that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on, nothing so great

but it will forget in an hour when the fit is past."[28]

 

History will show us how the crowd-mind works. The medieval mind was not given

to reasoning; the medieval man attached great weight to the utterance of

authority; his religion touched chiefly the emotions. These conditions provided

a rich soil for the propagation of the crowd-mind when, in the eleventh century,

flagellation, a voluntary self-scourging, was preached by the monks.

Substituting flagellation for reciting penitential psalms was advocated by the

reformers. A scale was drawn up, making one thousand strokes equivalent to ten

psalms, or fifteen thousand to the entire psalter. This craze spread by

leaps--and crowds. Flagellant fraternities sprang up. Priests carrying banners

led through the streets great processions reciting prayers and whipping their

bloody bodies with leathern thongs fitted with four iron points. Pope Clement

denounced this practise and several of the leaders of these processions had to

be burned at the stake before the frenzy could be uprooted.

 

All western and central Europe was turned into a crowd by the preaching of the

crusaders, and millions of the followers of the Prince of Peace rushed to the

Holy Land to kill the heathen. Even the children started on a crusade against

the Saracens. The mob-spirit was so strong that home affections and persuasion

could not prevail against it and thousands of mere babes died in their attempts

to reach and redeem the Sacred Sepulchre.

 

In the early part of the eighteenth century the South Sea Company was formed in