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diff --git a/40914-0.txt b/40914-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f65d39d --- /dev/null +++ b/40914-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8638 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40914 *** + + _The_ + BEHAVIOR OF CROWDS + _A Psychological Study_ + + _by_ + Everett Dean Martin + + _Lecturer in Social Philosophy and Director of the Cooper + Union Forum of the People's Institute of New York_ + + [Illustration] + + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + + + + + + THE BEHAVIOR OF CROWDS + + Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers + Printed in the United States of America + + H--W + + + + + CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + FOREWORD vii + + I. THE CROWD AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF TO-DAY 1 + + II. HOW CROWDS ARE FORMED 11 + + III. THE CROWD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 51 + + IV. THE EGOISM OF THE CROWD-MIND 73 + + V. THE CROWD A CREATURE OF HATE 92 + + VI. THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWD-MIND 133 + + VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONARY CROWDS 166 + + VIII. THE FRUITS OF REVOLUTION--NEW CROWD-TYRANNIES + FOR OLD 219 + + IX. FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT BY CROWDS 233 + + X. EDUCATION AS A POSSIBLE CURE FOR CROWD-THINKING 281 + + INDEX 305 + + + + +FOREWORD + + +Since the publication of Le Bon's book, _The Crowd_, little has been +added to our knowledge of the mechanisms of crowd-behavior. As a +practical problem, the habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more +serious menace to civilization. Events are making it more and more clear +that, pressing as are certain economic questions, the forces which +threaten society are really psychological. + +Interest in the economic struggle has to a large extent diverted +attention from the significance of the problems of social psychology. +Social psychology is still a rather embryonic science, and this +notwithstanding the fact that psychiatry has recently provided us with a +method with which we may penetrate more deeply than ever before into the +inner sources of motive and conduct. + +The remedy which I have suggested in Chapter X deserves a much more +extended treatment than I have given it. It involves one of the great +mooted questions of modern philosophical discussion. It is, however, not +within the province of this book to enter upon a discussion of the +philosophy of Humanism. The subject has been thoroughly thrashed over in +philosophical journals and in the writings of James, Schiller, Dewey, +and others. It is sufficient for my purpose merely to point out the fact +that the humanist way of thinking may provide us with just that +educational method which will break up the logical forms in which the +crowd-mind intrenches itself. + +Those who expect to find a prescribed formula or ideal scheme of +organization as a remedy for our social ills may feel that the solution +to which I have come--namely, a new educational method--is too vague. +But the problem of the crowd is really concerned with the things of the +mind. And if I am correct in my thesis that there is a necessary +connection between crowd-thinking and the various traditional systems of +intellectualist, absolutist, and rationalist philosophy, the way out +must be through the formation of some such habits of thinking as I have +suggested. + + E. D. M. + +NEW YORK, _October 10, 1919_. + + + + +THE BEHAVIOR OF CROWDS + + + + +I + +THE CROWD AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF TO-DAY + + +Every one at times feels himself in the grip of social forces over which +he has no control. The apparently impersonal nature of these forces has +given rise to various mechanistic theories of social behavior. There are +those who interpret the events of history as by-products of economic +evolution. Others, more idealistic but determinists, nevertheless, see +in the record of human events the working out of a preordained plan. + +There is a popular notion, often shared by scholars, that the individual +and society are essentially irreconcilable principles. The individual is +assumed to be by nature an antisocial being. Society, on the other hand, +is opposed in principle to all that is personal and private. The demands +of society, its welfare and aims, are treated as if they were a tax +imposed upon each and every one by something foreign to the natural will +or even the happiness of all. It is as if society as "thing-in-itself" +could prosper in opposition to the individuals who collectively +constitute it. + +It is needless to say that both the individual and the social, according +to such a view, are empty abstractions. The individual is, in fact, a +social entity. Strip him of his social interests, endowments, and +habits, and the very feeling of self, or "social me" as William James +called it, vanishes and nothing is left but a Platonic idea and a reflex +arc. The social also is nothing else than the manner in which +individuals habitually react to one another. Society in the abstract, as +a principle opposed to individual existence, has no more reality than +that of the grin which Alice in Wonderland sees after the famous +Cheshire cat has vanished. It is the mere logical concept of others in +general, left leering at us after all the concrete others have been +thought away. + +Much social thinking is of this cat-grin sort. Having abstracted from +the thought of self everything that is social, and from the idea of the +social all that has to do with concrete persons, the task remains to get +pure grin and pure cat together again in such a way that neither shall +lose its identity in the other. It is, of course, impossible to +reconcile these mutually exclusive abstractions either in theory or in +practice. It is often difficult enough, even with the aid of empirical +thinking, to adjust our relations with the other people about us. But on +the Cheshire-cat hypothesis, the social problem can never be solved, +because it is not a real problem at all. + +Since the individual is therefore a social being as such, and the social +is just a way of acting together, the social problem does not grow out +of a conflict between the self and an impersonal social principle. The +conflicts are, in fact, clashes among certain individuals and groups of +them, or else--and this is a subject to which social psychology has paid +insufficient attention--the social struggle is in certain of its phases +a conflict within the personal psyche itself. Suppose that the +apparently impersonal element in social behavior is not impersonal in +fact, but is, for the most part, the result of an impersonal manner of +thinking about ourselves. Every psychic fact must really be an act of +somebody. There are no ideas without thinkers to think them, no +impersonal thoughts or disembodied impulses, no "independent" truths, no +transcendental principles existing in themselves and outside of human +heads. Life is everywhere reaction; it is nowhere a mere product or a +passive registering of impersonal forces. It is the organism's behavior +in the presence of what we call environment. + +Individual opinions cannot be tossed into a common hat, like small +coins. Though we may each learn from the others, there is no magic by +which our several thoughts can sum themselves up into a common fund of +public opinion or super-personal whole which thinks itself, there being +no collective head to think it. No matter how many people think and +behave as I do, each of us knows only his own thought and behavior. My +thought may be about you and what I judge you are thinking, but it is +not the same as your thought. To each the social is _nil_ except in so +far as he experiences it himself, and to each it is something unique +when viewed from within. The uniformity and illusion of identity--in +short, the impersonal aspect of social thinking and activity appears +only when we try to view social behavior from without--that is, as +objectively manifest in the behavior of others. + +What then is the secret of this impersonal view of the social? Why do we +think of ourselves socially in the same impersonal or external way that +we think of others? There is an interesting parallel here in the +behavior of certain types of mental pathology. There are neurotics who +commonly feel that certain aspects of their behavior are really not of +their own authorship, but come to them as the result of influences +acting from without. It was such phenomena in part that led +psychologists of a generation ago to construct the theory of "multiple +personality." It is known now that the psychic material which in these +cases appears to be automatic, and impersonal, in the sense that it is +not consciously willed, is really motivated by unconscious mechanisms. +The apparently "impersonal" behavior of the neurotic is psychologically +determined, though unconsciously. + +May there not be a like unconscious psychic determination of much that +is called social behavior? It is my thesis that this is so, and that +there are certain types of social behavior which are characterized by +unconscious motivation to such a degree that they may be placed in a +definite class of psychological phenomena. This group of phenomena I +have, following to some extent the terminology of Le Bon, called "The +Crowd." I wish there were a more exact word, for it is very difficult to +use the word crowd in its psychological sense without causing some +confusion in the mind of the reader. In ordinary speech "a crowd" is any +gathering of people. In the writings of Le Bon, as we shall see, the +word has a special meaning, denoting not a gathering of people as such, +but a gathering which behaves in a certain way which may be classified +and described psychologically as "crowd mentality." Not every gathering +of people shows this crowd-mentality. It is a characteristic which +appears under certain circumstances. In this discussion the word "crowd" +must be understood to mean the peculiar mental condition which sometimes +occurs when people think and act together, either immediately where the +members of the group are present and in close contact, or remotely, as +when they affect one another in a certain way through the medium of an +organization, a party or sect, the press, etc. + +The crowd while it is a social phenomenon differs greatly from the +social as such. People may be social--the family is an example of +this--without being a crowd either in thought or action. Again a +crowd--a mob is an example of this--may be distinctly antisocial, if we +attach any ethical meaning to the term. Both the individual and society +suffer, as we shall see, from crowd-behavior. I know of nothing which +to-day so menaces not only the values of civilization, but also--it is +the same thing in other words, perhaps--the achievement of personality +and true knowledge of self, as the growing habit of behaving as crowds. + +Our society is becoming a veritable babel of gibbering crowds. Not only +are mob outbreaks and riots increasing in number, but every interest, +patriotic, religious, ethical, political, economic, easily degenerates +into a confusion of propagandist tongues, into extravagant partisanship, +and intemperance. Whatever be the ideal to which we would attain, we +find the path of self-culture too slow; we must become army worms, +eating our way to the goal by sheer force of numbers. The councils of +democracy are conducted on about the psychological level of commercial +advertising and with about the same degree of sincerity. While it cannot +be said that the habit of crowd-making is peculiar to our times--other +ages, too, have indulged in it--it does seem that the tendency to +crowd-mindedness has greatly increased in recent years. + +Whether it is temperance, or justice, or greater freedom, moral +excellence or national glory, that we desire--whether we happen to be +conservatives or radicals, reformers or liberals, we must become a cult, +write our philosophy of life in flaming headlines, and sell our cause in +the market. No matter if we meanwhile surrender every value for which we +stand, we must strive to cajole the majority into imagining itself on +our side. For only with the majority with us, whoever we are, can we +live. It is numbers, not values, that count--quantity not quality. +Everybody must "moral-crusade," "agitate," "press-agent," play politics. +Everyone is forced to speak as the crowd, think as the crowd, +understand as the crowd. The tendency is to smother all that is unique, +rare, delicate, secret. If you are to get anywhere in this progressive +age you must be vulgar, you must add to your vulgarity unction. You must +take sides upon dilemmas which are but half true, change the tempo of +your music to ragtime, eat your spiritual food with a knife, drape +yourself in the flag of the dominant party. In other words, you must be +"one hundred per cent" crowd man. + +The effect of all this upon the individual is that he is permitted +neither to know nor to belong to himself. He becomes a mere banner +toter. He must hold himself ever in readiness to wiggle-waggle in the +perpetual Simon-says-thumbs-up game which his crowd is playing. He +spends his days playing a part which others have written for him; loses +much of his genuineness and courage, and pampers himself with imitation +virtues and second-hand truths. + +Upon the social peace the effect is equally bad. Unnecessary and +meaningless strife is engendered. An idolatry of phrases is enthroned. A +silly game of bullying and deception is carried on among contending +crowds, national, religious, moral, social. The great truths of +patriotism, morality, and religion become hardly more than +caricatures--mere instruments of crowds for putting their rivals on the +defensive, and securing obeisance from the members of the crowd itself, +easily repudiated in the hour of the crowd's victory. The social harmony +is menaced by numerous cliques and parties, ranging in size all the way +from the nation-crowd down to the smallest sect, each setting out like a +band of buccaneers bent upon nothing but its own dominance, and seeking +to justify its piratical conduct by time-worn platitudes. + +That which is meant by the cry of the Russian Revolution, "All power to +the soviets," is peculiar neither to Russia nor to the working class. +Such in spirit is the cry of every crowd, for every crowd is, +psychologically considered, a soviet. The industrial and political +danger of the soviet would amount to little or nothing, were it not for +the fact that the modern world is already _spiritually sovietized_. The +threatened soviet republic is hardly more than the practical result of a +hundred years of crowd-thinking on almost every subject. Whether +capitalist or proletarian, reformer or liberal, we have all along been +behaving and thinking in soviet fashion. In almost every important +matter in life we have ignored Emerson's warning that we must rely upon +ourselves, and have permitted ourselves to behave and think as crowds, +fastening their labels and dogmas upon our spirits and taking their +shibboleths upon our tongues, thinking more of the temporary triumph of +our particular sect or party than of the effect of our behavior upon +ourselves and others. + +There is certainly nothing new in the discovery that our social behavior +is not what it ought to be. Mediæval thinkers were as much aware of the +fact as we are, but they dismissed the social problem with the simple +declaration of the "sinfulness of human nature." Nineteenth-century +utilitarians felt that the social problem could be solved by more +enlightened and more reasonable behavior on the part of individuals. +Recent social psychology--of which the writings of Prof. William +McDougall are probably the best example, has abandoned the theory that +social behavior is primarily governed by reason or by considerations of +utility. A better explanation of social phenomena is found in instinct. +It is held that the true motives of social behavior are pugnacity, the +instinct of self-appreciation or self-debasement, of sex, +gregariousness, and the like. Each instinct with its "affective emotion" +becomes organized through various complex reactions to the social +environment, into fairly well established "sentiments." These sentiments +are held to be the controlling social forces. As McDougall says: + + We may say then that directly or indirectly the instincts are + the prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or + impulsive force of some instinct (or of some habit derived from + an instinct), every train of thought, however cold and + passionless it may seem, is borne along toward its end, and + every bodily activity is initiated and sustained. The + instinctive impulses determine the ends of all activities and + supply the driving-power by which all mental activities are + sustained; and all the complex intellectual apparatus of the + most highly developed mind is but a means toward those ends, is + but the instrument by which these impulses seek their + satisfactions.... These impulses are the mental forces that + maintain and shape all the life of individuals and societies, + and in them we are confronted with the central mystery of life + and mind and will. + +This is all very good so far as it goes. But I confess that I am +somewhat at loss to know just what it explains so far as crowd-behavior +is concerned. Do these instincts and sentiments operate the same under +all social conditions? Are some of them suppressed by society and forced +to seek their satisfaction in roundabout ways? If so, how? Moreover, I +fail to find in present-day social psychology, any more than in the +writings of Herbert Spencer, Sumner, Ward, and others, any clear +distinction between the characteristic behavior of crowds and other +forms of social activity. Only the school of Le Bon has shown any +definite appreciation of these facts. It is to Le Bon, therefore, in +spite of the many and just criticisms of his work, that we must turn +for a discussion of the crowd as a problem apart from social psychology +in general. Le Bon saw that the mind of the crowd demanded special +psychological study, but many of the psychological principles which he +used in solving the problem were inadequate to the task. Certain of his +conclusions were, therefore, erroneous. Since the close of the +nineteenth century, however, psychology has gained much insight into the +secret springs of human activity. Possibly the most significant +achievement in the history of this science is Freud's work in analytical +psychology. + +So much light has been thrown upon the unconscious by Freud and other +analytical psychologists, that psychology in all its branches is +beginning to take some of Freud's discoveries into account. Strictly +speaking, psychoanalysis is a therapeutic method. It has, however, +greatly enriched our knowledge of mental pathology, and thus much of its +data has become indispensable to general psychology and to social +psychology in particular. + +In his book the _Interpretation of Dreams_, Freud has shown that there +exist in the wish-fulfilling mechanisms of dream formation certain +definite laws. These laws undoubtedly underlie and determine also many +of our crowd-ideas, creeds, conventions, and social ideals. In his book, +_Totem and Taboo_, Freud has himself led the way to the application of +the analytical psychology to the customs and ideas of primitive groups. +I am sure that we shall find, as we proceed, that with the analytical +method we shall gain an entirely new insight into the causes and meaning +of the behavior of crowds. + + + + +II + +HOW CROWDS ARE FORMED + + +In his well-known work on the psychology of the crowd Le Bon noted the +fact that the unconscious plays a large part in determining the behavior +of crowds. But he is not clear in his use of the term "unconscious." In +fact, as Graham Wallas justly points out, his terminology is very loose +indeed. Le Bon seems to have made little or no attempt to discover in +detail the processes of this unconscious. In company with most +psychologists of his time, he based his explanation upon the theory of +"suggestion and imitation." He saw in the unconscious merely a sort of +mystical "common humanity," from which he derived his--also +mystical--idea of a common crowd-mind which each individual in the crowd +in some unexplained manner shared. He says: + + The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd + is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, + however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, + their character or their intelligence, the fact that they have + been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort + of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a + manner quite different from that in which each individual of + them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of + isolation.... + + It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a + crowd differs from the isolated individual, but it is less easy + to discover the causes of this difference. + + To obtain, at any rate, a glimpse of them it is necessary in the + first place to call to mind the truth established by modern + psychology, that unconscious phenomena play an altogether + preponderating part, not only in organic life, but also in the + operations of intelligence.... Our conscious acts are the + outcome of an unconscious substratum created in the mind in the + main by heredity. This substratum consists of innumerable + characteristics handed down from generation to generation which + constitute the genius of the race.... + + It is more especially with respect to those unconscious elements + which constitute the genius of a race that all the individuals + belonging to it resemble each other.... It is precisely these + general qualities of character, governed by forces of which we + are unconscious and possessed by the majority of normal + individuals of a race in much the same degree--it is precisely + these qualities, I say, that in crowds become common property. + In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the + individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are + weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped in the homogeneous and + the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand. + +It may safely be said, I think, that this assumed impersonal collective +mind of the crowd has no existence in a sound psychology. People's +minds show, of course, innumerable mutual influences, but they do not +fuse and run together. They are in many respects very similar, but +similarity is not identity, even when people are crowded together. Our +author has doubtless borrowed here rather uncritically from Herbert +Spencer's organic conception of society--his later statement, not quoted +here, that the alleged merging of the heterogeneous in the homogeneous +would logically imply a regression to a lower stage in evolution, is +another bit of Spencerian jargon commonly accepted in Le Bon's day. + +When, however, Graham Wallas, in _The Great Society_, states that Le Bon +is not "himself clear whether he means that crowds have no collective +consciousness, or that every individual in a crowd is completely +unconscious," it seems to me that Wallas is a little unfair. Neither Le +Bon nor the relation of the unconscious to the crowd-mind may be +dismissed in Wallas's apparently easy manner. Le Bon has established two +points which I think cannot be successfully denied: first, that the +crowd is essentially a psychological phenomenon, people behaving +differently in a crowd from the way they behave when isolated; and +second, that the unconscious has something to do with crowd-thinking and +acting. + +Wallas says of Le Bon: + + Tarde and Le Bon were Frenchmen brought up on vivid descriptions + of the Revolution and themselves apprehensive of the spread of + socialism. Political movements which were in large part carried + out by men conscious and thoughtful, though necessarily ill + informed, seemed therefore to them as they watched them from the + outside to be due to the blind and unconscious impulses of + masses "incapable both of reflection and of reasoning." + +There is some truth in this criticism. In spite of the attempt of the +famous author of crowd-psychology to give us a really scientific +explanation of crowd-phenomena, his obviously conservative bias robs his +work of much of its power to convince. We find here, just as in the case +of Gobineau, Nietzsche, Faguet, Conway, and other supporters of the +aristocratic idea, an a priori principle of distrust of the common +people as such. In many passages Le Bon does not sufficiently +distinguish between the crowd and the masses. Class and mass are opposed +to each other as though, due to their superior reasoning powers, the +classes were somehow free from the danger of behaving as crowd. This is +of course not true. Any class may behave and think as a crowd--in fact +it usually does so in so far as its class interests are concerned. +Anyone who makes a study of the public mind in America to-day will find +that the phenomena of the crowd-mind are not at all confined to +movements within the working class or so-called common people. + +It has long been the habit of conservative writers to identify the crowd +with the proletariat and then to feel that the psychology of the +situation could be summed up in the statement that the crowd was simply +the creature of passion and blind emotion. The psychology which lies +back of such a view--if it is psychology rather than class prejudice--is +the old intellectualism which sought to isolate the intellect from the +emotional nature and make the true mental life primarily a knowledge +affair. The crowd, therefore, since it was regarded as an affair of the +emotions, was held to be one among many instances of the natural mental +inferiority of the common people, and a proof of their general unfitness +for self-government. + +I do not believe that this emotional theory is the true explanation of +crowd-behavior. It cannot be denied that people in a crowd become +strangely excited. But it is not only in crowds that people show +emotion. Feeling, instinct, impulse, are the dynamic of all mental life. +The crowd doubtless inhibits as many emotions as it releases. Fear is +conspicuously absent in battle, pity in a lynching mob. Crowds are +notoriously anæsthetic toward the finer values of art, music, and +poetry. It may even be argued that the feelings of the crowd are +dulled, since it is only the exaggerated, the obvious, the cheaply +sentimental, which easily moves it. + +There was a time when insanity was also regarded as excessive emotion. +The insane man was one who raved, he was mad. The word "crazy" still +suggests the condition of being "out of one's mind"--that is, driven by +irrational emotion. Psychiatry would accept no such explanation to-day. +Types of insanity are distinguished, not with respect to the mere amount +of emotional excitement they display, but in accordance with the +patient's whole psychic functioning. The analyst looks for some +mechanism of controlling ideas and their relation to impulses which are +operating in the unconscious. So with our understanding of the +crowd-mind. Le Bon is correct in maintaining that the crowd is not a +mere aggregation of people. _It is a state of mind._ A peculiar psychic +change must happen to a group of people before they become a crowd. And +as this change is not merely a release of emotion, neither is it the +creation of a collective mind by means of imitation and suggestion. My +thesis is that _the crowd-mind is a phenomenon which should best be +classed with dreams, delusions, and the various forms of automatic +behavior_. The controlling ideas of the crowd are the result neither of +reflection nor of "suggestion," but are akin to what, as we shall see +later, the psychoanalysts term "complexes." The crowd-self--if I may +speak of it in this way--is analogous in many respects to "compulsion +neurosis," "somnambulism," or "paranoiac episode." Crowd ideas are +"fixations"; they are always symbolic; they are always related to +something repressed in the unconscious. They are what Doctor Adler would +call "fictitious guiding lines." + +There is a sense in which all our thinking consists of symbol and +fiction. The laws, measurements, and formulas of science are all as it +were "shorthand devices"--instruments for relating ourselves to reality, +rather than copies of the real. The "truth" of these working ideas is +demonstrated in the satisfactoriness of the results to which they lead +us. If by means of them we arrive at desired and desirable adaptations +to and within our environment, we say they are verified. If, however, no +such verification is reached, or the result reached flatly contradicts +our hypothesis, the sane thinker holds his conclusions in abeyance, +revises his theories, or candidly gives them up and clings to the real +as empirically known. + +Suppose now that a certain hypothesis, or "fiction," instead of being an +instrument for dealing with external reality, is unconsciously designed +as a refuge from the real. Suppose it is a symbolic compromise among +conflicting desires in the individual's unconscious of which he cannot +rid himself. Suppose it is a disguised expression of motives which the +individual as a civilized being cannot admit to his own consciousness. +Suppose it is a fiction necessary to keep up one's ego