THE MOB MIND. m 



The mob is thus a formation that takes time. In an audience 

 falling under the spell of an actor or an orator, a congregation 

 developing the revival spirit, a crowd becoming riotous, or an 

 army under the influence of panic, we can witness the stages by 

 which the mob mood is reached. With the growing fascination 

 of the mass for the individual, his consciousness contracts to the 

 pin point of the immediate moment, and the volume of sugges- 

 tion needed to start an impulse on its conquering career becomes 

 less and less. In the end, perhaps, any commanding person can 

 assume the direction of the mob. 



It must be manifest, however, that there are a hundred cases 

 of imitation of the many for one case where the entire mass 

 throughout obeys a single person. In accounting for the mob, 

 hypnosis has no such scope of application as the theory of mental 

 intimidation. If we suppose that the eye of the leader or the ges- 

 ture of the orator paralyzes the will of the crowd as the " bright 

 object " of the hypnotizer overcomes his subject, we shall not get 

 the mob without presence. But if the secret of its unanimity 

 lies in mass suggestion, why is presence necessary ? May there 

 not be mob phenomena in a multitude of people not collected at 

 one spot within sight and sound of each other ? 



It has long been recognized that the behavior of city popula- 

 tions under excitement shows the familiar characteristics of the 

 mob quite apart from any thronging. Here we get unanimity, 

 impulsiveness, exaggeration of feeling, excessive credulity, fickle- 

 ness, inability to reason, and sudden alternations of boldness and 

 cowardice. In fact, if you translate these qualities into public 

 policy, you have the chief counts in the indictment which his- 

 torians have drawn against the city democracies of old Greece 

 and mediaeval Italy. 



These faults are due in part to the nervous strains of great 

 cities. The continual bombardment of the attention by innu- 

 merable sense impressions is known to produce neurasthenia or 

 hysteria, the peculiar malady of the city dweller. Then, too, 

 there thrive in the sheltered life of the city many mental de- 

 generates that would be unsparingly eliminated by the sterner 

 conditions of existence in the country. But aside from this the 

 behavior of city dwellers under excitement can best be under- 

 stood as the result of mental contacts made possible by easy com- 

 munication. While the crowd, with its elbow-touch and its heat 

 has no doubt a maddening all its own, the main thing in it is the 

 contact of minds. Let this be given, and the three consequences 

 I have pointed out must follow. An expectant or excited man 

 learns that a thousand of his fellow-townsmen have been seized 

 by a certain strong feeling, and meets with their expression of 

 this feeling. Each of these townsmen learns how many others 



VOL. LI. 30 



