IMITATION 191 



same form in successive generations, this is due to fortuitous 

 external circumstances. ^ 



One might be tempted likewise to see in imitation an important 

 determining factor of suicide. It is incontestable that suicide 

 may be contagious. The history of the fifteen French veterans 

 who, in 1772, hanged themselves one after another from a hook 

 in an obscure courtyard of the Hotel des Invalides in Paris is a 

 typical case in point. Once the hook was removed, however, 

 the suicides ceased. And this fact shows us that it was not 

 only the suicide mania fer se which was contagious ; it is evident 

 that other factors, notably suggestibility, came here into action ; 

 for once the hook had disappeared, the suggesting factor dis- 

 appeared, and the list of voluntary deaths came to an end We 

 cannot, therefore, say that the fifteen suicides in question were 

 caused by imitation alone. 



In considering the question of the importance of imitation in 

 prompting suicide, it is necessary to define the phenomenon of 

 imitation itself, and we cannot find a better definition than that 

 given by M. Durkheim : There is imitation when an act has as 

 immediate antecedent the reproduction of a similar act, previously 

 accomplished hy another, withovi any intellectual operation what- 

 soever, either explicit or implicit, affecting the intrinsic character 

 of the act reproduced, having intervened between this representation 

 and the execution of the act. Thus, the mere obedience to laws 

 and customs and traditions is not imitation. The socialised 

 individual does not, as a general rule, obey the laws and tradi- 

 tions of the society to which he belongs without an act of his 

 individual judgment having intervened. The individual realises 

 that disobedience to certain peremptory formulae must entail 

 serious inconvenience for himself. He accomplishes the act 



1 The whole theory of monomania — according to which a person may 

 be insane on one point, and yet be otherwise of sound mind — is long since 

 abandoned. The conception of the brain as divided into separate and 

 independent faculties is contradicted by our actual knowledge of the 

 cerebral structure and of the psychic life. 