consciousness or +self-appreciative feeling without which either he or his world would +instantly become valueless. In these latter cases the fiction is not and +cannot be, without outside help, modified by the reality of experience. +The complex of ideas becomes a closed system, a world in and of itself. +Conflicting facts of experience are discounted and denied by all the +cunning of an insatiable, unconscious will. The fiction then gets itself +substituted for the true facts of experience; the individual has "lost +the function of the real." He no longer admits its disturbing elements +as correctives. He has become mentally unadjusted--pathological. + +Most healthy people doubtless would on analysis reveal themselves as +nourishing fictions of this sort, more or less innocent in their +effects. It is possible that it is by means of such things that the +values of living are maintained for us all. But with the healthy these +fictions either hover about the periphery of our known world as shadowy +and elusive inhabitants of the inaccessible, or else they are socially +acceptable as religious convention, race pride, ethical values, personal +ambition, class honor, etc. The fact that so much of the ground of our +valuations, at least so far as these affect our self-appreciation, is +explicable by psychologists as "pathological" in origin need not startle +us. William James in his _Varieties of Religious Experience_, you will +remember, took the ground that in judging of matters of this kind, it is +not so much by their origins--even admitting the pathological as a +cause--but by their fruits that we shall know them. There are "fictions" +which are neither innocent nor socially acceptable in their effects on +life and character. Many of our crowd-phenomena belong, like paranoia, +to this last class. + +As I shall try to show later, the common confusion of the crowd with +"society" is an error. The crowd is a social phenomenon only in the +sense that it affects a number of persons at the same time. As I have +indicated, people may be highly social without becoming a crowd. They +may meet, mingle, associate in all sorts of ways, and organize and +co-operate for the sake of common ends--in fact, the greater part of our +social life might normally have nothing in common with crowd-behavior. +Crowd-behavior is pseudo-social--if social organizations be regarded as +a means to the achievement of realizable goods. The phenomena which we +call the crowd-mind, instead of being the outgrowth of the directly +social, are social only in the sense that all mental life has social +significance; they are rather the result of forces hidden in the +personal and unconscious psyche of the members of the crowd, forces +which are merely _released_ by social gatherings of a certain sort. + +Let us notice what happens in a public meeting as it develops into a +crowd, and see if we can trace some of the steps of the process. Picture +a large meeting-hall, fairly well filled with people. Notice first of +all what sort of interest it is which as a rule will most easily bring +an assemblage of people together. It need not necessarily be a matter of +great importance, but it must be something which catches and challenges +attention without great effort. It is most commonly, therefore, an +_issue_ of some sort. I have seen efforts made in New York to hold mass +meetings to discuss affairs of the very greatest importance, and I have +noted the fact that such efforts usually fail to get out more than a +handful of specially interested persons, no matter how well advertised, +if the subject to be considered happens not to be of a controversial +nature. I call especial attention to this fact because later we shall +see that it is this element of conflict, directly or indirectly, which +plays an overwhelming part in the psychology of every crowd. + +It is the element of contest which makes baseball so popular. A debate +will draw a larger crowd than a lecture. One of the secrets of the large +attendance of the forum is the fact that discussion--"talking back"--is +permitted and encouraged. The evangelist Sunday undoubtedly owes the +great attendance at his meetings in no small degree to the fact that he +is regularly expected to abuse some one. + +If the matter to be considered is one about which there is keen partisan +feeling and popular resentment--if it lends itself to the spectacular +personal achievement of one whose name is known, especially in the face +of opposition or difficulties--or if the occasion permits of resolutions +of protest, of the airing of wrongs, of denouncing abuse of some kind, +or of casting statements of external principles in the teeth of "enemies +of humanity," then, however trivial the occasion, we may count on it +that our assembly will be well attended. Now let us watch the +proceedings. + +The next thing in importance is the speaker. Preferably he should be an +"old war horse," a victor in many battles, and this for a psychological +reason which we shall soon examine. Whoever he is, every speaker with +any skill knows just when this state of mind which we call "crowd" +begins to appear. My work has provided me with rather unusual +opportunities for observing this sort of thing. As a regular lecturer +and also as director of the forum which meets three nights a week in the +great hall of Cooper Union, I have found that the intellectual interest, +however intense, and the development of the crowd-spirit are accompanied +by wholly different mental processes. Let me add in passing that the +audiences which gather at Cooper Union are, on the whole, the most +alert, sophisticated, and reflective that I have ever known. I doubt if +in any large popular assembly in America general discussion is carried +on with such habitual seriousness. When on rare occasions the spirit of +the crowd begins to manifest itself--and one can always detect its +beginnings before the audience is consciously aware of it--I have +noticed that discussion instantly ceases and people begin merely to +repeat their creeds and hurl cant phrases at one another. All then is +changed, though subtly. There may be laughter as at first; but it is +different. Before, it was humorous and playful, now there is a note of +hostility in it. It is laughter _at_ some one or something. Even the +applause is changed. It is more frequent. It is more vigorous, and +instead of showing mere approval of some sentiment, it becomes a means +of showing the numerical strength of a group of believers of some sort. +It is as if those who applaud were unconsciously seeking to reveal to +themselves and others that there is a multitude on their side. + +I have heard the most exciting and controversial subjects discussed, and +seen the discussion listened to with the intensest difference of +opinion, and all without the least crowd-phenomena--so long as the +speaker refrained from indulging in generalities or time-worn forms of +expression. So long as the matter discussed requires close and sustained +effort of attention, and the method of treatment is kept free from +anything which savors of ritual, even the favorite dogmas of popular +belief may be discussed, and though the interest be intense, it will +remain critical and the audience does not become a crowd. But let the +most trivial bit of bathos be expressed in rhythmical cadences and in +platitudinous terms, and the most intelligent audience will react as a +crowd. Crowd-making oratory is almost invariably platitudinous. In fact, +we think as a crowd only in platitudes, propaganda, ritual, dogma, and +symbol. Crowd-ideas are ready-made, they possess finality and +universality. They are fixed. They do not develop. They are ends in +themselves. Like the obsessions of the insane, there is a deadly +inevitability in the logic of them. They are "compulsions." + +During the time of my connection with the Cooper Union Forum, we have +not had a crowd-demonstration in anything more than an incipient form. +The best laboratory for the study of such a phenomenon is the political +party convention, the mass meeting, or the religious revival. The +orators who commonly hold forth at such gatherings know intuitively the +functional value of bathos, ridicule, and platitude, and it is upon such +knowledge that they base the success of their careers in "getting the +crowd." The noisy "demonstrations" which it has of late become the +custom to stage as part of the rigmarole of a national party convention +have been cited as crowning examples of the stupidity and excess of +crowd enthusiasm. But this is a mistake. Anyone who has from the gallery +witnessed one or more of these mock "stampedes" will agree that they are +exhibitions of endurance rather than of genuine enthusiasm or of true +crowd-mindedness. They are so obviously manipulated and so deliberately +timed that they can hardly be regarded as true crowd-movements at all. +They are chiefly interesting as revelations of the general insincerity +of the political life of this republic. + +True crowd-behavior requires an element of spontaneity--at least on the +part of the crowd. And we have abundant examples of this in public +meetings of all sorts. As the audience becomes crowd, the speaker's +cadence becomes more marked, his voice more oracular, his gestures more +emphatic. His message becomes a recital of great abstract "principles." +The purely obvious is held up as transcendental. Interest is kept upon +just those aspects of things which can be grasped with least effort by +all. Emphasis is laid upon those thought processes in which there is +greatest natural uniformity. The general, abstract, and superficial come +to be exalted at the expense of that which is unique and personal. Forms +of thought are made to stand as objects of thinking. + +It is clear that such meaning as there is in those abstract names, +"Justice," "Right," "Liberty," "Peace," "Glory," "Destiny," etc., or in +such general phrases as "Brotherly Love," "Grand and Glorious," "Public +Weal," "Common Humanity," and many others, must vary with each one's +personal associations. Popular orators deal only with the greatest +common denominator of the meaning of these terms--that is, only those +elements which are common to the associations of all. Now the common +associations of words and phrases of this general nature are very +few--hardly more than the bare sound of the words, plus a vague mental +attitude or feeling of expectancy, a mere turning of the eyes of the +mind, as it were, in a certain direction into empty space. When, for +instance, I try now to leave out of the content of "justice" all my +personal associations and concrete experiences, I can discover no +remaining content beyond a sort of grand emptiness, with the intonations +of the word booming in my auditory centers like the ringing of a distant +bell. As "public property," the words are only a sort of worn banknote, +symbols of many meanings and intentions like my own, deposited in +individual minds. Interesting as these personal deposits are, and much +as we are mutually interested by them and moved to harmonious acting and +speaking, it is doubtful if more than the tiniest fragment of what we +each mean by "justice" can ever be communicated. The word is a +convenient instrument in adjusting our conduct to that of others, and +when such adjustment seems to meet with mutual satisfaction we say, +"That is just." But the just thing is always a concrete situation. And +the general term "justice" is simply a combination of sounds used to +indicate the class of things we call just. In itself it is but a form +with the content left out. And so with all other such abstractions. + +Now if attention can be directed to this imaginary and vague "meaning +for everybody"--which is really the meaning for nobody--and so directed +that the associations with the unique in personal experience are +blocked, these abstractions will occupy the whole field of +consciousness. The mind will yield to any connection which is made among +them almost automatically. As conscious attention is cut away from the +psyche as a whole, the objects upon which it is centered will appear to +have a reality of their own. They become a closed system, perfectly +logical it may be in itself, but with the fatal logic commonly found in +paranoia--the fiction may become more real than life itself. It may be +substituted, while the spell is on, for the world of actual experience. +And just as the manifest content of a dream is, according to Freud, the +condensed and distorted symbol of latent dream-thoughts and desires in +the unconscious, so, in the case we are discussing, the unconscious +invests these abstract terms with its own peculiar meanings. They gain a +tremendous, though undefined, importance and an irresistible compelling +power. + +Something like the process I have described occurs when the crowd +appears. People are translated to a different world--that is, a +different sense of the real. The speaker is transfigured to their +vision. His words take on a mysterious importance; something tremendous, +eternal, superhuman is at stake. Commonplace jokes become irresistibly +amusing. Ordinary truths are wildly applauded. Dilemmas stand clear with +all middle ground brushed away. No statement now needs qualification. +All thought of compromise is abhorrent. Nothing now must intervene to +rob these moments of their splendid intensity. As James once said of +drunkenness, "Everything is just utterly utter." They who are not for us +are against us. + +The crowd-mind consists, therefore, first of all, of a disturbance of +the function of the real. _The crowd is the creature of Belief._ Every +crowd has its peculiar "illusions," ideals, dreams. It maintains its +existence as a crowd just so long as these crowd-ideas continue to be +held by practically all the members of the group--so long, in fact, as +such ideas continue to hold attention and assent to the exclusion of +ideas and facts which contradict them. + +I am aware of the fact that we could easily be led aside at this point +into endless metaphysical problems. It is not our purpose to enter upon +a discussion of the question, what is the real world? The problem of the +real is by no means so simple as it appears "to common sense." Common +sense has, however, in practical affairs, its own criteria, and beyond +these it is not necessary for us now to stray. The "illusions" of the +crowd are almost never illusions in the psychological sense. They are +not false perceptions of the objects of sense. They are rather akin to +the delusions and fixed ideas commonly found in paranoia. The man in +the street does not ordinarily require the technique either of +metaphysics or of psychiatry in order to characterize certain +individuals as "crazy." The "crazy" man is simply unadjustable in his +speech and conduct. His ideas may be real to him, just as the +color-blind man's sensations of color may be as real as those of normal +people, but they won't work, and that is sufficient. + +It is not so easy to apply this criterion of the real to our +crowd-ideas. Social realities are not so well ordered as the behavior of +the forces of nature. Things moral, religious, and political are +constantly in the making. The creative role which we all play here is +greater than elsewhere in our making of reality. When most of our +neighbors are motivated by certain ideas, those ideas become part of the +social environment to which we must adjust ourselves. In this sense they +are "real," however "crazy." Every struggle-group and faction in society +is constantly striving to establish its ideas as controlling forces in +the social reality. The conflicts among ideals are therefore in a sense +conflicts within the real. Ideas and beliefs which seek their +verification in the character of the results to which they lead, may +point to very great changes in experience, and so long as the believer +takes into account the various elements with which he has to deal, he +has not lost his hold upon reality. But when one's beliefs or principles +become ends in themselves, when by themselves they seem to constitute an +order of being which is more interesting than fact, when the believer +saves his faith only by denying or ignoring the things which contradict +him, when he strives not to verify his ideas but to "vindicate" them, +the ideas so held are pathological. The obsessions of the paranoiac are +of this sort. We shall see later that these ideas have a meaning, though +the conscious attention of the patient is systematically diverted from +that meaning. Crowd-ideas are similar. The reason why their pathology is +not more evident is the fact that they are simultaneously entertained by +so great a number of people. + +There are many ideas in which our faith is sustained chiefly by the +knowledge that everyone about us also believes them. Belief on such +ground has commonly been said to be due to imitation or suggestion. +These do play a large part in determining all our thinking, but I can +see no reason why they should be more operative in causing the +crowd-mind than in other social situations. In fact, the distinctive +phenomena which I have called crowd-ideas clearly show that other causes +are at work. + +Among civilized people, social relationships make severe demands upon +the individual. Primitive impulses, unchecked eroticism, tendencies to +perversions, and antisocial demands of the ego which are in us all, are +constantly inhibited, resisted, controlled and diverted to socially +acceptable ends. The savage in us is "repressed," his demands are so +habitually denied that we learn to keep him down, for the most part, +without conscious effort. We simply cease to pay attention to his +gnawing desires. We become decently respectable members of society +largely at the expense of our aboriginal nature. But the primitive in us +does not really die. It asserts itself harmlessly in dreams. +Psychoanalysis has revealed the fact that every dream is the realization +of some desire, usually hidden from our conscious thought by our +habitual repression. For this reason the dream work consists of symbols. +The great achievement of Freud is the technique which enables the +analyst to interpret this symbolism so that his own unconscious thought +and desire are made known to the subject. The dream is harmless and is +normally utilized by the unconscious ego because during sleep we cannot +move. If one actually did the things he dreamed, a thing which happens +in various somnambulisms, the dream would become anything but harmless. +Every psychosis is really a dramatized dream of this sort. + +Now as it is the social which demands the repression of our primitive +impulses, it is to be expected that the unconscious would on certain +occasions make use of this same social in order to realize its primitive +desires. There are certain mental abnormalities, such as dementia +præcox, in which the individual behaves in a wholly antisocial manner, +simply withdrawing into himself. _In the crowd the primitive ego +achieves its wish by actually gaining the assent and support of a +section of society. The immediate social environment is all pulled in +the same direction as the unconscious desire._ A similar unconscious +impulse motivates each member of the crowd. It is as if all at once an +unspoken agreement were entered into whereby each member might let +himself go, on condition that he approved the same thing in all the +rest. Of course such a thing cannot happen consciously. Our normal +social consciousness would cause us each to resist, let us say, an +exhibition of cruelty--in our neighbors, and also in ourselves. The +impulse must therefore be disguised. + +The term "unconscious" in the psychology of the crowd does not, of +course, imply that the people in the crowd are not aware of the fact +that they are lynching a negro or demanding the humiliation or +extermination of certain of their fellows. Everybody is perfectly aware +of what is being said and done; only _the moral significance_ of the +thing is changed. The deed or sentiment, instead of being disapproved, +appears to be demanded, by moral principle, by the social welfare, by +the glory of the state, etc. What is unconscious is the fact that the +social is actually being twisted around into giving approval of the +things which it normally forbids. Every crowd considers that it is +vindicating some sacred principle. The more bloody and destructive the +acts to which it is impelled, the more moral are its professions. Under +the spell of the crowd's logic certain abstract principles lead +inevitably to the characteristic forms of crowd-behavior. They seem to +glorify such acts, to make heroes and martyrs of those who lead in their +performance. + +The attention of everyone is first centered on the abstract and +universal, as I have indicated. The repressed wish then unconsciously +gives to the formulas which the crowd professes a meaning different from +that which appears, yet unconsciously associated with it. This +unconscious meaning is of course an impulse to act. But the motive +professed is not the real motive. + +Normally our acts and ideas are corrected by our social environment. But +in a crowd our test of the real fails us, because, since the attention +of all near us is directed in the same way as our own, the social +environment for the time fails to check us. As William James said: + + The sense that anything we think is unreal can only come when + that thing is contradicted by some other thing of which we + think. Any object which remains uncontradicted is _ipso facto_ + believed and posited as "absolute reality." + +Our immediate social environment is all slipping along with us. It no +longer contradicts the thing we want to believe, and, unconsciously, +want to do. As the uncontradicted idea is, for the time, reality, so is +it a motor impulse. The only normal reason why we do not act immediately +upon any one of our ideas is that action is inhibited by ideas of a +contradictory nature. As crowd, therefore, we find ourselves moving in a +fictitious system of ideas uncritically accepted as real--not as in +dreams realizing our hidden wishes, merely in imagination, but also +impelled to act them out in much the way that the psychoeurotic is +impelled to act out the fixed ideas which are really the symbols of his +suppressed wish. In other words, _a crowd is a device for indulging +ourselves in a kind of temporary insanity by all going crazy together_. + +Of the several kinds of crowds, I have selected for our discussion the +mass meeting, because we are primarily interested in the _ideas_ which +dominate the crowd. The same essential psychological elements are also +found in the street crowd or mob. Serious mob outbreaks seldom occur +without mass meetings, oratory, and propaganda. Sometimes, as in the +case of the French Revolution and of the rise of the Soviets in Russia, +the mass meetings are held in streets and public places. Sometimes, as, +for instance, the crowds in Berlin when Germany precipitated the World +War, a long period of deliberate cultivation of such crowd-ideas as +happen to be advantageous to the state precedes. There are instances, +such as the Frank case, which brought unenviable fame to Georgia, when +no mass meeting seems to have been held. It is possible that in this +instance, however, certain newspapers, and also the trial--which, as I +remember, was held in a theater and gave an ambitious prosecuting +attorney opportunity to play the role of mob leader--served the purpose +of the mass meeting. + +The series of outbreaks in New York and other cities, shortly after the +War, between the socialists and certain returned soldiers, seem to have +first occurred quite unexpectedly, as do the customary negro lynchings +in the South. In each case I think it will be found that the complex of +crowd-ideas had been previously built up in the unconscious. A +deep-seated antagonism had been unconsciously associated with the +self-appreciative feelings of a number of individuals, all of which +found justification in the consciousness of these persons in the form +of devotion to principle, loyalty, moral enthusiasm, etc. I suspect that +under many of our professed principles there lurk elements of +unconscious sadism and masochism. All that is then required is an +occasion, some casual incident which will so direct the attention of a +number of these persons that they provide one another temporarily with a +congenial social environment. In the South this mob complex is doubtless +formed out of race pride, a certain unconscious eroticism, and will to +power, which unfortunately has too abundant opportunity to justify +itself as moral indignation. With the returned soldiers the unconscious +desires were often rather thinly disguised--primitive impulses to +violence which had been aroused and hardly satisfied by the war, a wish +to exhibit themselves which found its opportunity in the knowledge that +their lawlessness would be applauded in certain influential quarters, a +dislike of the nonconformist, the foreign, and the unknown, which took +the outward form of a not wholly unjustifiable resentment toward the +party which had to all appearances unpatriotically opposed our entrance +into the war. + +Given a psychic situation of this nature, the steps by which it leads to +mob violence are much alike in all cases. All together they simply +amount to a process of like direction of the attention of a sufficient +number of persons so affected as to produce a temporary social +environment in which the unconscious impulses may be released with +mutual approval. The presence of the disliked object or person gains +general attention. At first there is only curiosity; then amusement; +there is a bantering of crude witticisms; then ridicule. Soon the joking +turns to insults. There are angry exclamations. A blow is struck. There +is a sudden rush. The blow, being the act which the members of the crowd +each unconsciously wished to do, gains general approval, "it is a blow +for righteousness"; a "cause" appears. Casually associated persons at +once become a group, brought together, of course, by their interest in +vindicating the principles at stake. The mob finds itself suddenly doing +things which its members did not know they had ever dreamed of. + +Different as this process apparently is from that by which a meeting is +turned into a crowd by an orator, I think it will be seen that the two +are essentially alike. + +Thus far we have been considering crowd-movements which are local and +temporary--casual gatherings, which, having no abiding reason for +continued association, soon dissolve into their individual elements. +Frequently, after participating in such a movement, the individual, on +returning to his habitual relations, "comes to." He wonders what the +affair was all about. In the light of his re-established control +ideas--he will call it "reason"--the unconscious impulses are again +repressed; he may look with shame and loathing upon yesterday's orgy. +Acts which he would ordinarily disapprove in his neighbors, he now +disapproves in himself. If the behavior of the crowd has not been +particularly atrocious and inexcusable to ordinary consciousness, the +reaction is less strong. The voter after the political campaign merely +"loses interest." The convert in the revival "backslides." The striker +returns to work and is soon absorbed by the daily routine of his task. +The fiery patriot, after the war, is surprised to find that his hatred +of the enemy is gradually waning. Electors who have been swept by a wave +of enthusiasm for "reform" and have voted for a piece of ill-considered +restrictive legislation easily lapse into indifference, and soon look +with unconcern or amusement upon open violations of their own +enactments. There is a common saying that the public has a short memory. +Pick up an old newspaper and read about the great movements and causes +which were only a short time ago stirring the public mind, many of them +are now dead issues. But they were not answered by argument; we simply +"got over" them. + +Not all crowd-movements, however, are local and temporary. There are +passing moments of crowd-experience which are often too sweet to lose. +The lapse into everyday realism is like "falling from grace." The crowd +state of mind strives often to keep itself in countenance by +perpetuating the peculiar social-psychic conditions in which it can +operate. There are certain forms of the ego consciousness which are best +served by the fictions of the crowd. An analogy here is found in +paranoia, where the individual's morbid fixed ideas are really devices +for the protection of his self-esteem. The repressed infantile psyche +which exists in us all, and in certain neurotics turns back and attaches +itself to the image of the parent, finds also in the crowd a path for +expression. It provides a perpetual interest in keeping the crowd-state +alive. Notice how invariably former students form alumni associations, +and returned soldiers at once effect permanent organizations; persons +who have been converted in one of Mr. Sunday's religious campaigns do +the same thing--indeed there are associations of all sorts growing out +of these exciting moments in people's common past experience, the +purpose of which is mutually to recall the old days and aid one another +in keeping alive the enlarged self-feeling. + +In addition to this, society is filled with what might be called +"struggle groups" organized for the survival and dominance of similarly +constituted or situated people. Each group has its peculiar