SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF INVOLUTION 121 



We talk much of personality because we are losing 

 it. Whoever are the individuals composing the 

 group, however diverse their mode of life, their tem- 

 perament or intelligence, they are so dominated by 

 the collective mind as to think, feel and act as one, 

 and in a manner quite different from that of each 

 individual of them in a state of isolation ; this is the 

 law of the mental unity of crowds. Its confirma- 

 tion is found in the fact that our youth must read 

 the same book and wear the same necktie. And be- 

 cause that uniqueness which marks a well-defined 

 personality is denied them, they seek pitifully after 

 some freakishness in manner or dress for the distinc- 

 tion that was their birthright. 



The young people of the present are generally 

 arraigned as shallower, feebler, more flippant and 

 less intellectual than their grandfathers. In their 

 cause I would answer that the collective mind is in- 

 tellectually very inferior to the individual mind. It 

 is not an average even of the elements composing it, 

 but simply possesses those qualities which racially 

 they have in common. For instance, to quote Le 

 Bon : " The decisions affecting matters of general 

 interest come to by an assembly of men of distinc- 

 tion, but specialists in different walks of life, are not 

 sensibly superior to the decisions that would be 

 adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is 

 they can bring to bear in common on the work in 

 hand only those mediocre qualities which are the 



