to the bias the will receives from suggestion. It is not, as Schopenhauer thought, the foreshadow of punishment. It does not symbolize the sway of our ideal over our particular choices, or the rule of principle over impulse. The feeling of oughtness, except when it is the pressure of instinct, is the force of past or present social suggestion working directly on the will. It registers the subjection of the individual's desires and interests to the ascendancy of outsiders.
The extent to which this prevails in anyone depends on whether his individuality is feeble or developed, whether the influences to which he has been exposed are uniform or varied. People of narrow orbit—children, farmers' wives, spinsters, peasants, humble village folk, fishermen, often soldiers and sailors—are slaves to the sense of obligation. Prolonged exposure to a circle or group that speaks always with the same decision the same commands, benumbs the will over whole areas of choice.[1] On the other hand, whatever invigorates the will or reduces the grip of the environment—education, discussion, travel, varied experience, contact with unlike types of men, leadership, new ideas and wants, changes in general opinion, or intellectual progress—undermines the tyranny of group suggestion. In a country neighborhood made up of unlike elements, not crystallized into a close-grained community, the individual counts for much. Likewise in a large city, with many types of belief and sentiment. On the other hand in a military academy, a garrison, a colony, a New England village or a provincial town, the many get the upper hand of the one. Sometimes the coercion is not in the will of the community but in certain traditions. In old colleges, in universities, monasteries, senates, academies, soldiers' homes, ancient families, quiet neighborhoods are traditions that fascinate and profoundly modify the choices of those who come under their influence. So around rank, station, caste, and office cluster powerful precedents and traditions which quickly regulate the conduct of the newly initiated.
- ↑ Variety is the soul of originality and its only source of supply.—Baldwin, Mental Development, p. 360.