interests, +economic, spiritual, racial, etc., and each such interest is a mixture +of conscious and unconscious purposes. These groups become sects, cults, +partisan movements, class struggles. They develop propaganda, ritual, +orthodoxies, dogma, all of which are hardly anything more than +stereotyped systems of crowd-ideas. These systems differ from those of +the neurosis in that the former are less idiosyncratic, but they +undoubtedly perform much the same function. The primary aim of every +such crowd is to keep itself together as a crowd. Hardly less important +is the desire of its members to dominate over all outsiders. The +professed purpose is to serve some cause or principle of universal +import. Thus the crowd idealizes itself as an end, makes sanctities of +its own survival values, and holds up its ideals to all men, demanding +that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess--which is to say, +that the crowd believes in its own future supremacy, the members of the +group knowing that such a belief has survival value. This principle is +used by every politician in predicting that his party is bound to win at +the next election. + +Hence the crowd is a device by which the individual's "right" may be +baptized "righteousness" in general, and this personality by putting on +impersonality may rise again to new levels of self-appreciation. He +"belongs to something," something "glorious" and deathless. He himself +may be but a miserable clod, but the glory of his crowd reflects upon +him. Its expected triumph he already shares. It gives him back his lost +sense of security. As a good crowd man, true believer, loyal citizen, +devoted member, he has regained something of his early innocence. In +other members he has new brothers and sisters. In the finality of his +crowd-faith there is escape from responsibility and further search. He +is willing to be commanded. He is a child again. He has transferred his +repressed infantilism from the lost family circle to the crowd. There is +a very real sense in which the crowd stands to his emotional life _in +loco parentis_. + +It is to be expected, therefore, that wherever possible the crowd-state +of mind will be perpetuated. Every sort of device will be used to keep +the members of the crowd from coming to. In almost every organization +and social relationship there will be a tendency on part of the +unconscious to behave as crowd. Thus permanent crowds exist on every +hand--especially wherever political, moral, or religious ideas are +concerned. The general and abstract character of these ideas makes them +easily accessible instruments for justifying and screening the +unconscious purpose. Moreover it is in just those aspects of our social +life where repression is greatest that crowd-thinking is most common, +for it is by means of such thinking and behavior that the unconscious +seeks evasions and finds its necessary compensations. + +The modern man has in the printing press a wonderfully effective means +for perpetuating crowd-movements and keeping great masses of people +constantly under the sway of certain crowd-ideas. Every crowd-group has +its magazines, press agents, and special "literature" with which it +continually harangues its members and possible converts. Many books, and +especially certain works of fiction of the "best-seller" type, are +clearly reading-mob phenomena. + +But the leader in crowd-thinking _par excellence_ is the daily +newspaper. With few exceptions our journals emit hardly anything but +crowd-ideas. These great "molders of public opinion," reveal every +characteristic of the vulgar mob orator. The character of the writing +commonly has the standards and prejudices of the "man in the street." +And lest this man's ego consciousness be offended by the sight +of anything "highbrow"--that is, anything indicating that there +may be a superior intelligence or finer appreciation than his +own--newspaper-democracy demands that everything more exalted than the +level of the lowest cranial altitude be left out. The average result is +a deluge of sensational scandal, class prejudice, and special pleading +clumsily disguised with a saccharine smear of the cheapest moral +platitude. Consequently, the thinking of most of us is carried on +chiefly in the form of crowd-ideas. A sort of public-meeting self is +developed in the consciousness of the individual which dominates the +personality of all but the reflective few. We editorialize and +press-agent ourselves in our inmost musings. Public opinion is +manufactured just as brick are made. Possibly a slightly better +knowledge of mechanical engineering is required for making public +opinion, but the process is the same. Both can be stamped out in the +quantity required, and delivered anywhere to order. Our thinking on most +important subjects to-day is as little original as the mental processes +of the men who write and the machines which print the pages we read and +repeat as our own opinions. + +Thomas Carlyle was never more sound than when railing at this "paper +age." And paper, he wisely asked us to remember, "is made of old rags." +Older writers who saw the ragged throngs in the streets were led to +identify the mob or crowd with the tattered, illiterate populace. Our +mob to-day is no longer merely tramping the streets. We have it at the +breakfast table, in the subway, alike in shop and boudoir, and +office--wherever, in fact, the newspaper goes. And the raggedness is not +exterior, nor is the mob confined to the class of the ill-clad and the +poor. The raggedness, and tawdriness have now become spiritual, a +universal presence entering into the fabric of nearly all our mental +processes. + +We have now reached a point from which we can look back over the ground +we have traversed and note the points of difference between our view and +the well-known theory of Le Bon. The argument of the latter is as +follows: (1) From the standpoint of psychology, the crowd, as the term +is here defined, is not merely a group of people, it is the appearance +within such a group of a special mental condition, or crowd-mind. (2) +The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one +and the same direction. (3) Conscious personality vanishes. (4) A +collective mind is formed: This is Le Bon's "Law of the mental unity of +crowds." (5) This collective mind consists in the main of "general +qualities of character" which are our common racial inheritance. It is +an "unconscious substratum" which in the crowd becomes uppermost, +dominating over the unique personal consciousness. (6) Three causes +determine the characteristics of the crowd-mind, (a) From purely +numerical considerations, the individual acquires a sentiment of +invincible power which encourages him in an unrestrained yielding to his +instincts, (b) Contagion, or imitation, and (c) hypnotic suggestion +cause the individuals in the crowd to become "slaves of all the +unconscious activities of the spinal cord." (7) The resulting +characteristics of the crowd are (a) a descent of several rungs in the +ladder of civilization, (b) a general intellectual inferiority as +compared with the isolated individual, (c) loss of moral responsibility, +(d) impulsiveness, (e) credulity, (f) exaggeration, (g) intolerance, (h) +blind obedience to the leader of the crowd, (i) a mystical emotionalism. +(8) The crowd is finally and somewhat inconsistently treated by Le Bon +as being identical with the masses, the common people, the herd. + +Without pausing to review the criticisms of this argument which were +made at the beginning of our discussion, our own view may be summarized +as follows: (1) The crowd is not the same as the masses, or any class or +gathering of people as such, but is a certain mental condition which may +occur simultaneously to people in any gathering or association. (2) This +condition is not a "collective mind." It is a release of repressed +impulses which is made possible because certain controlling ideas have +ceased to function in the immediate social environment. (3) This +modification in the immediate social environment is the result of mutual +concessions on the part of persons whose unconscious impulses to do a +certain forbidden thing are similarly disguised as sentiments which meet +with conscious moral approval. (4) Such a general disguising of the real +motive is a characteristic phenomenon of dreams and of mental pathology, +and occurs in the crowd by fixing the attention of all present upon the +abstract and general. Attention is thus held diverted from the +individual's personal associations, permitting these associations and +their accompanying impulses to function unconsciously. (5) The abstract +ideas so entertained become symbols of meanings which are unrecognized; +they form a closed system, like the obsessions of the paranoiac, and as +the whole group are thus moved in the same direction, the "compulsory" +logic of these ideas moves forward without those social checks which +normally keep us within bounds of the real. Hence, acting and thinking +in the crowd become stereotyped and "ceremonial." Individuals move +together like automatons. (6) As the unconscious chiefly consists of +that part of our nature which is habitually repressed by the social, and +as there is always, therefore, an unconscious resistance to this +repressive force, it follows that the crowd state, like the neurosis, +is a mechanism of escape and of compensation. It also follows that the +crowd-spirit will occur most commonly in reference to just those social +forms where repression is greatest--in matters political, religious, and +moral. (7) The crowd-mind is then not a mere excess of emotion on the +part of people who have abandoned "reason"; crowd-behavior is in a sense +psychopathic and has many elements in common with somnambulism, the +compulsion neurosis, and even paranoia. (8) Crowds may be either +temporary or permanent in their existence. Permanent crowds, with the +aid of the press, determine in greater or less degree the mental habits +of nearly everyone. The individual moves through his social world like a +popular freshman on a college campus, who is to be "spiked" by one or +another fraternity competing for his membership. A host of crowds +standing for every conceivable "cause" and "ideal" hover constantly +about him, ceaselessly screaming their propaganda into his ears, +bullying and cajoling him, pushing and crowding and denouncing one +another, and forcing all willy-nilly to line up and take sides with them +upon issues and dilemmas which represent the real convictions of +nobody. + + + + +III + +THE CROWD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS + + +Throughout the discussion thus far I have been making repeated reference +to the psychology of the unconscious, without going into detail any more +than was necessary. Let us now take a closer look at some of Freud's +discoveries. In this way, what Brill would call the "psychogenesis" of +certain characteristic ideas and practices of crowds will be, I think, +made clear. Up to this point we have dealt generally with those mental +processes by which the crowd is formed. There are certain traits, +tendencies, ways of thinking which crowds so uniformly display that one +is justified, in want of other explanation, in assuming them to be +unconsciously determined. The remarkable blindness of organized crowds +to the most obvious of their own performances is so common as to be the +regularly expected thing--that is, of crowds other than our own. Long +and extensive operations may be carried on for years by crowds whose +members repeatedly declare that such things are not being done. The way +in which a nation will carefully prepare for war, gradually organizing +its whole life on a military basis with tremendous cost and effort, all +the while declaring that it is interested only in peace, denying its +warlike intentions, and even in the moment of picking a quarrel with its +neighbors declare to all the world that it had been wantonly and +unexpectedly attacked, is all a matter of general comment. The American +colonists, during the decade before the signing of the Declaration of +Independence, of course had no conscious thought of separating from +Great Britain. Almost to the very last they professed their loyalty to +the King; but looking back now it is clear that Independence was the +motive all along, and doubtless could not have been achieved more +opportunely or with greater finesse if it had been deliberately planned +from the start. The Hebrew Scriptures contain a story which illustrates +this aspect of crowd-behavior everywhere. The Children of Israel in +bondage in Egypt merely wished to go out in the wilderness for a day or +so to worship their God. All they asked was religious liberty. How +unjust of the authorities to assume they were planning to run away +from their masters! You will remember that at the last moment they +incidentally borrow some jewelry from their Egyptian neighbors. Of +course they will pay it back after their little religious holiday, +but ... later a most unforeseen thing happens to that jewelry, a +scandalous thing--it is made into an idol. Does it require that one be a +psychologist to infer that it was the unconscious intention all along to +use this metal for just that, the first good chance they had--and that, +too, notwithstanding repeated prohibitions of idolatry? The motive for +borrowing the jewelry is evident. + +Certain crowd-movements in America to-day give marked evidence of this +unconscious motivation. Notice how both the radical and reactionary +elements behave when, as is frequently the case with both, the +crowd-spirit comes over them. Certain radicals, who are fascinated with +the idea of the Russian Revolution, are still proclaiming sentiments of +human brotherhood, peace, and freedom, while unconsciously they are +doing just what their enemies accuse them of--playing with the welcome +ideas of violence, class war, and proletarian dictatorship. And +conservative crowds, while ostensibly defending American traditions and +ideals against destructive foreign influence, are with their own hands +daily desecrating many of the finest things which America has given to +the world in its struggle of more than a century for freedom and +justice. Members of each crowd, while blissfully unaware of the +incompatibility of their own motives and professions, have no illusions +about those of the counter-crowd. Each crowd sees in the professions of +its antagonist convincing proof of the insincerity and hypocrisy of the +other side. To the student of social philosophy both are right and both +wrong. All propaganda is lies, and every crowd is a deceiver, but its +first and worst deception is that of itself. This self-deception is a +necessary step in crowd-formation and is a _sine qua non_ of becoming a +crowd. It is only necessary for members of a crowd to deceive themselves +and one another for the crowd-mind to function perfectly; I doubt if +they are often successful in deceiving anybody else. It was this common +crowd-phenomenon of self-deception which led Gobineau and Nietzsche to +the conclusion that the common people are liars. But as has been said, +the crowd is by no means peculiar to the working class; some of its +worst features are exhibited these days among employers, law-makers, and +the well-to-do classes. This deception is moreover not really conscious +and deliberate. If men deliberately set about to invent lies to justify +their behavior I have little doubt that most of them would be clever +enough to conjure up something a little more plausible. These naïve and +threadbare "hypocrisies" of crowds are a commonplace mechanism of the +unconscious. It is interesting to note that the delusions of the +paranoiac likewise deceive no one but himself, yet within themselves +form a perfectly logical _a priori_ system. They also serve the +well-understood purpose, like that of crowd-ideas, of keeping their +possessor in a certain fixed relation toward portions of his own psychic +material. As Brill says, they are "compromise formations." + +Those who have read Freud's little book, _Delusion and Dream_, an +analysis of a psychological romance written by Wilhelm Jensen, will +recall how extensive a fabric of plausibilities a delusion may build up +in its defense in order at the same time to satisfy a repressed wish, +and keep the true meaning of the subject's acts and thoughts from +conscious attention. In the story which Freud has here taken as his +subject for study, a young student of archæology has apparently +conquered all adolescent erotic interest and has devoted himself +whole-heartedly to his science. While at the ruins of ancient Pompeii, +he finds a bas-relief containing the figure of a young woman represented +in the act of walking with peculiar grace. A cast of this figure he +brings home. His interest is curiously aroused. At first this interest +appears to be scientific only, then æsthetic, and historical. Finally he +builds up about it a complete romance. He becomes restless and very much +of a misogynist, and is driven, he knows not why, again to the ruins. +Here he actually meets the object of his dreams in the solitude of the +excavated city. He allows himself to believe that the once living model +of his treasured bas-relief has again come to life. For days he meets +and talks with the girl, living all the while in a world of complete +unreality, until she finally succeeds in revealing herself as the young +woman who lives next door to him. It also appears that in their +childhood he and this girl had been playmates, and that in spite of all +his conscious indifference to her his unconscious interest was the +source of his interest in the bas-relief and the motive which led him to +return to Pompeii, where he unconsciously expected to find her. The +interesting thing about all this for our present study is the series of +devices, fictions, and compromises with reality which this repressed +interest made use of while having its way with him, and at the same time +resisting whatever might force it upon his conscious attention, where a +recognition of its significance might result in a deliberate rejection. + +We shall not go into Freud's ingenious analysis of the mental processes +at work here. The following passage is sufficient for our purpose: + + There is a kind of forgetting which distinguishes itself by the + difficulty with which memory is awakened, even by strong + appeals, as if a subjective resistance struggled against the + revival. Such forgetting has received the name of "repression" + in psychopathology ... about repression we can assert that + certainly it does not coincide with the destruction, the + obliteration of memory. The repressed material can not of itself + break through as memory, but remains potent and effective. + +From this, and from what was said in our previous chapter, it is plain +that the term "unconscious" as used in psychology does not mean total +absence of psychic activity. It refers to thoughts and feelings which +have _purposefully_ been forgotten--to experiences or impulses to which +we do not pay attention nor wish to attend to, but which influence us +nevertheless. Everyone of us, when he dreams, has immediate knowledge of +the unconscious as here defined. Certainly we pass into unconsciousness +when we sleep. Yet something is unquestionably going on inside our +heads. One wakens and says, "What strange, or exciting, or delightful +dreams I have had!" Bergson says that sleep is due to the relaxing of +attention to our environment. Yet in dreams attention is never turned +away from ourselves. Possibly instead of the word "unconscious" the term +"unattended" might be used with less danger of confusion. + +Consciousness is, therefore, not the whole of our psychic activity. Much +of our behavior is reflex and automatic. James used to be fond of +showing how much even of our higher psychic activity was reflex in its +nature. We may be conscious of various portions of our psychic material, +but never of all of it at once. Attention is like a spotlight thrown on +a semi-darkened stage, moving here and there, revealing the figures upon +which it is directed in vivid contrast with the darkly moving objects +which animate the regions outside its circle. A speaker during his +discourse will straighten his tie, make various gestures, and toy with +any object which happens to be lying on the desk, all without being +aware of his movements, until his attention is called to the fact. +Absent-minded persons habitually amuse us by frequently performing +complete and rather complex series of actions while wholly oblivious to +what they are doing. Everyone can recall numerous instances of +absent-mindedness in his own experience. + +Now all pathological types of mental life have in common this quality of +absent-mindedness, and it is held that the thing said or done +absent-mindedly has in every instance, even when normal, a meaning which +is unconscious. But the unconscious or unattended is by no means +confined to the infrequent and the trivial. As temperament, or +character, its activity is a determining factor in all our thought and +conduct. Dream fancies do not really cease when we awake; the dream +activity goes on all about our conscious thoughts, our associations now +hovering near long-forgotten memories, now pulled in the direction of +some unrecognized bit of personal conceit, now skipping on tiptoe over +something forbidden and wicked and passing across without looking in; +only a part of our mental processes ever directly finding expression in +our conscious acts and words. The unchosen and the illogical run along +with the desired and the logical material, only we have learned not to +pay attention to such things. Under all our logical structures there +flows a ceaseless stream of dream stuff. Our conscious thought is like +little planks of attention laid end to end on the stones which here and +there rise above the surface of our thinking. The mind skips across to a +desired conclusion, not infrequently getting its feet wet, and, on +occasion, upsetting a plank or slipping off and falling in altogether. + +We have only to relax our attention a little to enter the world of day +dreams, of art, and religion; we can never hold it so rigid as to be +wholly rational for long. + +Those interested in the general psychology of the unconscious are +referred to the writings of such authorities in this field as Freud, +Jung, Adler, Dr. A. A. Brill, and Dr. William White. In fact, the +literature dealing with psychoanalysis is now so widely read that, +unless the reader has received his information about this branch of +science from hostile sources alone, it is to be assumed that he has a +fairly accurate acquaintance with its general history and theory. We +must confine our discussions to those aspects of unconscious behavior +which can be shown by analogy with the psychoneurosis to be determinants +of crowd-thinking. As the details and technical discussions of +psychoanalytical material belong strictly to the psychiatric clinic, any +attempt at criticism by the medical layman of the scientific processes +by which they are established is of course impossible. Consequently, I +have sought to make use of only those principles which are now so well +established as to become rather generally accepted commonplaces of +psychopathology. + +All analysis reveals the fact that the unconscious of the individual is +concerned primarily with himself. This is true in the psychosis, and +always in dreams. Freud says: + + Every dream is absolutely egotistical; in every dream the + beloved ego appears, even though it be in a disguised form. The + wishes that are realized in dreams are regularly the wishes of + this ego; it is only a deceptive appearance if interest in + another person is thought to have caused the dream. + +Freud then proceeds to give analyses of several dreams in which the +naïve egoism of childhood which lies at the core of the unconscious +psyche is apparently absent, and shows that in each and every case it is +there. The hero of our dreams, notwithstanding all appearances to the +contrary, is always ourself. + +Brill, in his book, _Psychoanalysis_, says of the neurosis: + + Both hysteria and compulsion neurosis belong to the defense + neuropsychoses; their symptoms originate through the psychic + mechanism of defense, that is, through the attempt to repress a + painful idea which was incompatible with the ego of the patient. + There is still another more forceful and more successful form of + defense wherein the ego misplaces the incompatible idea with its + emotions and acts as though the painful idea had never come to + pass. When this occurs the person merges into a psychosis which + may be called "hallucinatory confusion." + +Thus the psychoneurosis is in all its forms, I believe, regarded as a +drama of the ego and its inner conflicts. The egoism of the unconscious +belongs alike to the normal and the unadjusted. The mental abnormalities +appear when the ego seeks to escape some such conflict by means of a +closed system of ideas or symbolic acts which will divert attention from +the unwelcome psychic material. Adler, in _The Neurotic Constitution_, +is even, if possible, more emphatic in affirming the egoism of the +unconscious as revealed in neurotics. His thesis is that the mainspring +of all the efforts of achievement and the source of all the +vicissitudes of the psyche is a desire to be important, or will to "be +above," not wholly unlike Nietzsche's theory of the "will to power." The +neurosis goes back to some organic defect or other cause of childish +humiliation. As a result, the cause of such humiliation, a defective +bodily organ, or whatever it may be, gains special attention. The whole +psyche is modified in the process of adjustment. In cases where the +psyche remains normal, adjustment is achieved through stimulation to +extra effort to overcome the disadvantage, as in the triumph of +Demosthenes, Byron, Pope. + +On the contrary, this disadvantage may result in a fixed feeling of +inferiority. Such a feeling may be brought about in the sensitive child +by a variety of circumstances, physical facts such as smallness of +stature, adenoids, derangements of the alimentary organs, undersized +genitals, homeliness of feature, or any physical deformity or weakness; +again by such circumstances as domineering parents or older brothers and +sisters. The child then thinks always of himself. He forms the habit of +comparing himself with others. He creates, as a protection against the +recognition of this feeling of inferiority, what Adler calls the +"masculine protest." + + The feeling which the individual has of his own inferiority, + incompetency, the realization of his smallness, of his weakness, + of his uncertainty, thus becomes the appropriate working basis + which, because of the intrinsically associated feelings of + pleasure and pain, furnishes the inner impulse to advance toward + an imaginary goal.... + + In all similar attempts (and the human psyche is full of them), + it is the question of the introduction of an unreal and abstract + scheme into actual life.... No matter from what angle we observe + the psychic development of a normal or neurotic person, he is + always found ensnared in the meshes of his particular fiction--a + fiction from which the neurotic is unable to find his way back + to reality and in which he believes, while the sound and normal + person utilizes it for the purpose of reaching a definite goal + ... the thing which impels us all, and especially the neurotic + and the child, to abandon the direct path of induction and + deduction and use such devices as the schematic fiction, + originates in the feeling of uncertainty, and is the craving for + security, the final purpose of which is to escape from the + feeling of inferiority in order to ascend to the full height of + the ego consciousness, to complete manliness, to attain the + ideal of being "above."