150 MASON — RIPENING OF THOUGHTS IN COMMON. [April 9, 



Speech. 



The first and easily overlooked occasion of thoughts in common 

 is speech. Each word or phrase, and even whole sentences, have 

 generic as well as specific meanings. Through the former they 

 have acquired the habit of making like impressions on a multitude 

 of minds or of calling forth identical responses. Through their 

 specific, esoteric meanings they appeal to* a smaller following, but 

 more intensively. 



Every association or tribe has such formulae, and their instanta- 

 neous power of allaying the individual thought and merging the 

 single into the organized opinion is a matter of common knowl- 

 edge. Amid the multifarious capabilities of the vocal apparatus a 

 small number of products are chosen, not by a committee, through 

 laborious and purposeful efforts, but by the committee of the whole, 

 which never adjourns. 



In some families of tribes, only the easy, musical, phonic ele- 

 ments are picked out ; while in others not far away, the harsh or 

 guttural sounds are preferred. 



It has often been declared that these subtle combinations of breath- 

 ings are more persistent than walls of brick and stone. This is not 

 difficult to believe, since the verbal expressions that survive among 

 a people body forth the imperishable thoughts and prejudices that 

 long ago passed from the evanescent stage in the single mind to the 

 fixed stage in the tribal mind. The charge of plagiarism is fre- 

 quently made by literary critics when the authors were totally 

 unknown to each other. 



The great value of this potent vox populi, in this case vox dei 

 also, for fixing standard vocabulary and grammar cannot be over- 

 estimated. It needs no mysterious telepathy to account for such 

 phenomena. They are grounded in the law of association, in the 

 clan organism, and, since biological endurance is a fixed quantity, 

 they ripen together. 



Industries. 



The common and widespread interests in the activities of life, 

 called industries, give rise to much simultaneity and identity of 

 mental operations. Children go to school in common, the labor- 

 ing class move to their employments as one. 



In the country they have a fashion of cutting a mark in the south 

 kitchen window to note the noon hour. All housewives watch the 



