394 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are feeling as he does. Each stage in the consequent growth of 

 this feeling in extent and in intensity is perceived, and so fosters 

 sympathy and a disposition to go with the mass. Will we not 

 inevitably by this series of interactions get that " out "-look 

 which characterizes the human atom in the mob ? 



The bulletin, the flying rumor, " the man in the street," and 

 the easy swarming for talk or harangue open those paths between 

 minds, and prepare those contacts that permit the ambient mass 

 to press almost irresistibly upon the individual. But why will 

 this phenomenon be limited to the people huddled on a few square 

 miles of city ground ? Mental touch is not bound up with prox- 

 imity. With the telegraph to collect and transmit the expres- 

 sions and signs of the ruling mood, and the fast mail to hurry to 

 the eager clutch of waiting thousands the still damp sheets of the 

 morning daily, remote people are brought as it were into one 

 another's presence. Through its organs the excited public is able 

 to assail the individual with a mass of suggestion almost as vivid 

 as if he actually stood in the midst of an immense crowd. 



Formerly, within a day a shock might throw into a fever all 

 within a hundred miles of its point of origin. The next day it 

 might agitate the zone beyond, but meanwhile the first body of 

 people would have cooled down and would be disposed to listen 

 to reason. And so, while a wave of excitement passed slowly over 

 a country, the entire folk mass was at no moment in the same 

 state of agitation. 



Now, however, our space-annihilating devices, by transmitting 

 a shock without loss of time, make it all but simultaneous. A 

 vast public shares the same rage, alarm, enthusiasm, or horror. 

 Then, as each part of the mass becomes acquainted with the senti- 

 ment of all the rest, the feeling is generalized and intensified. A 

 rise of emotional temperature results which leads to a similar 

 reaction. In the end the public swallows up the individuality 

 of the ordinary man, as the crowd swallows up the will of its 

 members. 



It is plain that in matters of policy this instant consensus of 

 feeling or opinion works for ill if it issues in immediate action. 

 Formerly the necessary slowness of focusing and- ascertaining 

 the common will insured pause and deliberation. Now the swift 

 appearance of a mass sentiment threatens to betray us into hot- 

 headed or ill-considered measures. Sudden heats and flushes take 

 the place of reflection and resolve ; and with this comes a grow- 

 ing impatience with the checks and machinery that prevent the 

 public from giving immediate effect to its will. As the working 

 of representative government thus becomes less clumsy, there dis- 

 appears some of that wholesome deliberateness which has distin- 

 guished indirect from direct democracy. 