... + + Even our judgments concerning the value of things are determined + according to the standard of the imaginary goal, not according + to "real" feelings or pleasurable sensations. + +That repressed sexuality plays an important part in the conflicts of the +ego is well known to all who are acquainted with analytical psychology. +According to Freud, the sexual impulse dates from earliest childhood and +is an essential element in every stage of self-appreciation. A summary +of the process by which the infantile ego develops to maturity is as +follows: The child is by nature "polymorphous perverse"--that is, both +physically and psychically he possesses elements which in the mature +individual would be considered perversions. Physiologically, what are +known as "erogenous zones"--tissue which is capable of what in mature +life is sexual excitation--are diffused through the organism. As the +child passes through the "latent period" of later childhood and +adolescence, these "erogenous zones" are concentrated as it were in the +organs which are to serve the purpose of reproduction. If for any reason +this process of concentration is checked, and remains in later life +incomplete, the mature individual will be afflicted with certain +tendencies to sex perversion. + +Similarly the psychosexual passes through a metamorphosis in normal +development. The erotic interest of the child, at first quite without +any object at all, is soon attached to one or the other of the parents, +then, in the "narcissus period" is centered upon the individual himself, +after which, normally, but not without some storm and stress, it becomes +detached and capable of "object love"--that is, love of a person of the +opposite sex. This psychic process is by no means a smooth and easy +matter. It is attended at every stage with such dangers that a very +large number of people never achieve it entire. Various kinds of "shock" +and wrong educational influence, or overindulgence on the part of the +parents, may cause the psychosexual interest of the ego--or "libido"--to +remain "fixed" at some point in its course. It may retain vestiges of +its early undifferentiated stage, appearing then in the perverted forms +of "masochism"--sexual enjoyment of self-torture--or "sadism"--sexual +pleasure in torturing others. Or the libido may remain fixed upon the +parent, rendering the individual in some degree incapable of a normal +mature love life. He has never quite succeeded in severing his infantile +attachment to his mother and transferring his interest to the world of +social relations and mature experiences. If he meets with a piece of +misfortune, he is likely to seek imaginary security and compensation by +a "regression" of the libido and a revival of childlike affection for +the mother image. As this return is, in maturity, unconsciously resisted +by the horror of incest, a conflict results. The individual then +develops certain mechanisms or "complex formations" in defense of his +ego against this painful situation. The withdrawal of the libido from +the ordinary affairs of life renders the latter valueless. Thoughts of +death and like compulsory mechanisms ensue. The patient has become a +neurotic. + +Psychoanalysts make much of this latter situation. They term it the +"Oedipus complex." They assert that in its severer forms it is a common +feature of psychoneurosis, while in less marked form, according to Jung, +it underlies, and is the real explanation of the "birth of tragedy," +being also the meaning of much religious symbolism, including the Divine +Drama of Christian tradition. It is not, therefore, only the +psychoneurotic whose unconscious takes the form of the "Oedipus +complex." Under certain conditions it is manifest in normal people. I +have already indicated that the crowd is one of those conditions, and +shall have something a little more specific to say about this later on. + +Again the growing libido may become fixed in the "narcissus stage." +Between the period of love of parents and object love, the adolescent +youth passes through a period when he is "in love with himself." The +fact that many people remain in some measure fixed in this period of +their development is not surprising when we remember that self-feeling +occupies a central place in the unconscious at all times. Many of the +world's greatest men have doubtless been characters in which there was a +slightly more than average fixation at this point. Inordinate ambition +is, I should say, an evidence of such a fixation. If one possesses great +natural ability he may under such circumstances be able to forge ahead +to his goal, overcoming the conflicts which such a fixation always +raises, and show no greater evidence of pathology in his career than is +seen in the usual saying that "genius is always a little queer." The +typical crowd-leader would, on analysis, I think, show something of this +"narcissus complex," as would doubtless the great run of fanatics, +bigots, and doctrinaires, "hundred per cent" crowd-men all. + +According to Brill, these "auto erotic" persons are always homosexual, +their homosexuality manifesting itself in various ways. The overt +manifestations of this tendency are known as perversions. Certain +persons who have suppressed or sublimated these tendencies, by means of +certain defense mechanisms, or "fictions," as Adler would call them, get +along very well so long as the defense mechanism functions. There are +cases when this unconsciously constructed defense breaks down. An inner +conflict is then precipitated, a marked form of which is the common type +of insanity, "paranoia." Persons suffering with paranoia are +characterized by an insatiable demand for love along with a psychic +incapacity to give love. They have an exaggerated sense of their own +importance which is sustained by a wholly unreal but deadly logical +system of _a priori_ ideas, which constitute the "obsessions" common to +this type of mentality. The inner conflict becomes external--that is, it +is "projected." The paranoiac projects his own inner hostility and lack +of adjustment upon others--that is, he attributes his own feeling of +hostility to some one else, as if he were the object, not the author, of +his hatred. He imagines that he is persecuted, as the following example +will show. The passage here quoted is taken from a pamphlet which was +several years ago given to me by the author. He ostensibly wished to +enlist my efforts in a campaign he believed himself to be conducting to +"expose" the atrocious treatment of persons, like himself, who were +imprisoned in asylums as the innocent victims of domestic conspiracy. By +way of introducing himself the author makes it known that he has several +times been confined in various hospitals, each time by the design and +instigation of his wife, and after stating that on the occasion +described he was very "nervous and physically exhausted" and +incidentally confessing that he was arrested while attempting homicide +"purely in self-defense," he gives this account of his incarceration: + + I was locked in a cold cell, and being in poor health, my + circulation was poor, and the officer ordered me to go to bed + and I obeyed his orders, but I began to get cold, and believing + then, as I still believe, that the coffee I got out of the + coffee tank for my midnight lunch had been "doped," and fearful + that the blood in my veins which began to coagulate would stop + circulating altogether, I got out of bed and walked the floor to + and fro all the remainder of the night and by so doing I saved + my life. For had I remained in bed two hours I would have been a + dead man before sunrise next morning. I realized my condition + and had the presence of mind to do everything in my power to + save my life and put my trust in God, and asked his aid in my + extremity. But for divine aid, I would not now have the + privilege of writing my awful experiences in that hell-hole of a + jail. + + The officer who arrested me without any warrant of law, and + without any unlawful act on my part was the tool of some person + or persons who were either paid for their heinous crime, or of + the landlady of the ---- hotel (he had been a clerk there) who + allowed gambling to go on nearly every night, and thought I was + a detective or spy, and so was instrumental in having me thrown + into jail. + + I begged so hard not to be locked in the cell that I was allowed + to stay in the corridor in front of the cells. I observed + chloral dripping through the roof of the cell-house in different + places, and as I had had some experience with different drugs, I + detected the smell of chloral as soon as I entered the + cell-house. + + Sometime after midnight some one stopped up the stovepipe and + the door of the coal stove was left open so that the coal gas + issued from the stove, so that breathing was difficult in the + jail. The gases from the stove and other gases poisoned the air + ... and your humble servant had the presence of mind to tear up + a hair mattress and kept my nostrils continually filled with + padding out of the mattress. I would often and instantly change + the filling in one nostril, and not during the long hours of + that awful night did I once open my mouth. In that manner I + inhaled very little gases. Why in my weakened condition and my + poor health anyone wanted to deprive me of my life I am at a + loss to know, but failing to kill me, I was taken after nearly + three days of sojourn in that hell-hole to the courthouse in + ----. But such thoughts as an innocent man in my condition would + think, in among criminals of all sorts, can better be imagined + than described.... I thought of Christ's persecutors and I + thought how the innocent suffer because of the wicked. + +In general we may say that the various forms of psychoneurosis are +characterized by a conflict of the ego with primitive impulses +inadequately repressed. In defense against these impulses, which though +active remain unconsciously so, the individual constructs a fictitious +system of ideas, of symbolic acts, or bodily symptoms. These systems are +attempts to compromise the conflict in the unconscious, and in just the +degree that they are demanded for this function, they fail of their +function of adjusting the individual to his external world. Thought and +behavior thus serve the purpose of compensating for some psychic loss, +and of keeping up the individual's self feeling. Though the unconscious +purpose is to enhance the ego consciousness, the mechanisms through +which this end is achieved produce through their automatic and +stereotyped form a shrinking of personality and a serious lack of +adjustment to environment. + +Now it is not at all the aim of this argument to try to prove that +crowds are really insane. Psychoanalysts commonly assert that the +difference between the normal and the abnormal is largely one of degree +and of success in adjustment. We are told that the conflict exists also +in normal people, with whom, however, it is adequately repressed and +"sublimated"--that is, normal people pass on out of the stages in which +the libido of the neurotic becomes fixed, not by leaving them behind, +but by attaching the interests which emerge in such stages to ends which +are useful in future experience. The neurotic takes the solitary path of +resolving the conflict between his ego and the impulses which society +demands shall be repressed. + +It is altogether conceivable that _another path lies open--that of +occasional compromise in our mutual demands on one another_. The force +of repression is then relaxed by an unconscious change in the +significance of social ideas. Such a change must of course be mutual and +unconscious. Compromise mechanisms will again be formed serving a +purpose similar to the neurosis. As in the neurosis, thought and action +will be compulsory, symbolic, stereotyped, and more or less in conflict +with the demands of society as a whole, though functioning in a part of +it for certain purposes. Many of the characteristics of the unconscious +will then appear and will be similar in some respects to those of +neurosis. It is my contention that this is what happens in the crowd, +and I will now point out certain phases of crowd-behavior which are +strikingly analogous to some of the phenomena which have been described +above. + + + + +IV + +THE EGOISM OF THE CROWD-MIND + + +The unconscious egoism of the individual in the crowd appears in all +forms of crowd-behavior. As in dreams and in the neurosis this self +feeling is frequently though thinly disguised, and I am of the opinion +that with the crowd the mechanisms of this disguise are less subtle. To +use a term which Freud employs in this connection to describe the +process of distortion in dreams, the "censor" is less active in the +crowd than in most phases of mental life. Though the conscious thinking +is carried on in abstract and impersonal formula, and though, as in the +neurosis, the "compulsive" character of the mechanisms developed +frequently--especially in permanent crowds--well nigh reduces the +individual to an automaton, the crowd is one of the most naïve devices +that can be employed for enhancing one's ego consciousness. The +individual has only to transfer his repressed self feeling to the idea +of the crowd or group of which he is a member; he can then exalt and +exhibit himself to almost any extent without shame, oblivious of the +fact that the supremacy, power, praise, and glory which he claims for +his crowd are really claimed for himself. + +That the crowd always insists on being flattered is a fact known +intuitively by every orator and editor. As a member of a crowd the +individual becomes part of a public. The worship with which men regard +"The Public," simply means that the personal self falls at the feet of +the same self regarded as public, and likewise demands that obeisance +from all. _Vox populi est vox Dei_ is obviously the apotheosis of one's +own voice while speaking as crowd-man. When this "god-almightiness" +manifests itself along the solitary path of the psychoneurosis it +becomes one of the common symptoms of paranoia. The crowd, in common +with paranoia, uniformly shows this quality of "megalomania." Every +crowd "boosts for" itself, lauds itself, gives itself airs, speaks with +oracular finality, regards itself as morally superior, and will, so far +as it has the power, lord it over everyone. Notice how each group and +section in society, so far as it permits itself to think as crowd, +claims to be "the people." To the working-class agitator, "the cause of +labor is the cause of humanity," workers are always, "innocent exploited +victims, kept down by the master class whose lust for gain has made +them enemies of Humanity and Justice." "Workers should rule because they +are the only useful people; the sole creators of wealth; their dominance +would mean the end of social wrong, and the coming of the millennium of +peace and brotherhood, the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth, the final +triumph of Humanity!" + +On the other hand, the wealthy and educated classes speak of themselves +as "the best people"; they _are_ "society." It is they who "bear the +burdens of civilization, and maintain Law and Order and Decency." Racial +and national crowds show the same megalomania. Hebrews are "God's +chosen." "The Dutch Company is the best Company that ever came over from +the Old Country." "The Irish may be ornery, and they ain't worth much, +but they are a whole lot better than the ---- ---- Dutch." "Little +Nigger baby, black face, and shiny eye, you're just as good as the poor +white trash, an' you'll git thar by and by." "He might have been a +Russian or a Prussian, ... but it's greatly to his credit that he is an +Englishman." The German is the happy bearer of _Kultur_ to a barbarian +world. America is "The land of the free and the home of the brave," and +so on, wherever a group has become sufficiently a crowd to have a +propaganda of its own. Presbyterians are "the Elect," the Catholics +have the "true church of God," the Christian Scientists have alone +attained "Absolute Truth." + +A number of years ago, when the interest in the psychology of the crowd +led me to attempt a study of Mr. Sunday's revival meetings, then in +their earlier stages, certain facts struck me with great force. Whatever +else the revival may be, it provides the student of psychology with a +delightful specimen for analysis. Every element of the mob or crowd-mind +is present and the unconscious manifests itself with an easy naïveté +which is probably found nowhere else, not even in the psychiatric +clinic. One striking fact, which has since provided me with food for a +good deal of reflection, was the place which the revival holds in what I +should like to call the spiritual economy of modern democracy. + +It is an interesting historical fact that each great religious revival, +from Savonarola down, has immediately followed--and has been the +resistance of the man in the street to--a period of intellectual +awakening. Mr. Sunday's meetings undeniably provided a device whereby a +certain psychic type, an element which had hitherto received scant +recognition in the community, could enormously enhance his ego +consciousness. It would be manifestly unfair to say that this is the +sole motive of the religious revival, or that only this type of mind is +active in it. But it is interesting to see whose social survival values +stand out most prominently in these religious crowd-phenomena. The +gambler, the drunkard, the loafer, the weak, ignorant, and unsuccessful, +whose self-esteem it may be assumed had always been made to suffer in +small communities, where everyone knew everyone else, had only to yield +himself to the pull of the obviously worked-up mechanism of the +religious crowd, and lo! all was changed. He was now the repentant +sinner, the new convert, over whom there was more rejoicing in heaven, +and, what was more visible, also for a brief time, in the Church, than +over the ninety and nine just persons. He was "redeemed," an object now +of divine love, a fact which anyone who has studied the effects of these +crowd-movements scientifically will agree was at once seized upon by +these converts to make their own moral dilemmas the standards of +righteousness in the community, and hence secure some measure of +dominance. + +This self-adulation of crowds, with its accompanying will to be +important, to dominate, is so constant and characteristic a feature of +the crowd-mind that I doubt if any crowd can long survive which fails to +perform this function for its members. Self-flattery is evident in the +pride with which many people wear badges and other insignia of groups +and organizations to which they belong, and in the pompous names by +which fraternal orders are commonly designated. In its more +"exhibitionist" types it appears in parades and in the favorite ways in +which students display their "college spirit." How many school and +college "yells" begin with the formula, "Who are We?" obviously designed +to call general attention to the group and impress upon people its +importance. + +In this connection I recall my own student days, which are doubtless +typical--the pranks which served the purpose of bringing certain groups +of students into temporary prominence and permitted them for a brief +period to regard themselves as comic heroes, the practices by which the +different classes and societies sought to get the better of one another, +the "love feasts" of my society which were hardly more than mutual +admiration gatherings, the "pajama" parades in which the entire student +body would march in costume (the wearing of which by an isolated +individual would probably have brought him before a lunacy commission) +all through the town and round and round the dormitories of the women's +college a mile or so away, in order to announce a victory in some +intercollegiate contest or other. There was the brazenness--it seems +hardly credible now--with which the victors on such occasions would +permit themselves to be carried on their comrades' shoulders through +the public square, also the deportment with which a delegation of +students would announce their arrival in a neighboring college town and +the grinning self-congratulation with which we would sit in chapel and +hear a wrathful president denounce our group behavior as "boorishness +and hoodlumism." There was the unanimous conviction of us all, for no +other reason I imagine than that it was graced with our particular +presence, that our own institution was the most superior college in +existence, and I well remember the priggishness with which at student +banquets we applauded the sentiment repeated _ad nauseam_, that the +great aim of education and the highest mark of excellence in our college +was the development of character. What is it all but a slightly +exaggerated account of the egoism of all organized crowds? Persons of +student age are for the most part still in the normal "narcissus" +period, and their ego-mania is naturally less disguised than that of +older groups. But even then we could never have given such open +manifestation to it as isolated individuals; it required the +crowd-spirit. + +The egoism of the crowd commonly takes the form of the will to social +dominance and it is in crowd behavior that we learn how insatiable the +repressed egoism of mankind really is. Members of the crowd are always +promising one another a splendid future triumph of some sort. This +promise of victory, which is nearly always to be enjoyed at the expense, +discomfiture, and humiliation of somebody else, is of great advantage in +the work of propaganda. People have only to be persuaded that +prohibition, or equal suffrage, or the single tax "is coming," and +thousands whose reason could not be moved by argument, however logical +it might be, will begin to look upon it with favor. The crowd is never +so much at home as "on the band wagon." Each of the old political +parties gains strength through the repeated prediction of victory in the +presidential campaign of 1920. The Socialist finds warmth in the +contemplation of the "coming dictatorship of the proletariat." The +Prohibitionist intoxicates himself by looking forward to a "dry world." +So long as the German crowds expected a victorious end of the war, their +morale remained unbroken, the Kaiser was popular. + +When a crowd is defeated and its hope of victory fades, the individual +soon abandons the unsuccessful group. The great cause, being now a +forlorn hope, is seen in a different light, and the crowd character of +the group vanishes. When, however, certain forces still operate to keep +the crowd state of mind alive--forces such as race feeling, patriotism, +religious belief, or class consciousness--the ego consciousness of the +individuals so grouped finds escape in the promise of heaven, the +Judgment Day, and that "far off divine event toward which the whole +creation moves." Meanwhile the hope of victory is changed into that +"impotent resentment" so graphically described by Nietzsche. + +Another way in which the self feeling of the crowd functions is in +idealizing those who succeed in gaining its recognition. The crowd +always makes a hero of the public person, living or dead. Regardless of +what he really did or was, he is transformed into a symbol of what the +crowd wishes to believe him to be. Certain aspects of his teaching and +various incidents which would appear in his biography are glossed over, +and made into supports for existing crowd-ideas and prejudices. Most of +the great characters in history have suffered in this way at the hands +of tradition. The secret of their greatness, their uniqueness and +spiritual isolation, is in great part ignored. The crowd's own secret is +substituted. The great man now appears great because he possessed the +qualities of little men. He is representative man, crowd man. Every +crowd has a list of heroic names which it uses in its propaganda and in +its self-laudation. The greatness which each crowd reveres and demands +that all men honor is just that greatness which the crowd treasures as +a symbol of itself, the sort of superiority which the members of the +crowd may suck up to swell their own ego consciousness. + +Thus, hero worship is unconsciously worship of the crowd itself, and the +constituents thereof. The self-feeling of a crowd is always enhanced by +the triumph of its leader or representative. Who, at a ball game or +athletic event, has not experienced elation and added self-complacency +in seeing the home team win? What other meaning has the excited +cheering? Even a horse on a race track may become the representative of +a crowd and lift five thousand people into the wildest joy and ecstasy +by passing under a wire a few inches ahead of a rival. We have here one +of the secrets of the appeal which all such exhibitions make to people. +Nothing so easily catches general attention and creates a crowd as a +contest of any kind. The crowd unconsciously identifies its members with +one or the other competitor. Success enables the winning crowd to "crow +over" the losers. Such an occasion becomes symbolic and is utilized by +the ego to enhance its feeling of importance. + +A similar psychological fact may be observed in the "jollifications" of +political parties after the election of their candidates for high +office. This phenomenon is also seen, if I may say so without being +misunderstood, in the new spirit which characterizes a people victorious +in war, and is to no small degree the basis of the honor of successful +nations. It is seen again in the pride which the citizens of a small +town show in the fact that the governor of the state is a native of the +place. This same principle finds place in such teachings of the Church +as the doctrine of the "communion of the saints," according to which the +spiritual grace and superiority of the great and pure become the common +property of the Church, and may be shared by all believers as a saving +grace. + +Every organized crowd is jealous of its dignity and honor and is bent +upon keeping up appearances. Nothing is more fatal to it than a +successful assault upon its prestige. Every crowd, even the casual +street mob, clothes the egoistic desires of its members or participants +in terms of the loftiest moral motive. No crowd can afford to be laughed +at. Crowd men have little sense of humor, certainly none concerning +themselves and their crowd-ideas. Any laughter they indulge in is more +likely to be directed at those who do not believe with them. The +crowd-man resents any suspicion of irreverence or criticism of his +professions, because to question them is to weaken the claim of his +crowd upon the people, and to destroy in those professed ideals their +function of directing his own attention away from the successful +compromise of his unconscious conflicts which the crowd had enabled him +to make. The crowd would perish if it lost its "ideals." It clings to +its fixed ideas with the same tenacity as does the paranoiac. You can no +more reason with the former than you can with the latter, and for much +the same cause; the beliefs of both are not the fruit of inquiry, +neither do they perform the normal intellectual function of adjustment +to environment; they are mechanisms of the ego by which it keeps itself +in countenance. + +Much of the activity of the unconscious ego is viewed by psychologists +as "compensation." Devices which serve the purpose of compensating the +ego for some loss, act of self-sacrifice, or failure, are commonly +revealed by both the normal and the unadjusted. The popular notion that +unsatisfied desires sooner or later perish of starvation is at best but +a half truth. These desires after we have ceased to attend them become +transformed. They frequently find satiety in some substitute which the +unconscious accepts as a symbol of its real object. Dreams of normal +people contain a great deal of material of this sort. So do day-dreams, +and art. Many religious beliefs also serve this purpose of compensation. +Jung follows Freud in pointing out as a classic example of the +compensation in dreams, that of Nebuchadnezzar, in the Bible. + + Nebuchadnezzar at the height of his power had a dream which + foretold his downfall. He dreamed of a tree which had raised its + head even up to Heaven and now must be hewn down. This was a + dream which is obviously a counterpoise to the exaggerated + feeling of royal power. + +According to Jung, we may expect to find only those things contained in +the unconscious which we have not found in the conscious mind. Many +conscious virtues and traits of character are thus compensations for +their opposite in the unconscious. + + In the case of abnormal people, the individual entirely fails to + recognize the compensating influences which arise in the + unconscious. He even continues to accentuate his onesidedness; + this is in accord with the well-known psychological fact that + the worst enemy of the wolf is the wolfhound, the greatest + despiser of the negro is the mulatto, and that the biggest + fanatic is the convert; for I should be a fanatic were I to + attack a thing outwardly which inwardly I am obliged to concede + is right. + + The mentally unbalanced man tries to defend himself against his + own unconscious--that is to say, he battles against his own + compensating influences. In normal minds opposites of feeling + and valuations lie closely associated; the law of this + association is called "ambivalence," about which we shall see + more later. In the abnormal, the pairs are torn asunder, the + resulting division, or strife, leads to disaster, for the + unconscious soon begins to intrude itself violently upon the + conscious processes. + + An especially typical form of unconscious compensation ... is + the paranoia of the alcoholic. The alcoholic loses his love for + his wife; the unconscious compensation tries to lead him back + again to his duty, but only partially succeeds, for it causes + him to become jealous of his wife as if he still loved her. As + we know, he may go so far as to kill both his wife and himself, + merely out of jealousy. In other words, his love for his wife + has not been entirely lost. It has simply become subliminal; but + from the realm of consciousness it can now only reappear in the + form of jealousy.... We see something of a similar nature in the + case of the religious convert.... The new convert feels himself + constrained to defend the faith he has adopted (since much of + the old faith still survives in the unconscious associations) in + a more or less fanatical way. It is exactly the same in the + paranoiac who feels himself constantly constrained to defend + himself against all external criticism, because his delusional + system is too much threatened from within. + +It is not necessary for us to enter here upon a discussion of the +processes by which these compensating devices are wrought out in the +psychoneurosis. It is significant, though, that Jung calls attention to +the likeness between religious fanaticism and paranoia. Now it is +obvious that the fanaticism of the religious convert differs +psychologically not at all from that