THE MOB MIND. 397 



times ! " But we now see that a good deal of the net result has 

 been to put one kind of imitation in place of another. Instead of 

 aping their forefathers, people now ape the many. The multitude 

 has now the prestige that once clothed the past. Except where 

 rural conservatism holds sway, mob mind in the milder forms of 

 fad and craze begins to agitate the great deeps of society. 



Frequently a half-education has supplied many ideas without 

 developing the ability to choose among them. The power to dis- 

 criminate between ideas in respect to their value lagging far be- 

 hind the power to receive them, the individual is left with noth- 

 ing to do but follow the drift. Ideas succeed one another in his 

 mind not by trial and rejection, but in the order of their arrival 

 on the scene. Formerly people rejected the new in favor of wont 

 and tradition ; now they tend to " go in " for everything, and 

 atone for their former suspiciousness by a touching credulity. 

 The world is abuzz with half-baked ecstatic people who eagerly 

 champion a dozen different reforms in spelling, dress, diet, exer- 

 cise, medicine, manners, sex relations, care of children, art, in- 

 dustry, education, and religion, each of which is to bring in the 

 millennium all at once. 



These minds that, broken from the old moorings of custom, 

 drift without helm or anchor at the mercy of wind and tide, are 

 social derelicts. They follow the currents of opinion ; they can 

 not create them. At all times ripples chase each other over the 

 surface of society in the direction of improvement sudden but 

 all-pervading interest in " how the other half lives,^^ in the aboli- 

 tion of war, in rational dress, in out-of-door sports, in "a white 

 life for two." Had these ripples a real ground swell beneath 

 them, the world might soon be made over. But, alas ! they are 

 only ripples. They wrinkle the surface of people's attention for 

 an instant, but in a moment their fickle minds are responding to 

 a new impulse in a different direction. 



If this were to be the outcome of the attempt to emancipate 

 the common man and fit him to be helmsman of society, we might 

 well despair. Certainly the staid, slow-going man of olden times, 

 plodding along the narrow but beaten path of usage, is as dignified 

 a figure as the unsteady modern person whose ideas and prefer- 

 ence flicker constantly in the currents of momentary popular 

 feeling. The lanes of custom are narrow ; the hedgerows are 

 high, and view to right or left there is none. But there are as 

 much freedom and self-direction in him who trudges along this 

 lane as in the " emancipated " man who finds himself on an open 

 plain, free to go in any direction, but nevertheless stampedes aim- 

 lessly with the herd. 



The remedy for mob mind, whether presented in the liquefac- 

 tion of our city folk under modern conditions of mental intimacy 



