NOTES 287 



secute until the Reformation, by reviving religious differences, 

 again brought pubhc opinion to the fore. 



Its operation was ever5rwhere the same. In every country 

 it attacked the minority with gusto. This reductio ad absurdum 

 of Pragmatism therefore demonstrates that if the faith is true 

 which works, truth varies according to geography. Cathohcism 

 was true in Spain, Lutheranism in Germany, Calvinism in 

 Holland, because the majority said so. 



It is because public opinion is so variable that a cynic once 

 declared that the majority is always wrong ; that Lord Rosebery 

 in one of his essa3^s remarked that " politics are the sport of 

 circumstance, and principle the slave of opportunity " ; and 

 that men of science, accustomed to the certainties of the labora- 

 tor}^, are apt to ignore a force which seems both potent and 

 ineffective, certain only in its uncertainty, and at once irrational 

 and inconclusive. 



But this attitude is really as unscientific as Mr. Pickwick's. 

 The business of science is to find the rational element in the 

 apparently irrational. Public opinion is as uncertain as the 

 wind ; but the meteorologist knows the causes which bring 

 about a change of wind, although he cannot accurately foretell 

 them. Similarly, the student of history can analyse the more 

 complex causes which bring about a change of public opinion ; 

 and although he too is unable to predict them in advance, he 

 has sufficient materials to construct the basis of a theory of 

 communal psychology. 



Such a study will be found to differ very considerably from 

 the psychology of the individual. It is, in the first place, less 

 concerned with reason and more with will. Ten men in a crowd 

 are not ten times as rational as one man ; the probability is that 

 they will be less rational. But ten men in a crowd will have ten 

 times the volition of one, and they may have more, for the normal 

 will of the individual is increased by excitement, propinquity, 

 and the suggestion of action. Reason is the individual balance, 

 and it is, therefore, less operative when individuality is lost in 

 the crowd ; at such times the rational check on the emotions is 

 minimised or suspended, and the will, reinforced by those 

 emotions, is supreme. 



When the crowd is disciplined, its will is united ; an army is 

 nothing more than a trained and disciplined crowd, whose will 

 is directed to one end. Its will is irresistible unless it encounters 

 a stronger communal will ; but the ordinary crowd is a merely 

 fortuitous concourse, and its will is not thus unified. It may be 

 irresolute, until its emotions are roused by the leader ; and it is 

 possible that its will becomes sharply divided, in which case 

 there are the two mobs of Mr. Pickwick's experience, or even 

 riot or civil war. Thought is primarily the consequence of 



