--GERALD STANLEY LEE, _Crowds_.

 

In the early part of July, 1914, a collection of Frenchmen in Paris, or Germans

in Berlin, was not a crowd in a psychological sense. Each individual had his own

special interests and needs, and there was no powerful common idea to unify

them. A group then represented only a collection of individuals. A month later,

any collection of Frenchmen or Germans formed a crowd: Patriotism, hate, a

common fear, a pervasive grief, had unified the individuals.

 

The psychology of the crowd is far different from the psychology of the personal

members that compose it. The crowd is a distinct entity. Individuals restrain

and subdue many of their impulses at the dictates of reason. The crowd never

reasons. It only feels. As persons there is a sense of responsibility attached

to our actions which checks many of our incitements, but the sense of

responsibility is lost in the crowd because of its numbers. The crowd is

exceedingly suggestible and will act upon the wildest and most extreme ideas.

The crowd-mind is primitive and will cheer plans and perform actions which its

members would utterly repudiate.

 

A mob is only a highly-wrought crowd. Ruskin's description is fitting: "You can

talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be--usually are--on the whole,

generous and right, but it has no foundation for them, no hold of them. You may

tease or tickle it into anything at your pleasure. It thinks by infection, for

the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little