence.

See Delage, La structure du protoplasme et les théories de l’hérédité. Paris, 1895, p. 813 ff.