This relegation of the low castes to a sort of ghetto is carried to great lengths in the south of India where the intolerance of the Brāhman is very conspicuous. In the typical Madras village the Pariahs—"dwellers in the quarter" (pārā) as this broken tribe is now called—live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm leaves known as the pārchery, the squalor and untidiness of which present the sharpest contrasts to the trim street of tiled masonry houses where the Brāhmans congregate. "Every village," says the proverb, "has its Pariah hamlet"—a place of pollution the census of which is even now taken with difficulty owing to the reluctance of the high-caste enumerator to enter its unclean precincts. "A palm tree," says another, "casts no shade; a Pariah has no caste and rules." The popular estimate of the morals of the Pariah comes out in the saying, "He that breaks his word is a Pariah at heart"; while the note of irony predominates in the pious question, "If a Pariah offers boiled rice will not the god take it?" the implication being that the Brāhman priests who take the offerings to idols are too greedy to inquire by whom they are presented.
B. SUBORDINATION AND SUPERORDINATION
1. The Psychology of Subordination and Superordination[229]
The typical suggestion is given by words. But the impulse to act under the influence of another person arises no less when the action is proposed in the more direct form of showing the action itself. The submission then takes the form of imitation. This is the earliest type of subordination. It plays a fundamental rôle in the infant's life, long before the suggestion through words can begin its influence. The infant imitates involuntarily as soon as connections between the movement impulses and the movement impressions have been formed. At first automatic reflexes produce all kinds of motions, and each movement awakes kinesthetic and muscle sensations. Through association these impressions become bound up with the motor impulses. As soon as the movements of other persons arouse similar visual sensations the kinesthetic sensations are associated and realize the corresponding movement. Very soon the associative irradiation becomes more complex, and whole groups of emotional reactions are imitated. The child cries and laughs in imitation.
Most important is the imitation of the speech movement. The sound awakes the impulse to produce the same vocal sound long before the meaning of the word is understood. Imitation is thus the condition for the acquiring of speech, and later the condition for the learning of all other abilities. But while the imitation is at first simply automatic, it becomes more and more volitional. The child intends to imitate what the teacher shows as an example. This intentional imitation is certainly one of the most important vehicles of social organization. The desire to act like certain models becomes the most powerful social energy. But even the highest differentiation of society does not eliminate the constant working of the automatic, impulsive imitation.
The inner relation between imitation and suggestion shows itself in the similarity of conditions under which they are most effective. Every increase of suggestibility facilitates imitation. In any emotional excitement of a group every member submits to the suggestion of the others, but the suggestion is taken from the actual movements. A crowd in a panic or a mob in a riot shows an increased suggestibility by which each individual automatically repeats what his neighbors are doing. Even an army in battle may become, either through enthusiasm or through fear, a group in which all individuality is lost and everyone is forced by imitative impulses to fight or escape. The psychophysical experiment leaves no doubt that this imitative response releases the sources of strongest energy in the mental mechanism. If the arm lifts the weight of an ergograph until the will cannot overcome the fatigue, the mere seeing of the movement carried out by others whips the motor centers to new efficiency.
We saw that our feeling states are both causes and effects of our actions. We cannot experience the impulse to action without a new shading of our emotional setting. Imitative acting involves, therefore, an inner imitation of feelings too. The child who smiles in response to the smile of his mother shares her pleasant feeling. The adult who is witness of an accident in which someone is hurt imitates instinctively the cramping muscle contractions of the victim, and as a result he feels an intense dislike without having the pain sensations themselves. From such elementary experiences an imitative emotional life develops, controlled by a general sympathetic tendency. We share the pleasures and the displeasures of others through an inner imitation which remains automatic. In its richer forms this sympathy becomes an altruistic sentiment; it stirs the desire to remove the misery around us and unfolds to a general mental setting through which every action is directed toward the service to others. But from the faintest echoing of feelings in the infant to the highest self-sacrifice from altruistic impulse, we have the common element of submission. The individual is feeling, and accordingly acting, not in the realization of his individual impulses, but under the influence of other personalities.
This subordination to the feelings of others through sympathy and pity and common joy takes a new psychological form in the affection of tenderness and especially parental love. The relation of parents to children involves certainly an element of superordination, but the mentally strongest factor remains the subordination, the complete submission to the feelings of those who are dependent upon the parents' care. In its higher development the parental love will not yield to every momentary like or dislike of the child, but will adjust the educative influence to the lasting satisfactions and to the later sources of unhappiness. But the submission of the parents to the feeling tones in the child's life remains the fundamental principle of the family instinct. While the parents' love and tenderness mean that the stronger submits to the weaker, even up to the highest points of self-sacrifice, the loving child submits to his parents from feelings which are held together by a sense of dependence. This feeling of dependence as a motive of subordination enters into numberless human relations. Everywhere the weak lean on the strong, and choose their actions under the influence of those in whom they have confidence. The corresponding feelings show the manifold shades of modesty, admiration, gratitude, and hopefulness. Yet it is only another aspect of the social relation if the consciousness of dependence upon the more powerful is felt with fear and revolt, or with the nearly related emotion of envy.
The desire to assert oneself is no less powerful, in the social interplay, than the impulse to submission. Society needs the leaders as well as the followers. Self-assertion presupposes contact with other individuals. Man protects himself against the dangers of nature, and man masters nature; but he asserts himself against men who interfere with him or whom he wants to force to obedience. The most immediate reaction in the compass of self-assertion is indeed the rejection of interference. It is a form in which even the infant shows the opposite of submission. He repels any effort to disturb him in the realization of the instinctive impulses. From the simplest reaction of the infant disturbed in his play or his meal, a straight line of development leads to the fighting spirit of man, whose pugnaciousness and whose longing for vengeance force his will on his enemies. Every form of rivalry, jealousy, and intolerance finds in this feeling group its source of automatic response. The most complex intellectual processes may be made subservient to this self-asserting emotion.
But the effort to impose one's will on others certainly does not result only from conflict. An entirely different emotional center is given by the mere desire for self-expression. In every field of human activity the individual may show his inventiveness, his ability to be different from others, to be a model, to be imitated by his fellows. The normal man has a healthy, instinctive desire to claim recognition from the members of the social group. This interferes neither with the spirit of co-ordination nor with the subordination of modesty. In so far as the individual demands acknowledgement of his personal behavior and his personal achievement, he raises himself by that act above others. He wants his mental attitude to influence and control the social surroundings. In its fuller development this inner setting becomes the ambition for leadership in the affairs of practical life or in the sphere of cultural work.