HUMAN AGGREGATION AND CRIME. 453 



played by leaders has not, in mobs at least, had the universality 

 and importance which we attribute to it. There are, in fact, 

 mobs without an apparent leader. Famine prevails in a region ; 

 on every side the starving masses rise, demanding bread : no chief 

 appears here, but spontaneous unanimity. Let us look a little 

 closer. All these uprisings do not break out together ; they fol- 

 low one another like a powder fuse, beginning with a primary 

 spark. A first riot took place somewhere, in a place suffering 

 more and more effervescent than the others, more exploited by 

 agitators, apparent or secret, who gave the signal for revolt. 

 The outbreak was then imitated in neighboring places, and the 

 new agitators, thanks to their predecessors, had less to do ; and 

 from vicinage to vicinage, from mob to mob, their work is pro- 

 pagated with an increasing force that detracts correspondingly 

 from the efficiency of local directors; till at last, particularly 

 after the popular cyclone has spread beyond the bounds where 

 there is any reason for it, or beyond the region of scarcity, no 

 direction can be perceived. Strangely, indeed, to those who do 

 not comprehend the force of imitative enthusiasm, the spontaneity 

 of the uprising then becomes more complete the less motive there 

 is for it. 



Taken in one view, all the tumultuous assemblages which pro- 

 ceed thus from an initial riot in intimate connection with one an- 

 other a habitual phenomenon in revolutionary crises may be 

 regarded as a single mob. There are thus complex mobs, as in 

 physics there are complex waves, chains of groups of waves. Plac- 

 ing ourselves at this point of view, we see that there is no mob 

 without leaders ; and we perceive, further, that from the first of 

 these compound mobs to the last the function of the secondary 

 leaders goes on diminishing and that of the primary leaders in- 

 creasing, augmented at each new tumult born of a preceding 

 tumult by a kind of distant contagion. Epidemics of strikes are 

 a proof of it ; the first that breaks out, the one therefore where 

 the grievances are most serious and which consequently should 

 be the most spontaneous of all, always leaves defined behind it 

 the personality of the agitators ; those that follow, often without 

 the shadow of a reason, have the appearance of explosions with- 

 out a match. It thus often happens that a mob started by a 

 nucleus of excited persons goes beyond them, absorbs them, and, 

 becoming headless, seems to have no leader. The truth is that 

 it has none in the same way that raised dough has no yeast. The 

 function of these leaders is, finally and essentially, greater and 

 more distinct in proportion as the mob acts with more concentra- 

 tion, consecutiveness, and intelligence, as it comes nearer to being 

 a moral person, an organized association. 



It appears, then, that in every case, notwithstanding the im- 



