THE MOB MIND. 391 



the criminal mood that chiefly marks off the human crowd from 

 the animal crowd. 



More than any other animal, man is restrained by a morality 

 founded not on impulse but oil discipline. Animal morality is 

 mainly the prompting of fellow-feeling. But by the long pressure 

 of an artificial environment man is brought to submit himself to 

 the constant sway of a moral code often quite alien to his im- 

 pulses. Remove the fear of consequences by the anonymity of 

 the crowd, take away the sense of personal responsibility by the 

 participation of numbers, and people will step by step descend into 

 depths of evil-doing and violence that measure how far their pre- 

 vailing inclinations lie below the moral standard which social 

 pressure has forced upon them. Animals, because they have 

 been less moralized than men by education, rarely show any such 

 collective demoralization. 



A one-mindedness, therefore, the result not of reasoning or dis- 

 cussion or coming together of the like-minded, but of imitation, 

 is the mark of the true mob. We think of the mob as excited 

 simply because it is under stress of excitement that men become 

 highly imitative. Fickleness and instability characterize it sim- 

 ply because mood changes promptly with every change in the 

 nature of the suggestion. It is irrational because dominated not 

 by the remembered teachings of experience but by the fleeting 

 impressions of the moment. It is cowardly because its members, 

 actuated not by stern purpose or set resolve but by mere sugges- 

 tion, scatter in craven flight the moment the charm is broken. It 

 is transitory because the orgy of excitement leads to fatigue and 

 lessened power of response to stimuli from without. In a few 

 hours the hypersesthesia wears away, physical wants and sensa- 

 tions turn the attention inward, the psychic bond is broken, and 

 the crowd disperses and goes home. A mob, then, defined for pur- 

 poses of social psychology, is a crowd of people showing a una- 

 nimity due to mental contagion. Other traits of the mob of which 

 much is made such as ferocity, shamelessness, criminality, cour- 

 age, intolerance, etc. need not flow from suggestion at all. More 

 often, as I have pointed out, they are the effect of the sense of 

 numbers. 



Analyzing the mob as thus defined, we find at the base of it 

 that mental quality termed suggestibility which comes to light in 

 gregarious animals, children, certain lunatics, hysterical patients, 

 and hypnotized subjects. It dominates childhood, but fades as 

 character sets and the will hardens. In adult life it is so over- 

 borne by habit and reason as to be dominant only under abnormal 

 conditions such as disease, fascination, or excitement. 



Why, now, should this quality be heightened when one is in the 

 midst of a crowd ? 