of any other convert. We have +already noted the fact that most religious conversions are accomplished +by the crowd. Moreover the crowd everywhere tends to fanaticism. The +fanatic is the crowd-man pure and simple. He is the type which it ever +strives to produce. His excess of devotion, and willingness to sacrifice +both himself and everyone else for the crowd's cause, always wins the +admiration of his fellow crowd-members. He has given all for the crowd, +is wholly swallowed by it, is "determined not to know anything save" his +crowd and its propaganda. He is the martyr, the true believer, "the +red-blooded loyal American" with "my country right or wrong." He is the +uncompromising radical whose prison record puts to shame the less +enthusiastic members of his group. He is the militant pacifist, the +ever-watchful prohibitionist, and keeper of his neighbors' consciences, +the belligerent moral purist, who is scandalized even at the display of +lingerie in the store windows, the professional reformer who in every +community succeeds in making his goodness both indispensable and +unendurable. + +One need not be a psychologist to suspect that the evil against which +the fanatic struggles is really in large measure in himself. He has +simply externalized, or "projected" the conflict in his own unconscious. +Persons who cry aloud with horror at every change in the style of +women's clothing are in most cases persons whose ego is gnawed by a +secret promiscuous eroticism. The scandalmonger, inhibited from doing +the forbidden thing, enjoys himself by a vicarious indulgence in +rottenness. The prohibition agitator, if not himself an alcoholic barely +snatched from the burning, is likely to be one who at least feels safer +in a democracy where it is not necessary to resist temptation while +passing a saloon door. Notice that the fanatic or crowd-man always +strives to universalize his own moral dilemmas. This is the device by +which every crowd seeks dominance in the earth. A crowd's virtues and +its vices are really made out of the same stuff. Each is simply the +other turned upside down, the compensation for the other. They are alike +and must be understood together as the expression of the type of person +who constitutes the membership of some particular group or crowd. + + I'll never use tobacco, it is a filthy weed + I'll never put it in my mouth, said little Robert Reed. + +But obviously, little Robert is already obsessed with a curious interest +in tobacco. His first word shows that he has already begun to think of +this weed in connection with himself. Should a crowd of persons +struggling with Robert's temptation succeed in dominating society, +tobacco would become taboo and thus would acquire a moral significance +which it does not have at present. So with all our crowd-ethics. The +forbidden thing protrudes itself upon consciousness as a negation. The +negation reveals what it is that is occupying the inner psyche, and is +its compensation. There are certain psychoneuroses in which this +negative form of compensation is very marked. Now it is a noteworthy +fact that with the crowd the ethical interest always takes this negative +form. + +The healthy moral will is characterized by a constant restating of the +problem of living in terms of richer and higher and more significant +dilemmas as new possibilities of personal worth are revealed by +experience. New and more daring valuations are constantly made. The +whole psychic functioning is enriched. Goodness means an increase of +satisfactions through a more adequate adjustment to the real--richer +experience, more subtle power of appreciation and command, a +self-mastery, sureness, and general personal excellence--which on +occasions great and small mark the good will as a reality which counts +in the sum total of things. Something is achieved because it is really +desired; existence is in so far humanized, a self has been realized. As +Professor Dewey says: + + If our study has shown anything it is that the moral _is_ a + life, not something ready-made and complete once for all. It is + instinct with movement and struggle, and it is precisely the + new and serious situations which call out new vigor and lift it + to higher levels. + +It is not so with the crowd-ethic. It is interesting to note that from +the "Decalogue" to Kant's "Categorical Imperative," crowd-morals always +and everywhere take the form of prohibitions, taboos, and ready-made +standards, chiefly negative. Freud has made an analytical study of the +Taboo as found in primitive society and has shown that it has a +compensatory value similar to that of the taboos and compulsions of +certain neurotics. + +The crowd admits of no personal superiority other than that which +consists in absolute conformity to its own negative standards. Except +for the valuations expressed by its own dilemmas, "one man is as good as +another"--an idea which it can be easily seen serves the purpose of +compensation. The goodness which consists of unique personal superiority +is very distasteful to the crowd. There must be only one standard of +behavior, alike for all. A categorical imperative. The standard as set +up is of the sort which is most congenial, possible of attainment, and +even necessary for the survival of the members of some particular crowd. +It is _their_ good, the converse and compensation of their own vices, +temptations, and failures. The crowd then demands that this good shall +be THE GOOD, that it become the universal standard. By such means even +the most incompetent and unadventurous and timid spirits may pass +judgment upon all men. They may cry to the great of the earth, "We have +piped unto you and you have not danced." Judged by the measure of their +conformity to the standards of the small, the great may be considered no +better, possibly not so good as the little spirits. The well are forced +to behave like the spiritually sick. The crowd is a dog in the manger. +If eating meat maketh my brother to be scandalized, or giveth him the +cramps, I shall remain a vegetarian so long as the world standeth. +Nietzsche was correct on this point. The crowd--he called it the +herd--is a weapon of revenge in the hands of the weaker brother. It is a +Procrustean bed on which every spiritual superiority may be lopped off +to the common measure, and every little ego consciousness may be +stretched to the stature of full manhood. + + + + +V + +THE CROWD A CREATURE OF HATE + + +Probably the most telling point of likeness between the crowd-mind and +the psychoneurosis--paranoia especially--is the "delusion of +persecution." In cases of paranoia the notion that the patient is the +victim of all sorts of intrigue and persecution is so common as to be a +distinguishing symptom of this disease. Such delusions are known to be +defenses, or compensation mechanisms, growing out of the patient's +exaggerated feeling of self-importance. The delusion of grandeur and +that of being persecuted commonly go together. The reader will recall +the passage quoted from the pamphlet given me by a typical paranoiac. +The author of the document mentioned feels that he has a great mission, +that of exposing and reforming the conditions in hospitals for the +insane. He protests his innocence. In jail he feels like Christ among +his tormentors. His wife has conspired against him. The woman who owns +the hotel where he was employed wishes to put him out of the way. The +most fiendish methods are resorted to in order to end his life. "Some +one" blocked up the stovepipe, etc., etc. + +Another illustration of a typical case is given by Doctor Brill. I quote +scattered passages from the published notes on the case record of the +patient, "E. R." + + He graduated in 1898 and then took up schoolteaching.... He did + not seem to get along well with his principal and other + teachers.... He imagined that the principal and other teachers + were trying to work up a "badger game" on him, to the effect + that he had some immoral relations with his girl pupils.... + + In 1903 he married, after a brief courtship, and soon thereafter + took a strong dislike to his brother-in-law and sister and + accused them of immorality.... He also accused his wife of + illicit relations with his brother and his brother-in-law, Mr. S. + + Mr. S., his brother-in-law, was the arch conspirator against + him. He also (while in the hospital) imagined that some women + made signs to him and were in the hospital for the purpose of + liberating him. Whenever he heard anybody talking he immediately + referred it to himself. He interpreted every movement and + expression as having some special meaning for himself.... + + Now and then (after his first release by order of the court) he + would send mysterious letters to different persons in New York + City. At that time one of his delusions was that he was a great + statesman and that the United States government had appointed + him ambassador (to Canada), but that the "gang" in New York City + had some one without ability to impersonate him so that he lost + his appointment. (Later, while confined to the hospital again) + he thought that the daughter of the President of the United + States came to visit him.... + + After the patient was recommitted to Bellevue Hospital, he told + me that I (Doctor Brill) was one of the "gang." I was no longer + his wife in disguise (as he has previously imagined) but his + enemy. + +Brill's discussion of this case contains an interesting analysis of the +several stages of "regression" and the unconscious mechanisms which +characterize paranoia. He holds that such cases show a "fixation" in an +earlier stage of psychosexual development. The patient, an unconscious +homosexual, is really in love with himself. The resulting inner conflict +appears, with its defense formations, as the delusion of grandeur and as +conscious hatred for the person or persons who happen to be the object +of the patient's homosexual wish fancy. However this may be, the point +of interest for our study is the "projection" of this hatred to others. +Says Brill: + + The sentence, "I rather hate him" becomes transformed through + projection into the sentence, "he hates (persecutes) me, which + justifies my hating him." + +The paranoiac's delusional system inevitably brings him in conflict with +his environment, but his feeling of being persecuted is less the result +of this conflict with an external situation than of his own inner +conflict. He convinces himself that it is the other, or others, not he, +who is the author of this hatred. He is the innocent victim of their +malice. + +This phenomenon of "projection and displacement" has received +considerable attention in analytical psychology. Freud, in the book, +_Totem and Taboo_, shows the role which projection plays in the +primitive man's fear of demons. The demons are of course the spirits of +the dead. But how comes it that primitive people fear these spirits, and +attribute to them every sort of evil design against the living? To quote +Freud: + + When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter her mother, it not + infrequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with + tormenting scruples, called "obsessive reproaches," which raise + the question whether she herself has not been guilty, through + carelessness or neglect, of the death of the beloved person. No + recalling of the care with which she nursed the invalid, or + direct refutation of the asserted guilt, can put an end to the + torture, which is the pathological expression of mourning and + which in time slowly subsides. Psychoanalytic investigation of + such cases has made us acquainted with the secret mainspring of + this affliction. We have ascertained that these obsessive + reproaches are in a certain sense justified.... Not that the + mourner has really been guilty of the death or that she has + really been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts; but + still there was something in her, a wish of which she was + unaware, which was not displeased with the fact that death came, + and which would have brought it about sooner had it been strong + enough. The reproach now reacts against this unconscious wish + after the death of the beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in + the unconscious behind tender love, exists in almost all cases + of intensive emotional allegiance to a particular person; + indeed, it represents the classic case, the prototype of the + ambivalence of human emotions.... + + By assuming a similar high degree of ambivalence in the + emotional life of primitive races such as psychoanalysis + ascribes to persons suffering from compulsion neurosis, it + becomes comprehensible that the same kind of reaction against + the hostility latent in the unconscious behind the obsessive + reproaches of the neurotic should also be necessary here after + the painful loss has occurred. But this hostility, which is + painfully felt in the unconscious in the form of satisfaction + with the demise, experiences a different fate in the case of + primitive man: the defense against it is accomplished by a + displacement upon the object of hostility--namely, the dead. We + call this defense process, frequent in both normal and diseased + psychic life, a "projection."... Thus we find that taboo has + grown out of the soil of an ambivalent emotional attitude. The + taboo of the dead also originates from the opposition between + conscious grief and the unconscious satisfaction at death. If + this is the origin of the resentment of spirits, it is + self-evident that the nearest and formerly most beloved + survivors have to feel it most. As in neurotic symptoms, the + taboo regulations evince opposite feelings. Their restrictive + character expresses mourning, while they also betray very + clearly what they are trying to conceal--namely, the hostility + toward the dead which is now motivated as self-defense.... + + The double feeling--tenderness and hostility--against the + deceased, which we consider well-founded, endeavors to assert + itself at the time of bereavement as mourning and satisfaction. + A conflict must ensue between these contrary feelings, and as + one of them--namely, the hostility, is altogether, or for the + greater part, unconscious, the conflict cannot result in a + conscious difference in the form of hostility or tenderness, as, + for instance, when we forgive an injury inflicted upon us by + some one we love. The process usually adjusts itself through a + special psychic mechanism which is designated in psychoanalysis + as "projection." This unknown hostility, of which we are + ignorant and of which we do not wish to know, is projected from + our inner perception into the outer world and is thereby + detached from our own person and attributed to another. Not we, + the survivors, rejoice because we are rid of the deceased, on + the contrary we mourn for him; but now, curiously enough, he has + become an evil demon who would rejoice in our misfortune and who + seeks our death. The survivors must now defend themselves + against this evil enemy; they are freed from inner oppression, + but they have only succeeded in exchanging it for an affliction + from without. + +Totem, taboo, demon worship, etc., are clearly primitive +crowd-phenomena. Freud's main argument in this book consists in showing +the likeness between these phenomena and the compulsion neurosis. The +projection of unconscious hostility upon demons is by no means the only +sort of which crowds both primitive and modern are capable. Neither must +the hostility always be unconscious. Projection is a common device +whereby even normal and isolated individuals justify themselves in +hating. Most of us love to think evil of our enemies and opponents. Just +as two fighting schoolboys will each declare that the other "began it," +so our dislike of people often first appears to our consciousness as a +conviction that they dislike or entertain unfriendly designs upon us. +There is a common type of female neurotic whose repressed erotic wishes +appear in the form of repeated accusations that various of her men +acquaintances are guilty of making improper advances to her. When the +"white slavery" reform movement swept over the country--an awakening of +the public conscience which would have accomplished a more unmixed good +if it had not been taken up in the usual crowd-spirit--it was +interesting to watch the newspapers and sensational propagandist +speakers as they deliberately encouraged these pathological phenomena in +young people. The close psychological relation between the neurosis and +the crowd-mind is shown by the fact that the two so frequently appear at +the same moment, play so easily into each other's hands, and are +apparently reactions to the very same social situation. + +In Brill's example of paranoia, it will be remembered that the patient's +delusions of persecution took the form of such statements as that the +"gang" had intrigued at Washington to prevent his appointment as +ambassador, that certain of his relatives were in a "conspiracy against +him." How commonly such phrases and ideas occur in crowd-oratory and in +the crowd-newspaper is well known to all. We have already seen that the +crowd in most cases identifies itself with "the people," "humanity," +"society," etc. Listen to the crowd-orator and you will also learn that +there are all sorts of abominable "conspiracies" against "the people." +"The nation is full of traitors." The Church is being "undermined by +cunning heretics." "The Bolshevists are in secret league with the +Germans to destroy civilization." "Socialists are planning to corrupt +the morals of our youth and undermine the sacredness of the home." "The +politicians' gang intends to loot the community." "Wall Street is +conspiring to rob the people of their liberties." "England plans to +reduce America to a British colony again." "Japan is getting ready to +make war on us." "German merchants are conducting a secret propaganda +intending to steal our trade and pauperize our nation." "The Catholics +are about to seize power and deliver us over to another Inquisition." +"The liquor interests want only to make drunkards of our sons and +prostitutes of our daughters." And so on and so forth, wherever any +crowd can get a hearing for its propaganda. Always the public welfare is +at stake; society is threatened. The "wrongs" inflicted upon an innocent +humanity are rehearsed. Bandages are taken off every social wound. +Every scar, be it as old as Cromwell's mistreatment of Ireland, is +inflamed. "The people are being deceived," "kept down," "betrayed." They +must rise and throw off their exploiters, or they must purge the nation +of disloyalty and "anarchy." + +It cannot be denied that our present social order is characterized by +deep and fundamental social injustices, nor that bitter struggles +between the various groups in society are inevitable. But the crowd +forever ignores its own share in the responsibility for human ills, and +each crowd persists in making a caricature of its enemies, real and +imagined, nourishing itself in a delusion of persecution which is like +nothing so much as the characteristic obsessions of the paranoiac. This +suspiciousness, this habit of misrepresentation and exaggeration of +every conceivable wrong, is not only a great hindrance to the +conflicting groups in adjusting their differences, it makes impossible, +by misrepresenting the real issue at stake, any effective struggle for +ideals. As the history of all crowd movements bears witness, the real +source of conflict is forgotten, the issue becomes confused with the +spectacular, the unimportant, and imaginary. Energy is wasted on side +issues, and the settlement finally reached, even by a clearly victorious +crowd, is seldom that of the original matter in dispute. In fact, it is +not at all the function of these crowd-ideas of self-pity and +persecution to deal with real external situations. These ideas are +propaganda. Their function is to keep the crowd together, to make +converts, to serve as a defense for the egoism of the crowd-man, to +justify the anticipated tyranny which it is the unconscious desire of +the individual to exercise in the moment of victory for his crowd, and, +as "they who are not for us are against us," to project the crowd-man's +hatred upon the intended victims of his crowd's will to universal +dominion. In other words, these propaganda ideas serve much the same end +as do the similar delusions of persecution in paranoia. + +This likeness between the propaganda of the crowd and the delusions of +paranoia is illustrated daily in our newspapers. The following items cut +from the New York _Tribune_ are typical. The first needs no further +discussion, as it parallels the cases given above. The second is from +the published proceedings of "a committee," appointed, as I remember it, +by the assembly of the state of New York, to conduct an investigation +into certain alleged seditious and anarchist activities. These articles +well illustrate the character of the propaganda to which such a +committee almost inevitably lends itself. Whether the committee or the +newspapers were chiefly responsible for such fabrications, I do not +know, but the crowd character of much of the attempt to stamp out +Bolshevism is strikingly revealed in this instance. No doubt the members +of this committee, as well as the detectives and the press agents who +are associated with them, are as honestly convinced that a mysterious +gang of radicals is planning to murder us all as is the paranoiac W. H. +M. fixed in his delusion that his enemies are trying to asphyxiate him. +It will be remembered that Brill's patient "E. S." interpreted "every +movement and expression as having some special meaning for himself." +This kind of "interpretation" has a curious logic all its own. It is +what I would call "compulsive thinking," and is characteristic of both +the delusions of paranoia and the rumors of the crowd. + +First clipping: + + INVENTOR IS DECLARED INSANE BY A JURY. + + W. H. M. declares rivals are attempting to asphyxiate him. W. H. + M., an inventor, was declared mentally incompetent yesterday by + a jury in the Sheriff's court.... Alienists said M. had + hallucinations about enemies who he thinks are trying to + asphyxiate him. He also imagines that he is under hypnotic + influences and that persons are trying to affect his body with + "electrical influences." + +Second clipping: + + RADICALS HERE SEEK SOLDIERS FOR "RED GUARD." + + Several hundred men, formerly in United States Service, signify + willingness to aid in project. A "Red Guard" composed of men who + have served in the American military establishment is + contemplated in the elaborate revolutionary plans of Bolshevik + leaders here. This was learned yesterday when operatives of the + Lusk committee discovered that the radicals were making every + effort to enlist the aid of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines + Protective Association in carrying out a plot to overthrow the + government by force. As far as the detectives have been able to + ascertain, the great mass of fighting men are not in sympathy + with the Reds, but several hundred have signified their + willingness to co-operate. + + Just how far the plans of the Reds have progressed was not + revealed. It is known, however, that at a convention of the Left + Wing Socialists in Buffalo the movement designed to enlist the + support of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Protective + Association was launched. This convention was addressed by + prominent Left Wingers from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, + Pittsburgh, and Paterson. They asserted that trained military + men must be obtained for the organization if the plans were to + be successful. + + It was from this meeting, which was held in secret, that + agitators were sent to various parts of the state to form + soviets in the shops and factories. This phase of the radical + activity, according to the investigators, has met with + considerable success in some large factory districts where most + of the workers are foreign-born. In some places the soviets in + the shops have become so strong that the employers are alarmed + and have notified the authorities of the menace. When sufficient + evidence has been gathered, foreign-born agitators working to + cause unrest in factories will be apprehended and recommended + for deportation. + +Later report: + + DENIES FORMATION OF "RED GUARD" IN U. S. + + Alfred Levitt, secretary of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines + Protective Association, yesterday emphatically denied that the + organization was to be used as a "Red Guard" by the radicals + when they started their contemplated revolution. He said he + never had heard any of the members of the association discuss + the formation of a "Red Guard" but admitted that many of them + were radicals. + +In the two instances given above, fear, suspicion, hatred, give rise in +one case to a delusional system in the mind of an isolated individual, +and in the other to the circulation of an unfounded rumor by men who in +their right minds would, to say the least, carefully scrutinize the +evidence for such a story before permitting it to be published. As +several months have passed since the publication of this story and +nothing more has appeared which would involve our returned service men +in any such treasonable conspiracy, I think it is safe to say that this +story, like many others circulated by radicals as well as by +reactionaries during the unsettled months following the war, has its +origin in the unconscious mechanisms of crowd-minded people. Every sort +of crowd is prone to give credence to rumors of this nature, and to +accuse all those who can not at once give uncritical acceptance to such +tales of sympathy with the enemy. Later we shall have something to say +about the delusional systems which appear to be common to the crowd-mind +and the paranoiac. In this connection I am interested in pointing out +only the psychological relation between what I might call the +"conspiracy delusion" and unconscious hatred. Commonly the former is the +"projection" of the latter. + +One of the differences between these two forms of "projection" is the +fact that the hatred of the crowd is commonly less "rationalized" than +in paranoia--that is, less successfully disguised. Like the paranoiac, +every crowd is potentially if not actually homicidal in its tendencies. +But whereas with the paranoiac the murderous hostility remains for the +greater part an unconscious "wish fancy," and it is the mechanisms which +disguise it or serve as a defense against it which appear to +consciousness, with the crowd the murder-wish will itself appear to +consciousness whenever the unconscious can fabricate such defense +mechanisms as will provide it with a fiction of moral justification. +Consequently, it is this fiction of justification which the crowd-man +must defend. + +The crowd's delusion of persecution, conspiracy, or oppression is thus a +defense mechanism of this nature. The projection of this hatred on those +outside the crowd serves not so much, as in paranoia, to shield the +subject from the consciousness of his own hatred, as to provide him with +a pretext for exercising it. Given such a pretext, most crowds will +display their homicidal tendencies quite openly. + +Ordinary mobs or riots would seem to need very little justification of +this sort. But even these directly homicidal crowds invariably represent +themselves as motivated by moral idealism and righteous indignation. +Negroes are lynched in order to protect the white womanhood of the +South, also because, once accused, the negro happens to be helpless. If +the colored people were in the ascendancy and the whites helpless we +should doubtless see the reverse of this situation. A community +rationally convinced of the culprit's guilt could well afford to trust +the safety of womanhood to the justice meted out by the courts, but it +is obvious that these "moral" crowds are less interested in seeing that +justice is done than in running no risk of losing their victim, once he +is in their power. A recent development of this spirit is the lynching +in a Southern town of a juror who voted for the acquittal of a black man +accused of a crime. + +It may be taken as a general law of crowd-psychology that the +"morality" of the crowd always demands a victim. Is it likely that one +of these mobs would "call off" an interesting lynching party if at the +last minute it were demonstrated that the accused was innocent? The +practice of lynching has been extended, from those cases where the +offense with which the accused is charged is so revolting as justly to +arouse extreme indignation, to offenses which are so trivial that they +merely serve as a pretext for torture and killing. + +The homicidal tendencies of the crowd-mind always reveal themselves the +minute the crowd becomes sufficiently developed and powerful to relax +for the time being the usual social controls. Illustrations of this may +be seen in the rioting between the white and the colored +races--epidemics of killing--such as occurred recently in East St. +Louis, and in the cities of Washington, Chicago, and Omaha. The same +thing is evident in the "pogroms" of Russia and Poland, in the acts of +revolutionary mobs of Germany and Russia, in the promptness with which +the Turks took advantage of the situation created by the war to +slaughter the Armenians. This hatred is the specter which forever haunts +the conflict between labor and capital. It