192 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



fleeting, for, as soon as a fashion has spread to a certain 

 proportion of the total population, the operation is re- 

 versed and contra-imitation begins to make for its aboli- 

 tion and replacement by another. For example, the 

 stylish mistress will not continue to wear the new shape 

 of hat, however becoming to her, after the colored cook 

 and her humbler neighbors have begun to imitate it. 

 Each person is moved not alone by the prestige of those 

 whom he imitates, but also by the desire to be different 

 from the mass who have not yet adopted the style. Most 

 Englishmen would scorn to kiss and embrace one another 

 or to gesticulate freely, if only because Frenchmen do 

 these things ; they would not wear their hair either long 

 or very closely cropped, because Germans do so. Thus 

 contra-imitation makes societies homogeneous. 35 



Although imitation spreads in all directions in geo- 

 metrical progression, it spreads most easily and most 

 rapidly from above to below, from the higher to the 

 lower social classes. 36 "Given the opportunity, a nobil- 

 ity will always and everywhere imitate its leaders, its 

 kings or suzerains, and the people, likewise, given the op- 

 portunity, its nobility." 37 The impression must come, 

 from a source enjoying prestige, an individual or a col- 

 lective personality that is stronger, more complex, or 

 more highly developed. "But in reality, the thing that 

 is most imitated is the most superior one of those that 

 are nearest. In fact, the influence of the model's ex- 

 ample is efficacious inversely to its distance as well as 

 directly to its superiority. Distance is understood here 

 in its sociological meaning. However distant in space 

 a stranger may be, he is close by, from this point of 

 view, if we have numerous and daily relations with 



s/6td. soTarde, op. cit., pp. 215-224. si Ibid., p. 217. 



