IMITATION 193 



excitement spread to an increasing number of persons it increased 

 ia force, and developed into uncontrollable passion. The quanti- 

 tative change is accompanied by a qualitative one ; but there is 

 here no reproduction of either actions or ideas. We are in the 

 presence of a mutual interaction between the difierent members 

 of the crowd, by means of which two or more similar states of 

 conscience attract each other by reason of their resemblance. 

 These two states of conscience finally absorb each other ; the 

 process repeats itself indefinitely, until it has produced a col- 

 lective state of conscience sensibly different to the original 

 separate individual states. Thus, the result is diametrically 

 different from that which imitation would have brought about ; 

 for imitation, being the automatic reproduction of an action pre- 

 viously perpetrated, could only lead to the repetition of similar 

 actions. 



But it may be urged that imitation does play a role in prompt- 

 ing suicides, even when we restrict the meaning of imitation to 

 the automatic reproduction of an act previously performed. 

 We do not propose to deny that imitation plays a part in some 

 individual cases of suicide. In the case of the fifteen veterans 

 already mentioned, who hanged themselves one after another 

 from the same hook, it is certain that the example of the first 

 victim, acting on the morbid temperament of the second, caused 

 the latter to hang himself from the hook in question ; and, as we 

 have said, suggestion played an important part in determining 

 the fate of the remaining thirteen victims. Other cases of 

 suicide might be given in which imitation was a determining 

 factor ; but in order to appreciate the influence of imitation on 

 the social rate of suicide, it is not sufficient to discuss individual 

 cases, however numerous. We must take the population of a 

 country in its totality, examine which regions of the country 

 are most subject to the suicidal mania, and see by statistics 

 whether these regions exercise an influence over the adjacent 

 regions sufficient to increase the total number of suicides in these . 



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