SOCIAL HEREDITY 187 



In the crowd, the close grouping of people, the shoulder 

 to shoulder contact, furnishes a dense medium for the 

 transmission of ideas and notions. In crowds, men and 

 women are subject to swift contagion of feeling. Ideas 

 spread like lightning. Suggestibility is heightened, for 

 example, when a wave of applause sweeps over an audi- 

 ence. Thus crowds are impulsive, mobile, credulous, and 

 readily influenced by suggestion. The images invoked 

 in the mind of the crowd are accepted as realities. 

 Crowds do not admit of doubt or uncertainty ; they always 

 go to extremes. Hence it follows that the morality of 

 crowds, according to the suggestions under which they 

 act, may be much higher or lower than the morality of 

 the individuals composing them. 26 The emotional na- 

 ture, the rapid contagion of feeling, the close contact, all 

 tend to force upon the individual a sense of invincible 

 power. The individual loses all sense of personal re- 

 sponsibility. He becomes merged with the crowd, and, 

 as men are more alike emotionally than intellectually, the 

 individual loses his identity. The feeling of responsi- 

 bility which controls individuals when alone, disappears 

 in the wild gusts of passion that sweep over the mob. 

 The individual does things and gives way to impulses 

 which if alone he would have controlled. Thus in the 

 crowd, all the conditions which determine the degree of 

 communication are intensified, with the result that im- 

 pulsive and emotional activity goes beyond the bounds 

 that are under normal conditions set by rational control. 

 When the community is densely populated and means 

 of communication have been developed whereby usages 

 are perpetuated and new ideas spread, the further trans- 



26 Giddings, F. H. Democracy and Empire, p. 56; and Le Bon, G. The 

 Crowd. 



