454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



portance attached to the character of its members, the association, 

 as a whole, is worth what its chief is worth. His character is the 

 factor of pre-eminent importance ; a little less, it is perhaps true, 

 in mobs ; but in them, on the other hand, while a bad choice of 

 a chief may not produce as disastrous consequences as in a cor- 

 porative association, the chances in favor of a good choice are 

 much less. Multitudes and assemblages, even parliamentary 

 bodies, are quick to be infatuated with a fine speaker, with any 

 stranger ; but the collegia of ancient Rome, the churches of the 

 early Christians, all corporations of every kind, when they come 

 to elect their prior, their bishop, or their syndic, have long been 

 accustomed to examine into his character ; or, if they receive him 

 all fitted out, as in an army, it is at the hands of an intelligent 

 and well-informed authority. They are less exposed to " ring 

 rule," for they do not live continually in a single body, but most 

 usually in a dispersed condition that leaves their members, freed 

 from the constraint of contacts, to be influenced by their own 

 reason. Besides, when the excellence of the chief of a body has 

 been recognized, he may die, but his acts will survive him ; the 

 founder of a religious order, canonized after his death, continues 

 to act in the hearts of his disciples ; and to the influence he exerts 

 is added that of all the abbes and reformers who succeeded him, 

 and whose prestige, like his, grows and is refined by distance in 

 time ; while the honest leaders of mobs * for there are such 

 cease to act as soon as they have disappeared, and are more easily 

 forgotten than replaced. Mobs obey men, living and present only, 

 men of physical and corporeal prestige, never phantoms of ideal 

 perfection, immortalized memories. As I have just mentioned in 

 passing, corporations in their long existence, sometimes of several 

 centuries, present a series of perpetual leaders, grafted, as it were, 

 upon one another and complementing one another ; another differ- 

 ence from mobs, in which there is at most a group of temporary 

 and simultaneous leaders who reflect and aggrandize one another. 

 There are other differences. The worst leaders are liable to be 

 chosen and endured by multitudes, and the worst suggestions of 

 all that are offered to be adopted. This is because, first, the most 

 contagious notions or ideas are those which are most intense; 

 and, secondly, the most intense ideas are the narrowest and most 



* In a conference on Industrial Conciliation and the Function of Leaders, held at Brus- 

 sels in 1892, a very competent Belgian engineer, M. Weiler, illustrated the useful function 

 which honest leaders that is, as he expressed it, leaders of the profession, not leaders by 

 profession might fulfill in differences between employers and their workmen. He also 

 spoke of the little desire which workmen show in these critical moments to see " Messrs. the 

 politicians " come up. Why ? Because they know very well that, once come, these gentle- 

 men will subjugate them with or without their consent. It is a fascination they are afraid 

 of, but are nevertheless subject to. 



