Section 94. (d) Imitation and the Crowd.
The character of the instinct of imitation and its influence on
the crowd has long been studied in animals, children, and even men,
and has been recognized as a fundamental trait of intellect and the
prime condition of all education. Later on its influence on crowds
was observed, and Napoleon said, "Les crimes collectifs n'engagent
personnes." Weber spoke of moral contagion, and it has long
been known that suicide is contagious. Baer, in his book on "Die
Gefängnisse," has assigned the prison-suicides "imitative tendency."
There is the remarkable fact that suicides often hang themselves
on trees which have already been used for that purpose. And in
jails it is frequently observed that after a long interval a series of
suicides suddenly appear.
The repetition of crimes, once one has been committed in a particular
way, is also frequent; among them, the crime of child-murder.
If a girl has stifled her child, ten others do so; if a girl has sat down
upon it, or has choked it by pressing it close to her breast, etc.,
there are others to do likewise. Tarde believes that crime is altogether
to be explained by the laws of imitation. It is still unknown
where imitation and the principles of statistics come into contact,
and it is with regard to this contact we find our greatest difficulties.
When several persons commit murder in the same way we call it
imitation, but when definite forms of disease or wounds have for
years not been noticed in hospitals and then suddenly appear in
numbers, we call it duplication. Hospital physicians are familiar
with this phenomenon and count on the appearance of a second case
of any disease if only a first occurs. Frequently such diseases come
from the same region and involve the same extraordinary abnormalities,
so that nothing can be said about imitation. Now, how can
imitation and duplication be distinguished in individual cases?
Where are their limits? Where do they touch, where cover each
other? Where do the groups form?
There is as yet no solution for the crimino-political interpretation
of the problems of imitation, and for its power to excuse conduct
as being conduct's major basis. But the problems have considerable
symptomatic and diagnostic value. At the very least, we shall be
able to find the sole possibility of the explanation of the nature or
manner of a crime in the origin of the stimulus to some particular
imitation. Among youthful persons, women especially, there will
be some anticipatory image which serves as a plan, and this will
explain at least the otherwise inexplicable and superfluous concomitants
like unnecessary cruelty and destruction. The knowledge
of this anticipatory image may give even a clew to the criminal,
for it may indicate the nature of the person who could act it out and
realize it. Also in our field there exists "duplication of cases."
The condition of action in great crowds offers remarkable
characteristics. The most instructive are the great misfortunes in which
almost every unhappy individual conducts himself, not only irrationally
but, objectively taken, criminally towards his fellows, inasmuch
as he sacrifices them to his own safety without being in real
need. To this class belong the crossing of bridges by retreating
troops in which the cavalry stupidly ride down their own comrades
in order to get through. Again, there are the well-known accidents,
e. g., at the betrothal of Louis XVI., in which 1200 people were
killed in the crush, the fires at the betrothal of Napoleon, in the
Viennese Ringtheater in 1881, and the fire on the picnic-boat "General
Slocum," in 1904. In each of these cases horrible scenes occurred,
because of the senseless conduct of terrified people. It is said simply
and rightly, by the Styrian poet, "One individual is a man, a few
are people, many are cattle." In his book on imitation, Tarde says,
"In crowds, the calmest people do the silliest things," and in 1892,
at the congress for criminal anthropology, "The crowd is never
frontal and rarely occipital; it is mainly spinal. It always contains
something childish, puerile, quite feminine." He, Garnier, and
Dekterew, showed at the same congress how frequently the mob
is excited to all possible excesses by lunatics and drunkards. Lombroso,
Laschi, etc., tell of many cruelties which rebelling crowds
committed without rhyme or reason.[1]
The "soul of the crowd,"
just recently invented, is hardly different from Schopenhauer's
Macroanthropos, and it is our important task to determine how much
the anthropos and how much the macroanthropos is to be blamed
for any crime.
[[ id="n94.1"]]
Cf. Friedmann: Die Wahnsinn im Völkerleben. Wiesbaden 1901.
Sighele: La folla deliquente. Studio di psicologia Collettiva 2d Ed. Torino
1895. I delitti della folla studiati seconde la psicologia, il diritto la
giurisprudenza. Torino 1902.