is what speedily transformed +the French Revolution from the dawn of an era of "Fraternity" to a day +of terror and intimidation. It is seen again in the curious interest +which the public always has in a sensational murder trial. It is evident +in the hostility, open or suppressed, with which any community regards +the strange, the foreign, the "outlandish"--an example of which is the +frequent bullying and insulting of immigrants in this country since the +war. Much of the "Americanization propaganda" which we have carried on +since the war unfortunately gave the typical crowd-man his opportunity. +One need only listen to the speeches or read the publications of certain +"patriotic" societies to learn why it was that the exhortation to our +foreign neighbors to be loyal did so much more harm than good. + +The classic example of the killing crowd is, of course, a nation at war. +There are, to be sure, wars of national self-defense which are due to +political necessity rather than to crowd-thinking, but even in such +cases the phenomena of the crowd are likely to appear to the detriment +of the cause. At such times not only the army but the whole nation +becomes a homicidal crowd. The army, at least while the soldiers are in +service, probably shows the crowd-spirit in a less degree than does the +civilian population. The mental processes of an entire people are +transformed. Every interest--profit-seeking excepted--is subordinated +to the one passion to crush the enemy. The moment when war is declared +is usually hailed with tremendous popular enthusiasm and joy. There is a +general lifting of spirits. There is a sense of release, a nation-wide +exultation, a sigh of relief as we feel the deadening hand of social +control taken from our throats. The homicidal wish-fancy, which in peace +times and in less sovereign crowds exists only as an hypothesis, can now +become a reality. And though it is doubtful if more than one person in a +million can ever give a rational account of just what issue is really at +stake in any war, the conviction is practically unanimous that an +occasion has been found which justifies, even demands, the release of +all the repressed hostility in our natures. The fact that in war time +this crowd hostility may, under certain circumstances, really have +survival value and be both beneficial and necessary to the nation, is to +my mind not a justification of crowd-making. It is rather a revelation +of the need of a more competent leadership in world politics. + +Unconsciously every national crowd, I mean the crowd-minded element in +the nation, carries a chip on its shoulder, and swaggers and challenges +its neighbors like a young town-bully on his way home from grammar +school. This swaggering, which is here the "compulsive manifestation" of +unconscious hostility characteristic of every crowd, appears to +consciousness as "national honor." To the consciousness of the +nation-crowd the quarrel for which it has been spoiling for a long time +always appears to have been "forced upon it." Some nations are much more +quarrelsome than others. I cannot believe that our conviction that +Imperial Germany was the aggressor in the great war is due merely to +patriotic conceit on our part. The difference between our national +spirit and that of Imperial Prussia is obvious, but the difference in +this respect, great as it is, is one of degree rather than of kind, and +is due largely to the fact that the political organization of Germany +permitted the Prussian patriots to hold the national mind in a permanent +crowd state to a degree which is even now hardly possible in this +republic. My point is that a nation becomes warlike to precisely the +extent that its people may be made to think and behave as a crowd. Once +a crowd, it is always "in the right" however aggressive and ruthless its +behavior; every act or proposal which is calculated to involve the +nation-crowd in a controversy, which gains some advantage over +neighboring peoples, or intensifies hatred once it is released, is +wildly applauded. Any dissent from the opinions of our particular party +or group is trampled down. He who fails at such a time to be a +crowd-man and our own sort of a crowd-man is a "slacker." Everyone's +patriotism is put under suspicion, political heresy-hunting is the rule, +any personal advantage which can be gained by denouncing as "enemy +sympathizers" rival persons or groups within the nation is sure to be +snatched up by some one. The crowd-mind, even in times of peace, +distorts patriotism so that it is little more than a compulsive +expression and justification of repressed hostility. In war the crowd +succeeds in giving rein to this hostility by first projecting it upon +the enemy. + +Freud in his little book, _War and Death_, regards war as a temporary +"regression" in which primitive impulses which are repressed by +civilization, but not eradicated, find their escape. He argues that most +people live psychologically "beyond their means." Hence war could be +regarded, I suppose, as a sort of "spiritual liquidation." But if the +hostility which the war crowd permits to escape is simply a repressed +impulse to cruelty, we should be obliged to explain a large part of +crowd-behavior as "sadistic." This may be the case with crowds of a +certain type, lynching mobs, for instance. But as the homicidal +tendencies of paranoia are not commonly explained as sadism, I can see +no reason why those of the crowd should be. Sadism is a return to an +infantile sex perversion, and in its direct overt forms the resulting +conflicts are conscious and are between the subject and environment. It +is where a tendency unacceptable to consciousness is repressed--and +inadequately--that neurotic conflict ensues. This conflict being inner, +develops certain mechanisms for the defense of the ego-feeling which is +injured. The hatred of the paranoiac is really a defense for his own +injured self-feeling. As the crowd always shows an exaggerated +ego-feeling similar to the paranoiac's delusion of grandeur, and as in +cases of paranoia this inner conflict is always "projected" in the form +of delusions of persecution, may we not hold that the characteristic +hostility of the crowd is also in some way a device for protecting this +inflated self-appreciation from injury? The forms which this hatred +takes certainly have all the appearance of being "compulsive" ideas and +actions. + +We have been discussing crowds in which hostility is present in the form +of overt destructive and homicidal acts or other unmistakable +expressions of hatred. But are there not also peaceable crowds, crowds +devoted to religious and moral propaganda, idealist crowds? Yes, all +crowds moralize, all crowds are also idealistic. But the moral +enthusiasm of the crowd always demands a victim. The idealist crowd also +always makes idols of its ideals and worships them with human +sacrifice. The peaceable crowd is only potentially homicidal. The +death-wish exists as a fancy only, or is expressed in symbols so as to +be more or less unrecognizable to ordinary consciousness. I believe that +_every crowd is_ "_against some one_." Almost any crowd will persecute +on occasion--if sufficiently powerful and directly challenged. The crowd +tends ever to carry its ideas to their deadly logical conclusion. + +I have already referred to the crowd's interest in games and athletic +events as an innocent symbolization of conflict. How easy it is to +change this friendly rivalry into sudden riot--its real meaning--every +umpire of baseball and football games knows. As an illustration of my +point--namely, that the enthusiasm aroused by athletic contests is the +suppressed hostility of the crowd, I give the following. In this letter +to a New York newspaper, the writer, a loyal "fan," reveals the same +mentality that we find in the sectarian fanatic, or good party man, +whose "principles" have been challenged. The challenge seems in all such +cases to bring the hostility into consciousness as "righteous +indignation." + + _To the Editor_: + + SIR,--The article under the caption "Giants' Chances for Flag to + be Settled in Week," on the sporting page of the _Tribune_, is + doubtless intended to be humorous. + + The section referring to the Cincinnati baseball public is + somewhat overdrawn, to say the least, and does not leave a very + favorable impression on the average Cincinnatian, such as + myself. I have been a reader of your paper for some time, but if + this sort of thing continues I shall feel very much like + discontinuing. + + W. L. D. + +The extremes to which partisan hatred and jealousy can lead even members +of the United States Senate, the intolerance and sectarian spirit which +frequently characterize crowds, the "bigotry" of reformist crowds, are +matters known to us all. Does anyone doubt that certain members of the +Society for the Prevention of Vice, or of the Prohibitionists, would +persecute if they had power? Have not pacifist mass meetings been known +to break up in a row? The Christian religion is fundamentally a religion +of love, but the Church has seldom been wholly free from the +crowd-spirit, and the Church crowd will persecute as quickly as any +other. In each period of its history when Christian believers have been +organized as dominant crowds the Church has resorted to the severest +forms of persecution. Popular religion always demands some kind of devil +to stand as the permanent object of the believer's hostility. Let an +editor, or lecturer, or clergyman anywhere attack some one, and he at +once gains following and popularity. Evangelists and political orators +are always able to "get" their crowd by resorting to abuse of some one. +Let any mass meeting become a crowd, and this note of hostility +inevitably appears. + +Notice the inscriptions which commonly appear on the banners carried in +political or labor parades. On the day after the armistice was signed +with Germany, when the most joyous and spontaneous crowds I have ever +seen filled the streets of New York, I was greatly impressed with those +homemade banners. Though it was the occasion of the most significant and +hard-won victory in human history, there was hardly a reference to the +fact. Though it was the glad moment of peace for which all had longed, I +did not see ten banners bearing the word "Peace," even in the hands of +the element in the city who were known to be almost unpatriotically +pacifist. But within less than an hour I counted on Fifth Avenue more +than a hundred banners bearing the inscription, "To Hell with the +Kaiser." + +That the man chiefly responsible for the horrors of the war should be +the object of universal loathing is only to be expected, but the +significant fact is that of all the sentiments which swept into people's +minds on that occasion, this and this alone should have been immediately +seized upon when the crowd spirit began to appear. I doubt if at the +time there was a very clear sense of the enormity of Wilhelm's guilt in +the minds of those laughing people. The Kaiser was hardly more than a +symbol. The antagonist, whoever he be, was "fallen down to hell," our +own sense of triumph was magnified by the depth of his fall. Just so the +Hebrew Prophet cried "Babylon is fallen," so the early Christians +pictured Satan cast into the bottomless pit, so the Jacobins cried "_A +bas les Aristocrats_," our own Revolutionary crowds cried "Down with +George III," and the Union soldiers sang, "Hang Jeff Davis on a Sour +Apple Tree." I repeat that wherever the crowd-mind appears, it will +always be found to be "against" some one. + +An interesting fact about the hostility of a crowd is its ability on +occasion to survive the loss of its object. It may reveal the phenomenon +which psychologists call "displacement." That is to say, another object +may be substituted for the original one without greatly changing the +quality of the feeling. A mob in the street, driven back from the object +of its attack, will loot a store or two before it disperses. Or, bent on +lynching a certain negro, it may even substitute an innocent man, if +robbed of its intended victim--as, for instance, the lynching of the +mayor of Omaha. Such facts would seem to show that these hostile acts +are really demanded by mechanisms within the psyche. Many symbolic acts +of the person afflicted with compulsion neurosis show this same _trait +of substitution_. If inhibited in the exercise of one mechanism of +escape, the repressed wish will substitute another. Also anyone +associated by the unconscious reasoning with the hated object, or anyone +who tries to defend him or prove him innocent, may suffer from this +crowd's hatred. Freud has analyzed this phenomenon in his study of +taboo. He who touches the tabooed object himself becomes taboo. + +I have said that the hostility of the crowd is a sort of "defense +mechanism." That this is so in certain cases, I think can be easily +demonstrated. The following news item is an example of the manner in +which such hostility may serve as a "defense mechanism" compensating the +self-feeling for certain losses and serving to enhance the feeling of +self-importance: + + CHARGES BAKER HAD 57 BRANDS OF ARMY OBJECTOR. + + ----, OF MINNESOTA, DEFENDING MARINES FATHERS' ASSOCIATION + PROTEST; ASSAILS FREEING OF "SLACKERS." + + WASHINGTON, _July 23_.--A bitter partisan quarrel developed in + the House today when Representative ----, of Minnesota, attacked + Secretary Baker and the President for the government's policy + toward conscientious objectors. The attack was the result of + protests by the Marines Fathers' Association of Minneapolis, + Minnesota, representing between 500 and 600 young marines now in + France, all from the Minneapolis high schools and the University + of Minnesota, and many in the famous 6th Regiment of Marines + that took a big part in stopping the Germans at Chateau Thierry. + + Upon learning of the treatment accorded conscientious objectors + in this country while their sons were dying in France, the + association asked Representative ---- to fix the responsibility + for the government's policy. Representative ---- fixed it today + as that of Secretary Baker and President Wilson, charging that + they extended the definition of those to be exempted from + military service laid down by Congress in an act of May 17, + 1917. + + "One variety of conscientious objector was not enough for Mr. + Baker," declared Representative ----. "He had 57 kinds...." + + Representative ----, of Arizona, defended Secretary Baker, + asserting that of 20,000 men who were certified as conscientious + objectors, 16,000 ultimately went to war. The case of Sergt. + Alvin C. York, the Tennessee hero, who had conscientious + objections at first, but soon changed his mind, was cited in + defense of the War Department's policy. + +Let us pass over the obviously partisan element in this Congressional +debate--a crowd phenomenon in itself, by the way--and consider the +mental state of this Fathers' Association. + +In spite of the fact that the treatment of those who refused military +service in this country was so much more severe than the manner with +which the British government is reported to have dealt with this class +of persons, that many people, including the Secretary of War, whose +loyalty except to partisan minds was above suspicion, sought in the name +of humanity to alleviate some of the conditions in our military prisons, +it was not severe enough to satisfy these "fathers." It is doubtful if +anything short of an _auto da fe_ would have met their approval. Now no +one believes that these simple farmers from the Northwest are such +sadists at heart that they enjoy cruelty for its own sake. I imagine +that the processes at work here are somewhat as follows: + +The telltale phrase here is that these farmers' sons "were dying in +France." Patriotic motives rightly demanded that fathers yield their +sons to the hardship and danger of battle, and while the sacrifice was +made consciously, with willingness and even with pride in having done +their painful duty, it was not accomplished without struggle--the +unconscious resisted it. It could not be reconciled to so great a +demand. In other words, these fathers, and probably many of their sons +also, were unconsciously "conscientious objectors." Unconsciously they +longed to evade this painful duty, but these longings were put aside, +"repressed" as shameful and cowardly--that is, as unacceptable to +conscious self-feeling. It was necessary to defend the ego against +these longings. Compensation was demanded and found in the nation-wide +recognition of the value of this patriotic sacrifice. Expressions of +patriotic sentiment on the part of others, therefore, compensated the +individual and enhanced his self-feeling. + +Successful refusal anywhere to recognize the duty which consciously +motivated this sacrifice strengthened the unconscious desire to evade +it. The unconscious reasoning was something like this: "If those men got +out of this thing, why should not we? Since we had to bear this loss, +they must also. We have suffered for duty's sake. By making them suffer +also, they will be forced to recognize this 'duty' with which we defend +ourselves against our sense of loss and desire to escape it." As a +witness to the values against which the ego of these fathers has to +struggle, the existence of the conscientious objector, in a less degree +of suffering than their own, is as intolerable as their own "shameful +and cowardly" unconscious longings. Hostility to the conscientious +objector is thus a "projection" of their own inner conflict. By becoming +a crowd, the members of this "Fathers' Association" make it mutually +possible to represent their hostility to conscientious objectors as +something highly patriotic. Secretary Baker's alleged leniency to these +hated persons is now not only an affront to these fathers, it is an +affront to the entire nation. + +Another and somewhat different example of the function of hatred in the +service of the self-feeling is the following item, which throws some +light on the motives of the race riots in Washington. This is, of +course, a defense of but one of the crowds involved, but it is +interesting psychologically. + + NEGRO EDITOR BLAMES WHITES FOR RACE RIOTS. + + Dr. W. F. B. DuBois, of 70 Fifth Avenue, editor of _The Crisis_, + a magazine published in connection with the work of the National + Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, yesterday + attributed the race riots in Washington to the irritability of + all people and the unsettling of many ideas caused by the war, + to the influx of a large number of Southerners into Washington, + and to the _presence in that city of many of the representatives + of the educated, well-dressed class of negroes_ which white + racial antagonists dislike. + + Washington policemen are notoriously unfriendly to the colored + people, he added. Time and time again they stand by and witness + a dispute between a white man and a negro, and when it is over + and the negro has been beaten they arrest the negro, and not the + white man who caused the trouble in the first place. + + The colored editor pointed out the similarity between the + present riots in Washington and the Atlanta riots which occurred + about twelve years ago. In both places, he said, white hoodlums + began rioting and killing negroes. When the latter became + aroused and began to retaliate, the authorities stepped in and + the rioting stopped. + + Major J. E. Spingarn, acting treasurer of the National + Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, said the + _soldiers and sailors who have been taking part in the rioting + in Washington resent the new attitude of self-respect which the + negro has assumed because of the part he played in the war_. + + "The soldiers," he said, "instead of fighting the negroes + because the latter think better of themselves for having fought + in the war, should respect them for having proved themselves + such good fighters." (The italics are mine.) + +It is quite possible that in most communities where such race riots +occur certain members of the colored race are responsible to the extent +that they have made themselves conspicuously offensive to their white +neighbors. + +But such individual cases, even where they exist, do not justify attacks +upon hundreds of innocent people. And it must be said that in general +the kind of people whose feelings of personal superiority can find no +other social support than the mere fact that they happen to belong to +the white race--and I think it will be found that the mobs who attack +negroes are uniformly made of people who belong to this +element--naturally find their self-feeling injured "if a nigger puts on +airs." Their fiction is challenged; to accept the challenge would force +upon the consciousness of such people a correct estimate of their own +worth. Such an idea is unacceptable to consciousness. The presumptuous +negroes who serve as such unpleasant reminders "must be put in their +proper place"--that is, so completely under the feet of the white +element in the community that the mere fact of being a white man may +serve as a defense mechanism for just those members of our noble race +who approach more closely to the social position of the colored element +in our midst. + +As the moral standards of the community will not permit even this +element of the white race to play the hoodlum with self-approval, some +disguise or "displacement" for this motive must be found whereby the +acts to which it prompts may appear to the consciousness of their +perpetrators as justifiable. A misdeed is committed by a black man; +instantly this element of the white race becomes a crowd. The deed +provides the whites with just the pretext they want. They may now +justify themselves and one another in an assault on the whole colored +community. Here I believe we have the explanation of much that is called +"race prejudice." The hatred between the races, like all crowd-hatred, +is a "defense mechanism" designed to protect the ego in its conflict +with ideas unacceptable to consciousness. + +The intensest hatred of the crowd is that directed toward the heretic, +the nonconformist, the "traitor." I have sometimes thought that to the +crowd-mind there is only one sin, heresy. Every sort of crowd, +political, religious, moral, has an ax ready for the person who in +renouncing its ideas and leaving it threatens to break it up. The bitter +partisan hatred of crowds is nothing compared to their hatred for the +renegade. To the crowd of true believers, the heretic or schismatic is +"worse than the infidel." The moral crowd will "bear with" the worst +_roué_ if only he strives to keep up appearances, has a guilty +conscience, asks forgiveness, and professes firm belief in the +conventions against which he offends; one may be forgiven his inability +to "live up to his principles" if only his professed principles are the +same as the crowd's. But let a Nietzsche, though his life be that of an +ascetic, openly challenge and repudiate the values of popular morality, +and his name is anathema. + +As an example of the hatred of the political crowd for one who, having +once put his hand to the plow and turned back, henceforth is no longer +fit for the "kingdom," I quote the following from an ultraradical paper. +It is hard to believe that this passage was written by a man who, in his +right mind, is really intelligent and kind-hearted, but such is the +case: + + AN EXPLANATION.--Owing to a failure of editorial supervision we + published an advertisement of John Spargo's book on Bolshevism. + We have returned the money we received for it, and canceled the + contract for its future appearances. We do not pretend to + protect our readers against patent-medicine swindlers, + real-estate sharpers, canned goods prevaricators, ptomaine + poisoners, fairy bond-sellers, picaroon nickel-pickers, subway + ticket speculators, postage-stamp forgers, pie and pancake + counterfeiters, plagiary burglars, lecherous pornographers, and + pictorial back-porch climbers, plundering buccaneer blackmailers + and defaulting matrimonial agents, journalistic poachers, + foragers, pickpockets, thimbleriggers, lick-sauce publicity men, + notoriety hunters, typographical body-snatchers, blackletter + assassins, and promulgators of licentious meters in free verse. + Against these natural phenomena we offer no guarantee to our + readers, but we never intended to advertise John Spargo's book + on Bolshevism. + +Here again, it seems, the reason for hatred is "self-defense." One +important difference between the crowd-mind and the psychosis is the +fact that while the psychic mechanisms of the latter serve to disguise +the inadequately repressed wish, those of the crowd-mind permit the +escape of the repressed impulse by relaxing the force which demands the +repression--namely, the immediate social environment. This relaxation is +accomplished by a general fixation of attention which changes for those +who share it the moral significance of the social demand. The repressed +wish then appears to consciousness in a form which meets with the mutual +approval of the individuals so affected. Or, as I have said, the social +environment, instead of acting as a check upon the realization of the +wish-fancy, slips along in the same direction with it. Hence the will to +believe the same, so characteristic of every crowd. As soon as this +mutuality is broken the habitual criteria of the real again become +operative. Every individual who "comes to" weakens the hold of the +crowd-ideas upon all the others to just the extent that his word must be +taken into account. The crowd resorts to all sorts of devices to bind +its members together permanently in a common faith. It resists +disintegration as the worst conceivable evil. Disintegration means that +crowd-men must lose their pet fiction--which is to say, their "faith." +The whole system elaborated by the unconscious fails to function; its +value for compensation, defense, or justification vanishes as in waking +out of a dream. + +Strong spirits can stand this disillusionment. They have the power to +create new, more workable ideals. They become capable of self-analysis. +They learn to be legislators of value and to revise their beliefs for +themselves. Their faiths become not refuges, but instruments for meeting +and mastering the facts of experience and giving them meaning. The +strong are capable of making their lives spiritual adventures in a real +world. The "truths" of such persons are not compulsive ideas, they are +working hypotheses which they are ready, as occasion may demand, to +verify at great personal risk, or to discard when proved false. Such +persons sustain themselves in their sense of personal worth less by +defense mechanisms than by the effort of will which they can make. + +As William James said: + + If the searching of our heart and reins be the purpose of this + human drama, then what is sought seems to be what effort we can + make. He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much + is a hero. The huge world that girdles us about puts all sorts + of questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of ways. Some of + the tests we meet by actions that are easy, and some of the + questions we answer in articulately formulated words. But the + deepest question that is ever asked admits of no reply but the + dumb turning of the will and tightening of our heartstrings as + we say, "Yes, I will even have it so!" When a dreadful object is + presented, or when life as a whole turns up its dark abysses to + our view, then the worthless ones among us lose their hold on + the situation altogether, and either escape from its + difficulties by averting their attention, or, if they cannot do + that, collapse into yielding masses of plaintiveness and fear. + The effort required for facing and consenting to such objects is + beyond their power to make. But the heroic mind does + differently. To it, too, the objects are sinister and dreadful, + unwelcome, incompatible with wished-for things. But it can face + them if necessary without losing its hold upon the rest of life. + The world thus finds in the heroic man its worthy match and + mate.... He can _stand_ this Universe. + +Indeed the path for all who would make of living a reality rather than +an imitation leads along what James used to call "the perilous edge." +Every personal history that is a history, and not a mere fiction, +contains in it something unique, a fraction for which there is no common +denominator. It requires just that effort of attention to concrete +reality and the fact of self which in the crowd we always seek to escape +by diverting attention to congenial abstractions and ready-made +universals. We "find ourselves" only as we "get over" one after another +of our crowd-compulsions, until finally we are strong enough, as Ibsen +would say, "to stand alone." + +Timid spirits seldom voluntarily succeed in getting closer to reality +than the "philosophy of '_as if_'" which characterizes the thinking both +of the crowd and the psychoneurosis. What indeed is the crowd but a +fiction of upholding ourselves by all leaning on one another, an "escape +from difficulties by averting attention," a spiritual safety-first or +"fool-proof" mechanism by which we bear up one another's collapsing +ego-consciousness lest it dash its foot against a stone? + +The crowd-man can, when his fiction is challenged, save himself from +spiritual bankruptcy, preserve his defenses, keep his crowd from going +to pieces, only by a