HUMAN AGGREGATION AND CRIME. 457 



with which, to kill recklessly an unhappy man of whose nation- 

 ality, name, and crime they knew nothing. 



When the cholera was raging in Paris in 1832, the report 

 spread through the city rapidly that the disease was the work of 

 poisoners, who, the people were brought to believe, were tamper- 

 ing with food, wells, and wines. Immense multitudes assembled 

 in the public places, and every man who was seen carrying a 

 bottle or a vial or a small package was in imminent danger of his 

 life ; the mere possession of a flask was sufficient evidence to con- 

 vict, in the eyes of the delirious multitude ; and many fell vic- 

 tims to its rage. Two persons, flying before thousands of mad- 

 men accusing them of having given a poisoned tart to children, 

 took refuge in a guardhouse ; the post was surrounded in an in- 

 stant, and nothing could have prevented the murder of the ac- 

 cused men if two officers had not conceived the happy thought of 

 eating one of the tarts in full view of the mob. The mob burst 

 into laughter, and the men were saved. These follies are of all 

 kinds, and the mobs are of every race and every climate Roman 

 mobs, charging Christians with the burning of Rome or the de- 

 struction of a legion, and throwing them to wild beasts ; mobs of 

 the middle ages, entertaining the most absurd suspicions against 

 the Albigenses, the Jews, or any heretic, the spread of which 

 was independent of proof ; German mobs of Muzer in the Refor- 

 mation; French mobs of Jourdan in the Reign of Terror the 

 spectacle is always the same. The inconsistency of mobs is illus- 

 trated by what Dr. Zambuco Pasha relates of certain Eastern 

 villages where leprosy exists; where the populace are ready to 

 chase any one suspected of having leprosy, and even to execute 

 lynch law upon him; yet the same populace go to chapels at- 

 tended by leprous persons, kiss the images they have kissed, and 

 take the communion from the same chalices with them. 



Mobile, inconsistent, and without real traditions as mobs are, 

 they are, nevertheless, subject to routine ; and in this they differ 

 from corporations, which in their whole period of ascendency are 

 traditionalist and progressive, and progressive because they are 

 traditionalist. The power of routine over men casually brought 

 together was curiously illustrated to me a few years ago at the 

 rooms of a cure by inhalation at Mont Dore*, where the three or 

 four hundred men assembled to take the vapors issuing from a 

 boiler in the middle of the apartment, having nothing to do or 

 say, proceeded to march in procession around the room, and al- 

 ways walked in the same direction that of the hands of a watch ; 

 and all efforts to start them in the opposite direction failed. An 

 instance of the power of suggestion to start the crowd was fur- 

 nished in a dissecting room, where the work could be carried on 

 in the midst of conversation or singing. Some one would break 



