With the growth of the social aggregate, social structure and
functions become varied, differentiated, and rigid; social pressure in-
creases, while individuality and originality are ever on the decrease,
sinking to a uniform level of dead mediocrity and commonplace.
There is limitation of the field of consciousness, limitation of voluntary
activity, monotony, routine, and inhibitions, all growing with the in-
crease of mass, structure, and social pressure on individual units.
With the progressive intensification of these conditions the personal,
critical consciousness gets more and more dissociated from the imper-
sonal, automatic, reflex subconscious, and becomes subject to all sorts
of absurd suggestions. If now some brilliant object fixes the involun-
tary attention of the subconscious mind of the social aggregate, the
mental energy of the constituent units, becoming polarized, turning
in one direction, develops a momentum, uncontrollable and over-
whelming in its disastrous effects, — the subconscious self becomes the



40 The Source and Aim of Human Progress

luckless hysterical actor in all the vulgar farces and horrible tragedies
of historical life.