demur. Anyone who challenges the crowd's fictions +must be ruled out of court. He must not be permitted to speak. As a +witness to contrary values his testimony must be discounted. The worth +of his evidence must be discredited by belittling the disturbing +witness. "He is a bad man; the crowd must not listen to him." His +motives must be evil; he "is bought up"; he is an immoral character; he +tells lies; he is insincere or he "has not the courage to take a stand" +or "there is nothing new in what he says." Ibsen's "Enemy of the +People," illustrates this point very well. The crowd votes that Doctor +Stockman may not speak about the baths, the real point at issue. Indeed, +the mayor takes the floor and officially announces that the doctor's +statement that the water is bad is "unreliable and exaggerated." Then +the president of the Householder's Association makes an address accusing +the doctor of secretly "_aiming at revolution_." When finally Doctor +Stockman speaks and tells his fellow citizens the real meaning of their +conduct, and utters a few plain truths about "the compact majority," the +crowd saves its face, not by proving the doctor false, but by howling +him down, voting him an "enemy of the people," and throwing stones +through his windows. + +A crowd is like an unsound banking institution. People are induced to +carry their deposits of faith in it, and so long as there is no unusual +withdrawing of accounts the insolvent condition may be covered up. Many +uneasy depositors would like to get their money out if they could do so +secretly, or without incurring the displeasure of the others. Meanwhile +all insist that the bank is perfectly safe and each does all he can to +compel the others to stay in. The thing they all most fear is that some +one will "start a run on the bank," force it to liquidate, and everyone +will lose. So the crowd functions in its way just so long as its members +may be cajoled into an appearance of continued confidence in its ideals +and values. The spiritual capital of each depends on the confidence of +the others. As a consequence they all spend most of their time exhorting +one another to be good crowd-men, fearing and hating no one so much as +the person who dares raise the question whether the crowd could really +meet its obligations. + +The classic illustration of the manner in which the crowd is led to +discredit the witness to values contrary to its own, is the oration of +Mark Antony in Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar." It is by this means alone +that Antony is able to turn the minds of the Roman citizens into the +crowd state. It will be remembered that the address of Brutus, just +before this, while not at all a bit of crowd-oratory, left a favorable +impression. The citizens are convinced that "This Cæsar was a tyrant." +When Antony goes up to speak, he thanks them "for Brutus' sake." They +say, "'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here." He can never make +them his crowd unless he can destroy Brutus' influence. This is +precisely what he proceeds gradually to do. + +At first with great courtesy--"The noble Brutus hath told you Cæsar was +ambitious; if it were so it was a grievous fault ... for Brutus is an +honorable man, so are they all, all honorable men." This sentence is +repeated four times in the first section; Cæsar was a good faithful +friend to Antony, "But ... and Brutus is an honorable man." Again Cæsar +refused the crown, but "Brutus is an honorable man." Cæsar wept when the +poor cried, "sure, Brutus is an honorable man, I speak not to disprove +what he says" but "men have lost their reason" and "my heart is in the +coffin there with Cæsar." The citizens are sorry for the weeping Antony; +they listen more intently now. Again--"If I were disposed to stir your +hearts and minds to mutiny and rage"--but that would be to wrong Brutus +and Cassius, "Who you all know are honorable men"--this time said with +more marked irony. Rather than wrong such honorable men, Antony prefers +to "wrong the dead, to wrong myself--and you." That sentence sets Brutus +squarely in opposition to the speaker and his audience. Cæsar's will is +mentioned--if only the commons knew what was in it, but Antony will not +read it, "you are not wood, you are not stones, but men." The speaker +now resists their demand to hear the will, he ought not have mentioned +it. He fears he has, after all, wronged "the honorable men whose daggers +have stabbed Cæsar." The citizens have caught the note of irony now; the +honorable men are "traitors," "villains," "murderers." + +From this point on the speaker's task is easy; they have become a crowd. +They think only of revenge, of killing everyone of the conspirators, and +burning the house of Brutus. Antony has even to remind them of the +existence of the will. The mischief is set afloat the moment Brutus is +successfully discredited. + +The development of the thought in this oration is typical. Analysis of +almost any propagandist speech will reveal some, if not all, the steps +by which Brutus is made an object of hatred. _The crowd hates in order +that it may believe in itself._ + + + + +VI + +THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWD-MIND + + +Wherever conscious thinking is determined by unconscious mechanisms, and +all thinking is more or less so, it is dogmatic in character. Beliefs +which serve an unconscious purpose do not require the support of +evidence. They persist because they are demanded. This is a common +symptom of various forms of psychoneurosis. Ideas "haunt the mind" of +the patient; he cannot rid himself of them. He may know they are +foolish, but he is compelled to think them. In severe cases, he may hear +voices or experience other hallucinations which are symbolic of the +obsessive ideas. Or his psychic life may be so absorbed by his one fixed +idea that it degenerates into the ceaseless repetition of a gesture or a +phrase expressive of this idea. + +In paranoia the fixed ideas are organized into a system. Brill says: + + I know a number of paranoiacs who went through a stormy period + lasting for years, but who now live contentedly as if in another + world. Such transformations of the world are common in paranoia. + They do not care for anything, as nothing is real to them. They + have withdrawn their sum of libido from the persons of their + environment and the outer world. The end of the world is the + projection of this internal catastrophe. Their subjective world + came to an end since they withdrew their love from it. By a + secondary rationalization, the patients then explain whatever + obtrudes itself upon them as something intangible and fit it in + with their own system. Thus one of my patients who considers + himself a sort of Messiah denies the reality of his own parents + by saying that they are only shadows made by his enemy, the + devil, whom he has not yet wholly subdued. Another paranoiac in + the Central Islip State Hospital, who represented himself as a + second Christ, spends most of his time sewing out on cloth crude + scenes containing many buildings, interspersed with pictures of + the doctors. He explained all this very minutely as the _new + world system_.... Thus the paranoiac builds up again with his + delusions a new world in which he can live.... (Italics mine.) + + However, a withdrawal of libido is not an exclusive occurrence + in paranoia, nor is its occurrence anywhere necessarily followed + by disastrous consequences. Indeed, in normal life there is a + constant withdrawal of libido from persons and objects without + resulting in paranoia or other neuroses. It merely causes a + special psychic mood. The withdrawal of the libido as such + cannot therefore be considered as pathogenic of paranoia. It + requires a special character to distinguish the paranoiac + withdrawal of libido from other kinds of the same process. This + is readily found when we follow the further utilization of the + libido thus withdrawn. Normally, we immediately seek a + substitute for the suspended attachment, and until one is found + the libido floats freely in the psyche and causes tensions which + influence our moods. In hysteria the freed sum of libido + becomes transformed into bodily innervations of fear. Clinical + indications teach us that in paranoia a special use is made of + the libido which is withdrawn from its object ... the freed + libido in paranoia is thrown back on the ego and serves to + magnify it. + +Note the fact that there is a necessary relation between the fixed ideal +system of the paranoiac and his withdrawal of interest in the outside +world. The system gains the function of reality for him in the same +measure that, loving not the world nor the things that are in the world, +he has rendered our common human world unreal. His love thrown back upon +himself causes him to create another world, a world of "pure reason," so +to speak, which is more congenial to him than the world of empirical +fact. In this system he takes refuge and finds peace at last. Now we see +the function, at least so far as paranoia is concerned, of the ideal +system. As Brill says, it is a curative process of a mind which has +suffered "regression" or turning back of its interest from the affairs +of ordinary men and women, to the attachments of an earlier stage in its +history. To use a philosophical term, the paranoiac is the Simon-pure +"solipsist." And as _a priori_ thinking tends, as Schiller has shown, +ever to solipsism, we see here the grain of truth in G. K. Chesterton's +witty comparison of rationalism and lunacy. + +"Regression," or withdrawal of the libido, is present to some degree I +believe in all forms of the neurosis. But we are informed that a +withdrawal of the libido may, and frequently does, occur also in normal +people. Knowledge of the neurosis here, as elsewhere, serves to throw +light on certain thought processes of people who are considered normal. +Brill says that "normally we seek a substitute for the suspended +attachment." New interests and new affections in time take the places of +the objects from which the feelings have been torn. In analytical +psychology the process by which this is achieved is called a +"transference." + +Now the crowd is in a sense a "transference phenomenon." In the +temporary crowd or mob this transference is too transitory to be very +evident, though even here I believe there will generally be found a +certain _esprit de corps_. In permanent crowds there is often a marked +transference to the other members of the group. This is evident in the +joy of the new convert or the newly initiated, also in such terms of +affection as "comrade" and "brother." I doubt, however, if this +affection, so far as it is genuine among individuals of a certain crowd, +is very different from the good will and affection which may spring up +anywhere among individuals who are more or less closely associated, or +that it ever really extends beyond the small circle of personal friends +that everyone normally gains through his daily relations with others. + +But to the crowd-mind this transference is supposed to extend to all the +members of the group; they are comrades and brothers not because we like +them and know them intimately, but because they are fellow members. In +other words, this transference, so far as it is a crowd phenomenon as +such, is not to other individuals, but to the idea of the crowd itself. +It is not enough for the good citizen to love his neighbors in so far as +he finds them lovable; he must love his country. To the churchman the +Church herself is an object of faith and adoration. One does not become +a humanitarian by being a good fellow; he must love "humanity"--which is +to say, the bare abstract idea of everybody. I remember once asking a +missionary who was on his way to China what it was that impelled him to +go so far in order to minister to suffering humanity. He answered, "It +is love." I asked again, "Do you really mean to say that you care so +much as that for Chinese, not one of whom you have ever seen?" He +answered, "Well, I--you see, I love them through Jesus Christ." So in a +sense it is with the crowd-man always; he _loves through the crowd_. + +The crowd idealized as something sacred, as end in itself, as something +which it is an honor to belong to, is to some extent a disguised object +of our self-love. But the idea of the crowd disguises more than +self-love. Like most of the symbols through which the unconscious +functions, it can serve more than one purpose at a time. The idea of the +crowd also serves to disguise the parental image, and our own imaginary +identification or reunion with it. The nation is to the crowd-man the +"Fatherland," the "mother country," "Uncle Sam"--a figure which serves +to do more than personalize for cartoonists the initials U. S. Uncle Sam +is also the father-image thinly disguised. The Church is "the Mother," +again the "Bride." Such religious symbols as "the Heavenly Father" and +the "Holy Mother" also have the value of standing for the parent image. +For a detailed discussion of these symbols, the reader is referred to +Jung's _Psychology of the Unconscious_. + +In another connection I have referred to the fact that the crowd stands +to the member _in loco parentis_. Here I wish to point out the fact that +such a return to the parent image is commonly found in the +psychoneurosis and is what is meant by "regression." I have also dwelt +at some length on the fact that it is by securing a modification in the +immediate social environment, ideally or actually, that the crowd +permits the escape of the repressed wish. Such a modification in the +social at once sets the members of the crowd off as a "peculiar people." +Interest tends to withdraw from the social as a whole and center in the +group who have become a crowd. The Church is "in the world but not of +it." The nation is an end in itself, so is every crowd. Transference to +the idea of the crowd differs then from the normal substitutes which we +find for the object from which affection is withdrawn. It is itself a +kind of regression. In the psychoneurosis--in paranoia most clearly--the +patient's attempt to rationalize this shifting of interest gives rise to +the closed systems and ideal reconstructions of the world mentioned in +the passage quoted from Brill. + +Does the crowd's thinking commonly show a like tendency to construct an +imaginary world of thought-forms and then take refuge in its ideal +system? As we saw at the beginning of our discussion, it does. The +focusing of general attention upon the abstract and universal is a +necessary step in the development of the crowd-mind. + +The crowd does not think in order to solve problems. To the crowd-mind, +as such, there are no problems. It has closed its case beforehand. This +accounts for what Le Bon termed the "credulity" of the crowd. But the +crowd believes only what it wants to believe and nothing else. Anyone +who has been in the position of a public teacher knows how almost +universal is the habit of thinking in the manner of the crowd and how +difficult it is to get people to think for themselves. One frequently +hears it said that the people do not think, that they do not want to +know the truth. + +Ibsen makes his Doctor Stockman say: + + What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? + They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are + beginning to break up.... These "majority truths" are like last + year's cured meat--like rancid tainted ham; and they are the + origin of the moral scurvy that is rampant in our + communities.... The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom + among us is the compact majority, yes, the damned compact + liberal majority ... the majority has might on its side + unfortunately, but _right_ it has never. + +It is not really because so many are ignorant, but because so few are +able to resist the appeal which the peculiar logic of crowd-thinking +makes to the unconscious, that the cheap, the tawdry, the half-true +almost exclusively gain popular acceptance. The average man is a +dogmatist. He thinks what he thinks others think he is thinking. He is +so used to propaganda that he can hardly think of any matter in other +terms. It is almost impossible to keep the consideration of any subject +of general interest above the dilemmas of partisan crowds. People will +wherever possible change the discussion of a mooted question into an +antiphonal chorus of howling mobs, each chanting its ritual as ultimate +truth, and hurling its shibboleths in the faces of the others. Pursuit +of truth with most people consists in repeating their creed. Nearly +every movement is immediately made into a cult. Theology supplants +religion in the churches. In popular ethics a dead formalism puts an end +to moral advance. Straight thinking on political subjects is +subordinated to partisan ends. Catch-phrases and magic formulas become +substituted for scientific information. Even the Socialists, who feel +that they are the intellectually elect--and I cite them here as an +example in no unfair spirit, but just because so many of them are really +well-informed and "advanced" in their thinking--have been unable to save +themselves from a doctrinaire economic orthodoxy of spirit which is +often more dogmatic and intolerant than that of the "religious folks" to +whose alleged "narrow-mindedness" every Socialist, even while repeating +his daily chapter from the Marxian Koran, feels himself superior. + +The crowd-mind is everywhere idealistic, and absolutist. Its truths are +"given," made-in-advance. Though unconsciously its systems of logic are +created to enhance the self-feeling, they appear to consciousness as +highly impersonal and abstract. As in the intellectualist philosophies, +forms of thought are regarded as themselves objects of thought. Systems +of general ideas are imposed upon the minds of men apparently from +without. Universal acceptance is demanded. Thought becomes stereotyped. +What ought to be is confused with what is, the ideal becomes more real +than fact. + +In the essays on "Pragmatism" William James showed that the rationalist +system, even that of the great philosopher, is in large measure +determined by the thinker's peculiar "temperament." Elsewhere he speaks +of the "Sentiment of Rationality." For a discussion of the various types +of philosophical rationalism, the reader is referred to the criticisms +by William James, F. C. S. Schiller, Dewey, and other Pragmatists. It is +sufficient for our purpose to note the fact that the rationalist type of +mind everywhere shows a tendency to assert the unreality of the world of +everyday experience, and to seek comfort and security in the +contemplation of a logically ordered system or world of "pure reason." +Ideals, not concrete things, are the true realities. The world with +which we are always wrestling is but a distorted manifestation, a +jumbled, stereotyped copy of what James ironically referred to as "the +de luxe edition which exists in the Absolute." The parable of the cave +which Plato gives in the _Republic_ represents ordinary knowledge as a +delusion, and the empirically known world as but dancing shadows on the +wall of our subterranean prison. + +R. W. Livingstone, who sees in Platonism, from the very beginning, a +certain world-weariness and turning away of the Greek spirit from the +healthy realism which had formerly characterized it, says: + + For if Greece showed men how to trust their own nature and lead + a simply human life, how to look straight in the face of the + world and read the beauty that met them on the surface, certain + Greek writers preached a different lesson from this. In + opposition to directness they taught us to look past the + "unimaginary and actual" qualities of things to secondary + meanings and inner symbolism. In opposition to liberty and + humanism they taught us to mistrust our nature, to see in it + weakness, helplessness, and incurable taint, to pass beyond + humanity to communion with God, to live less for this world than + for one to come.... Perhaps to some people it may seem + surprising that this writer is Plato. + +According to this view reality may be found only by means of "pure +knowledge," and, to give a familiar quotation from the Phædo: + + If we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of + the body; the soul in herself must behold things in themselves; + and then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire and of which + we say that we are lovers; not while we live, but after death; + for if, while in company with the body, the soul cannot have + pure knowledge, one of two things follows--either knowledge is + not to be obtained at all, or if at all after death. + +Intellectualism may not always be so clearly other-worldly as Plato +shows himself to be in this passage. But it commonly argues that behind +the visible world of "illusory sense experience" lies the true ground +and cause--an unseen order in which the contradictions of experience are +either unknown or harmonized, an external and unchangeable "Substance," +a self-contained Absolute to which our ephemeral personalities with +their imperfections and problems are unknown. A "thing in itself," or +principle of Being which transcends our experience. + +This type of thinking, whether it be known as Idealism, Rationalism, +Intellectualism, or Absolutism, finds little sympathy from those who +approach the study of philosophy from the standpoint of psychology. The +following passages taken from _Studies in Humanism_ by Schiller, show +that even without the technique of the analytical method, it was not +hard to detect some of the motives which prompted the construction of +systems of this sort. The partisanism of one of these motives is rather +suggestive for our study of the mind of the crowd. Says our author: + + Logical defects rarely kill beliefs to which men, for + psychological reasons, remain attached.... This may suggest to + us that we may have perhaps unwittingly misunderstood + Absolutism, and done it a grave injustice.... What if its real + appeal was not logical but psychological?... + + The history of English Absolutism distinctly bears out these + anticipations. It was originally a deliberate importation from + Germany, with a purpose. And this purpose was a religious + one--that of counteracting the antireligious developments of + Science. The indigenous philosophy, the old British empiricism, + was useless for this purpose. For though a form of + intellectualism, its sensationalism was in no wise hostile to + Science. On the contrary, it showed every desire to ally itself + with, and to promote, the great scientific movement of the + nineteenth century, which penetrated into and almost overwhelmed + Oxford between 1859 and 1870. + + But this movement excited natural and not unwarranted alarm in + that great center of theology. For Science, flushed with its + hard-won liberty, ignorant of philosophy, and as yet unconscious + of its proper limitations, was decidedly aggressive and + overconfident. It seemed naturalistic, nay, materialistic, by + the law of its being. The logic of Mill, the philosophy of + Evolution, the faith in democracy, in freedom, in progress (on + material lines), threatened to carry all before them. + + What was to be done? Nothing directly; for on its own ground + Science seemed invulnerable, and had the knack of crushing the + subtlest dialectics by the knockdown force of sheer scientific + fact. But might it not be possible to change the venue, to + shift the battleground to a region _ubi instabilis terra unda_ + (where the land afforded no firm footing), where the frozen sea + could not be navigated, where the very air was thick with mists + so that phantoms might well pass for realities--the realm, in + short, of metaphysics?... + + So it was rarely necessary to do more than recite the august + table of _a priori_ categories in order to make the most + audacious scientist feel that he had got out of his depth; while + at the merest mention of the Hegelian dialectic all the + "advanced thinkers" of the time would flee affrighted. + +Schiller's sense of humor doubtless leads him to exaggerate somewhat the +deliberateness of this importation of German metaphysics. That these +borrowed transcendental and dialectical systems served their purpose in +the warfare of traditional theologies against Science is but half the +truth. The other half is that these logical formulas provided certain +intelligent believers with a defense, or safe refuge, in their own inner +conflicts. + +That this is the case, Schiller evidently has little doubt. After +discussing Absolutism itself as a sort of religion, and showing that its +"catch-words" taken at their face value are not only emotionally barren, +but also logically meaningless because "inapplicable to our actual +experience," he then proceeds to an examination of the unconscious +motives which determine this sort of thinking. His description of these +motives, so far as it goes, is an excellent little bit of analytical +psychology. He says: + + How then can Absolutism possibly be a religion? It must appeal + to psychological motives of a different sort, rare enough to + account for its total divergence from the ordinary religious + feelings and compelling enough to account for the fanaticism + with which it is held and the persistence with which the same + old round of negations has been reiterated through the ages. Of + such psychological motives we shall indicate the more important + and reputable. + + (1) It is decidedly flattering to one's spiritual pride to feel + oneself a "part" or "manifestation" or "vehicle" or + "reproduction" of the Absolute Mind, and to some this feeling + affords so much strength and comfort and such exquisite delight + that they refrain from inquiring what these phrases mean.... It + is, moreover, the strength of this feeling which explains the + blindness of Absolutists toward the logical defects of their own + theory.... + + (2) There is a strange delight in wide generalization merely as + such, which, when pursued without reference to the ends which it + subserves, and without regard to its actual functioning, often + results in a sort of logical vertigo. This probably has much to + do with the peculiar "craving for unity" which is held to be the + distinctive affliction of philosophers. At any rate, the thought + of an all-embracing One or Whole seems to be regarded as + valuable and elevating quite apart from any definite function it + performs in knowing, or light it throws on any actual problem. + + (3) The thought of an Absolute Unity is cherished as a guarantee + of cosmic stability. In face of the restless vicissitudes of + phenomena it seems to secure us against falling out of the + Universe. It assures us _a_ _priori_--and that is its supreme + value--that the cosmic order cannot fall to pieces and leave us + dazed and confounded among the debris.... We want to have an + absolute assurance _a priori_ concerning the future, and the + thought of the absolute seems designed to give it. It is + probably this last notion that, consciously or unconsciously, + weighs most in the psychology of the Absolutists' creed. + +In this connection the reader will recall the passage quoted from +Adler's _The Neurotic Constitution_, in which it was shown that the +fictitious "guiding-lines" or rational systems of both the neurotic and +normal are motivated by this craving for security. But it makes all the +difference in the world whether the system of ideas is used, as in +science and common sense, to solve real problems in an objective world, +or is created to be an artificial and imaginary defense of the ego +against a subjective feeling of insecurity; whether, in a word, the +craving for security moves one to do something calculated to render the +forces with which he must deal concretely more congenial and hospitable +to his will, or makes him content to withdraw and file a demur to the +challenge of the environment in the form of theoretical denial of the +reality of the situation. + +There is no denying the fact that Absolute Idealism, if not taken too +seriously, may have the function for some people of steadying their +nerves in the battle of life. And though, as I believe, logically +untenable, it not infrequently serves as a rationalization of +faith-values which work out beneficially, and, quite apart from their +metaphysical trappings, may be even indispensable. Yet when carried to +its logical conclusions such thinking inevitably distorts the meaning of +personal living, robs our world and our acts of their feeling of +reality, serves as an instrument for "regression" or withdrawal of +interest from the real tasks and objects of living men and women, and in +fact functions for much the same purpose, if not precisely in the same +way, as do the ideal systems of the psychopath. + +In justice to idealism it should be added that this is by no means the +only species of Rationalism which may lead to such psychic results. +There are various paths by which the craving for artificial security may +lead to such attempts to reduce the whole of possible experience to +logical unity that the realities of time and change and of individual +experience are denied. How many deterministic theories, with all their +scientific jargon, are really motivated by an inability to accept a +world with an element of chance in it. There is a sense in which all +science by subsuming like individuals in a common class, and thus +ignoring their individuality, in so far as they are alike in certain +respects, gains added power over all of them. There is a sense, too, in +which science, by discovering that whenever a given combination of +elements occurs, a definitely foreseen result will follow, is justified +in ignoring time and treating certain futures as if they were already +tucked up the sleeves of the present. It should be remembered that this +sort of determinism is purely methodological, and is, like all thinking, +done for a purpose--that of effecting desirable ends in a world made up +of concrete situations. + +When this purpose becomes supplanted by a passion to discount all future +change in general--when one imagines that he has a formula which enables +him to write the equation of the curve of the universe, science has +degenerated into scientificism, or head-in-the-sand philosophy. The +magic formula has precisely the same psychic value as the "absolute." I +know a number of economic determinists, for instance, who just cannot +get out of their heads the notion that social evolution is a process +absolutely underwritten, guaranteed, and predictable, without the least +possible doubt. In such a philosophy of history as this the individual +is of course a mere "product of his environment," and his role as a +creator of value is nil. On this "materialistic" theory, the individual +is as truly a mere manifestation of impersonal evolutionary forces as he +is, according to orthodox Platonism, a mere manifestation of the +abstract idea of his species. Notwithstanding the professed +impersonalism of this view, its value for consolation in minimizing the +causes of the spiritual difference in men--that is, its function for +enhancing the self-feeling of some people, is obvious. That such an idea +should become a crowd-idea is not to be wondered at. And this leads me +to my point. _It is no mere accident that the crowd takes to +rationalistic philosophies like a duck to water._ + +The crowd-man, however unsophisticated he may be, is a Platonist at +heart. He may never have heard the word epistemology, but his theory of +knowledge is essentially the same as Plato's. Religious crowds are, to +one familiar with the Dialogues, astonishingly Platonic. There is the +same habit of giving ontological rather than functional value to general +ideas, the same other-worldliness, the same moral dilemmas, the same +contempt for the material, for the human body, for selfhood; the same +assertion of finality, and the conformist spirit. + +Reformist crowds differ only superficially from religious crowds. +Patriotic crowds make use of a different terminology, but their mental +habits are the same. It has become a cult among crowds with tendencies +toward social revolution to paint their faces with the colors of a +borrowed nineteenth-century materialism. But all this is mere swagger +and "frightfulness," an attempt to make themselves look terrible and +frighten the bourgeois. I am sure that no one who has seen all this +radical rigmarole, as I have had occasion to see it, can be deceived by +it. These dreadful materialist doctrines of the radical crowd are wooden +guns, no thicker than the soap-box. As a matter of fact, the radical +crowds are extremely idealistic. With all their talk of proletarian +opposition to intellectualism, Socialists never become a crowd without +becoming as intellectualist as Fichte or Hegel. There is a sense in +which Marx himself never succeeded in escaping Hegel's dilemmas, he only +followed the fashion in those days of turning them upside down. + +With radical crowds as with conservative, there is the same substitution +of a closed system of ideas for the shifting phenomena of our empirical +world; the same worship of abstract forms of thought, the same +uncompromising spirit and insistence upon general uniformity of +opinions; the same orthodoxy. All orthodoxy is nothing other than the +will of the crowd to keep itself together. With all kinds of crowds, +also, there is the same diverting of attention from the personal and the +concrete to the impersonal and the general; the same flight from reality +to the transcendental for escape, for consolation, for defense, for +vindication; the same fiction that existence is at bottom a sort of +logical proposition, a magic formula or principle of Being to be +correctly copied and learned by rote; the same attempt to create the +world or find reality by thinking rather than by acting. + +The intellectualist bias of the average man is doubtless due in great +part to the fact that theology, and therefore the religious education of +the young, both Christian and Jewish, has throughout the history of +these religions been saturated with Platonism. But then, the universal +sway of this philosopher may be explained by the fact that there is +something in his abstractionism which is congenial to the creed-making +propensities of the crowd-mind. The great _a priori_ thinkers, Plato, +St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Green, +etc., have often been called solitary men, but it is significant that +their doctrines survive in popularized form in the creeds and +shibboleths of permanent crowds of all descriptions. While humanists, +nominalists, empiricists, realists, pragmatists, men like Protagoras, +Epicurus, Abelard, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, +James, have always had a hard time of it. They are considered +destructive, for the reason that the tendency of their teaching is to +disintegrate the crowd-mind and call one back to himself. Their names +are seldom mentioned in popular assemblies except to discredit them. +Yet it is on the whole these latter thinkers who orient us in our real +world, make us courageously face the facts with which we have to deal, +stimulate our wills, force us to use our ideas for what they +are--instruments for better living,--inspire us to finer and more +correct valuations of things, and point out the way to freedom for those +who dare walk in it. + +All this, however, is the very thing that the crowd-mind is running +headlong away from. As a crowd we do not wish to think empirically. Why +should we seek piecemeal goods by tedious and dangerous effort, when we +have only to do a little trick of attention, and behold The Good, +abstract, perfect, universal, waiting just around the corner in the +realm of pure reason, ready to swallow up and demolish all evil? Are we +not even now in possession of Love, Justice, Beauty, and Truth by the +sheer magic of thinking of them in the abstract, calling them +"principles" and writing the words with the initial letters in capitals? +The very mental processes by which a group of people becomes a crowd +change such abstract nouns from mere class names into copies of +supermundane realities. + +In wholesome thinking principles are of course necessary. They are what +I might call "leading ideas." Their function is to lead to more +satisfactory thinking--that is, to other ideas which are desired. Or +they are useful in leading us to actions the results of which are +intended and wished for. They may also be principles of valuation +guiding us in the choice of ends. If there were no substantial agreement +among us concerning certain principles we could not relate our conduct +to one another at all; social life would be impossible. But necessary as +such leading ideas are, they are means rather than ends. Circumstances +may demand that we alter them or make exceptions to their application. + +To the crowd-mind a principle appears as an end in itself. It must be +vindicated at all costs. To offend against it in one point is to be +guilty of breaking the whole law. Crowds are always uncompromising about +their principles. They must apply to all alike. Crowds are no respecters +of persons. + +As crowd-men we never appear without some set of principles or some +cause over our heads. Crowds crawl under their principles like worms +under stones. They cover up the wrigglings of the unconscious, and +protect it from attack. Every crowd uses its principles as universal +demands. In this way it gets unction upon other crowds, puts them in the +wrong, makes them give assent to the crowd's real purpose by challenging +them to deny the righteousness of the professed justifications of that +purpose. It is said that the Sioux Indians, some years ago, used to put +their women and children in front of their firing line. The braves could +then crouch behind these innocent ones and shoot at white men, knowing +that it would be a violation of the principles of humanity for the white +soldiers to shoot back and risk killing women and children. Crowds +frequently make just such use of their principles. About each crowd, +like the circle of fire which the gods placed about the sleeping +Brunhilde, there is a flaming hedge of logical abstractions, sanctions, +taboos, which none but the intellectually courageous few dare cross. In +this way the slumbering critical faculties of the crowd-mind are +protected against the intrusion of realities from outside the cult. The +intellectual curiosity of the members of the group is kept within proper +bounds. Hostile persons or groups dare not resist us, for in so doing +they make themselves enemies of Truth, of Morality, of Liberty, etc. +Both political parties, by a common impulse, "drape themselves in the +Flag." It is an interesting fact that the most antagonistic crowds +profess much the same set of principles. The "secondary rationalization" +of crowds, both Northern and Southern, at the time of the Civil War, +made use of our traditional principles of American Liberty, and +Christian Morality. We have seen both pacifist and militarist crowds +setting forth their manifestoes in terms of New Testament teaching. Each +religious sect exists only to teach "the one system of doctrine +logically deduced from Scripture." + +As an illustration of this sort of reasoning, I give here a few passages +from a propagandist publication in which the crowd-will to dominate +takes the typical American method of striving to force its cult ideas +upon the community as a whole by means of restrictive moralist +legislation--in this case attempt is made to prohibit the exhibition of +motion pictures on Sunday. That the demand for such legislation is for +the most part a pure class-crowd phenomenon, designed to enhance the +self-feeling and economic interests of the "reformers," by keeping the +poor from having a good time, is I think, rather obvious. The reasoning +here is interesting, as the real motive is so thinly disguised by +pietistic platitudes that the two follow each other in alternate +succession: + + (1) Sunday Movies are not needed. The people have six days and + six nights each week on which to attend the movies. Is not that + plenty of time for all? + + (2) Sunday Movie Theaters commercialize the Christian Sabbath. + While "the Sabbath was made for man," _yet it is God's day_. We + have no right to sell it for business purposes. It is a day for + rest and worship, not a day for greed and gain. Sunday would, + of course, be the best day in the week financially for the + movies. It would also be the best day in the week for the open + saloons and horse-racing, but that is no reason why these should + be allowed on Sunday. _The Sabbath must not be commercialized._ + + (3) _Sunday Movie Theaters destroy the rest and quiet of many + people, especially those who live in the residential district_ + of cities and in the neighborhood where such motion-picture + theaters are located. Great crowds pour along the streets near + such theaters, often breaking the Sunday quiet of that part of + the city by loud and boisterous talk. + + Thousands of people every year are moving away from the downtown + noisy districts of the cities out into the quiet residential + districts in order to have quiet Sundays. But when a + motion-picture theater comes and locates next to their homes, or + in their block, as has been done in many cases, and great noisy, + boisterous crowds surge back and forth before their homes all + Sunday afternoon and evening, going to the movies, they are + being robbed of _that for which they paid their money when they + bought a home in that quiet part of the city_.... + + (4) ... Anything that injures the Christian Sabbath injures the + Christian churches, and certainly Sunday motion-picture + theaters, wherever allowed, do injure the Christian Sabbath.... + + Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts of Washington, D. C., probably the greatest + authority on the Sabbath question in this country, says, "The + Sabbath-keeping nations are the strongest physically, mentally, + morally, _financially_, and politically." Joseph Cook said, "It + is no accident that the nations that keep the Sabbath most + carefully are those where there is the most political freedom." + _Sabbath-breaking nations gradually lose their political + freedom._ + + (5) Sunday Movie Theaters injure the Christian Sabbath and thus + injure the morals of the people. _Anything that injures the + morals of the people, injures the nation itself._ From a + _patriotic_ standpoint, we ought to stand for strict observance + of the Christian Sabbath, as past experience has shown and the + testimony of many witnesses proves that a disregard of the + Christian Sabbath produces crime and immorality and tends to + destroy the free institutions which have helped to make our + nation great.... + + Fundamentally, all such vicious laws are _unconstitutional_. + + _Sunday Movie Theaters disregard the rights of labor_.... Canon + William Sheafe Chase has aptly said, "No man has the Christ + spirit who wants a better time on Sunday than he is willing to + give everyone else."... + + Col. Fairbanks, the famous scale manufacturer, said: "I can tell + by watching the men at work Monday which spent Sunday in sport + and which at home, church, or Sabbath-school. The latter _do + more and better work_." + + Superintendents of large factories in Milwaukee and elsewhere + have said, "When our men go on a Sunday excursion, some cannot + work Monday, and many who work cannot earn their wages, while + _those who had no sport Sunday do their best day's work + Monday_." (Italics mine.) + +We need not be surprised to find that the closed ideational system which +in the first instance is a refuge from the real, becomes in turn a +device for imposing one's will upon his fellows. The believer's ego is +served in both instances. It is interesting to note also that this +self-feeling appears in crowd-thinking as its very opposite. _The +greatest enemy of personality is the crowd._ The crowd does not want +valuable men; it wants only useful men. Everyone must justify his +existence by appealing to the not-self. One may do nothing for his own +sake. He may not even strive for spiritual excellence for such a reason. +He must live for "principle," for "the great cause," for impersonal +abstractions--which is to say, he must live for his crowd, and so make +it easier for the other members to do the same with a good face. + +The complex of ideas in which the crowd-mind as we have seen takes +refuge, being necessarily made up of abstract generalizations, serves +the crowd-will to social dominance through the very claim to +universality which such ideas exert. Grant that an idea is an absolute +truth, and it follows, of course, that it must be true on all occasions +and for everyone. The crowd is justified, therefore, in sacrificing +people to its ideal--itself. The idea is no longer an instrument of +living; it is an imperative. It is not yours to use the idea; the idea +is there to use you. You have ceased to be an end. Anything about you +that does not partake of the reality of this idea has no right to be, +any experience of yours which happens to be incommensurable with this +idea loses its right to be; for experience as such has now only a +"phenomenal existence." The crowd, by identifying its will to power +with this idea, becomes _itself absolute_. Your personal self, as an +end, is quite as unwelcome to the Absolute as to the crowd. There must +be no private property in thought or motive. By making everybody's +business my business, I have made my business everybody's business. +There may be only one standard--that of our crowd, which, because of its +very universal and impersonal character is really nobody's. + +The absolutism of the crowd-mind with its consequent hostility to +conscious personality finds a perfect rationalization in the ethical +philosophy of Kant. The absolutism of the idea of Duty is less +skillfully elaborated in its popular crowd-manifestations, but in its +essentials it is always present, as propaganda everywhere when carefully +analyzed will show. We must not be deceived by Kant's assertion that the +individual is an end. This individual is not you or I, or anyone; it is +a mere logical abstraction. By declaring that everyone is equally an +end, Kant ignores all personal differences, and therefore the fact of +individuality as such. We are each an end in respect to those qualities +only in which we are identical--namely, in that we are "rational +beings." But this rational being is not a personal intelligence; it is a +fiction, a bundle of mental faculties assumed _a priori_ to exist, and +then treated as if it were universally and equally applicable to all +actually existing intelligences. + +In arguing that "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also +will that my maxim should become a universal law," Kant may be easily +understood as justifying any crowd in seeking to make its peculiar +maxims universal laws. Who but a Rationalist or a crowd-man presumes to +have found the "universal law," who else would have the effrontery to +try to legislate for every conscience in existence? But this presumption +has its price. In thus universalizing my moral will, I wholly +depersonalize it. He says: + + It is of extreme importance to remember that we must not allow + ourselves to think of deducing the reality of this principle + from the particular attributes of human nature. For duty is to + be a practical unconditional necessity of action; it must + therefore hold for all rational beings (to whom an imperative + can apply at all), and for this reason only be also a law for + all human wills. On the contrary, whatever it deduces from the + particular natural characteristics of humanity, from certain + feelings and propensions, nay, even if possible from any + particular tendency proper to human reason, and which need not + necessarily hold for the will of every rational being, this may + indeed supply us with a maxim but not with a law; with a + subjective principle on which we may have a propension or + inclination to act, but not with an objective principle on which + we should be _enjoined_ to act, _even though all our + propensions, inclinations, and natural dispositions were + opposed_ to it. In fact, the _sublimity and intrinsic dignity_ + of the command in duty _are so much the more evident the less + subjective impulses favor it, and the more they oppose it_ + [italics here are mine], without being able in the slightest + degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its + validity. + + ... An action done from duty derives its moral worth _not from + the purpose_ which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim + by which it is determined. It (this moral worth) cannot lie + anywhere but in the _principle of The Will_, without regard to + the ends which can be attained by such action. + +This loss of the conscious self in the universal, this turning away from +the empirically known, this demand that an _a priori_ principle be +followed to its deadly practical conclusion _regardless of the ends_ to +which it leads, is of utmost importance for our study. It is precisely +what the paranoiac does after his own fashion. In crowd-thinking it is +often made the instrument of wholesale destruction and human slaughter. +The mob is ever motivated by this logic of negation, and of automatic +behavior. It is thus that compulsive thinking sways vast hordes of men +and women, impelling them, in the very name of truth or righteousness, +to actions of the most atrocious character. It is this which robs most +popular movements of their intelligent purposiveness, unleashes the +fanatic and the bigot, and leads men to die and to kill for a phrase. +This way of thinking points straight to Salem, Massachusetts, to the +torture-chamber, the pile of fagots and the mill pond at Rosmersholm. + +The habit of thinking as a crowd is so widespread that it is impossible +to trace the influence of its rationalistic negations in the daily +mental habits of most of us. We play out our lives as if we were but +acting a part which some one had assigned to us. The fact that we are +ourselves realities, as inevitable as falling rain, and with the same +right to be as the rocks and hills, positively startles us. We feel that +we must plead extenuation, apologize for our existence, as if the end +and aim of living were to serve or vindicate a Good which, being +sufficient in itself and independent of us, can never be realized as +actually good for anybody. We behave as if we were unprofitable +servants, cringing before wrathful ideas which, though our own +creations, we permit to lord it over us. Our virtues we regard not as +expressions of ourselves or as habitual ways of reaching desirable +goods, but as if they were demanded of us unwillingly by something not +self. We should remind ourselves that these big words we idolize have no +eyes to see us and no hearts to care what we do, that they are but +symbols of ideas which we might find very useful if we dared to become +masters of them. The most common use we make of such ideas is to beat +one another and ourselves into line with them, or enforce upon +ourselves and others the collection of a debt which was contracted only +by our unconscious desire to cheat at cards in the game of civilization. + +A conscious recognition of this desire and its more deliberate and +voluntary resistance in ourselves rather than in our neighbors, a candid +facing of the fact of what we really are and really want, and a mutual +readjustment of our relations on this recognized basis would doubtless +deliver us from the compulsion of crowd-thinking in somewhat the same +way that psychoanalysis is said to cure the neurotic by revealing to him +his unconscious wish. + +That some such cure is an imperative social need is evident. To-day the +mob lurks just under the skin of most of us, both ignorant and educated. +The ever-increasing frequency of outbreaks of mob violence has its +source in the crowd-thinking which is everywhere encouraged. The mob +which may at any time engulf us is, after all, but the logical +conclusion and sudden ripening of thought processes which are commonly +regarded as highly respectable, idealistic, and moral. + + + + +VII + +THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONARY CROWDS + + +The crowd-mind is seen at its best and at its worst in revolution. To +many minds, revolution is so essentially a crowd phenomenon that the +terms revolution and crowd-rule are almost synonymous. "Hurrah, the mob +rules Russia," cried certain radicals in the spring of 1917--"Let the +people rule everywhere." Others, more conservative, saw in every +extravagant deed and atrocity alleged to have happened in Russia only +the thing logically to be expected where the mob rules. The idea of +revolution is itself so commonly a crowd-idea that the thinking--if +thinking it may be called--of most people on this subject depends +principally upon which crowd we happen to belong to, the crowd which +sustains the ego-feeling of its members by the hope of revolution, or +the crowd which, for similar reason, brands everything which opposes its +interests, real or imaginary, as "anarchy" and "Bolshevism." + +If the word "revolution" be taken to mean fundamental change in men's +habits of thought, and life, and the forms of their relations to one +another, then it may be said that great "revolutions may be and have +been achieved with a relatively small degree of crowd-thinking and mob +violence." Much of the normal development of civilization, for instance, +the great scientific advance of the nineteenth century, the spread of +culture, the creation of artistic values, the rise in the standard of +living, is change of this sort. Such change is, however, gradual. It is +brought about by countless concrete adaptations, by thinking always +toward realizable ends. New and often unforeseeable results are thus +reached; but they are reached, as in all organic growth and in all sound +thinking, by a series of successful adjustments within the real. True +progress is doubtless made up of changes of this sort. But for the +course of progress to run on uninterrupted and undefeated we should have +to be, both in our individual and social behavior, the reasonable beings +which certain nineteenth-century utilitarians mistook us for. + +It is the fool thing, the insincere thing, that more commonly happens in +matters social and political. The adjustment reached is not often a +solution of a social problem worked out deliberately on the +"greatest-happiness" principle. It is commonly a _status quo_, or +balance of power among contending crowds, each inspired by the fiction +of its own importance, by self-idealization, and desire to rule. It is +an unstable equilibrium usually held in place for the time by a dominant +crowd. This dominant crowd may itself be composed of quarreling +factions, but these parties, so long as they share enough of the +supremacy to keep up their self-feeling, so long, in fact, as their +members may even be able to make themselves believe that they, too, are +in the upper set, or so long as they continue to hope for success in the +social game as now played, unite in repeating the catchwords which +justify their crowd in its supremacy. The dominant group identifies its +own interests with the general welfare. And in the sense that some sort +of order, or any at all, is to be preferred to social chaos, there is an +element of truth in this identification. + +The fact remains, however, that the dominant crowd possesses always much +of the crowd-spirit which originally secured for it its enviable +position. Its ideas, like those of all crowds, are devices for +sustaining the self-feeling of its members, for protecting itself, for +keeping the group together, for justification. They are only +secondarily, if at all, instruments for dealing with new and perplexing +social situations. It cannot be denied that a certain set of opinions, +prejudices, mannerisms, ceremonies "go with" the social position which +corresponds to them. They are the ready-made habits of the "set" or +class. They are badges by which the "gentleman" is distinguished, the +evening clothes of the psyche, as it were. Many of these crowd-forms +represent true values of living, some of them are useful in our dealings +with reality; if this were not so, if such spiritual tattooings or +ceremonial forms were wholly harmful, the crowd which performed them +would be at such a disadvantage that it could not hold its own. But that +considerations of utility--other than the function which such +ceremonialism is known to have for the unconscious always--do not +directly govern these forms of thought and behavior is seen in the fact +that so many of them, as Sumner says of "folkways," are either harmful +or useless in dealing with matters of fact. + +The dominant crowd, therefore, in just so far as it must remain a crowd +in order to secure its own position of supremacy, must strive to force +all social realities into the forms of its own conflicts and dilemmas. +Inevitably the self-feeling of a great many people, who are forced by +the dominant crowd to conform and labor with no compensation, is hurt. +They cannot but contrast their own lot with that of their more fortunate +neighbors. Of all things, people probably resist most the feeling of +inferiority. Any suggestion that the difference in social position is +due to a similar difference in personal worth or in ability is hotly +resented. The resentment is in no wise abated by the fact that in some +cases this suggestion may be true. Compensations are at once created by +the unconscious. In mediæval times "all men were brothers and were equal +before the altars of the Church and in heaven." Thus distinctions of +merit, other than those which prevailed in the social order, were set up +in the interest of the common man. + +As the influence of the Renaissance directed general attention from the +realm of the spiritual to practical affairs of earth, these +compensations changed from thoughts of the future world to dreams of the +future of this world. The injured self-feeling dwells upon the economic +or political inequalities which flow from the dominance of the ruling +crowd. The injustices and acts of exploitation, which are certainly +neither new nor rare occurrences in human relations, are seized upon as +if it were these things, not the assumption to superiority, which were +the issue at stake. + +At the time of the French Revolution the Third Estate, or Bourgeois, +which showed itself quite as capable of exploiting the poor as ever were +the older aristocrats, saw itself only as part of the wronged and +exploited "people." The sufferings of the poor, which it was frequently +even then profiting in quite as heartily, to say the least, as the +titled nobility, were represented as the grievance of all mankind +against the hated nobility. That the ideas of "liberty, equality, and +fraternity" which these good tradesmen preached may easily become the +sort of compensatory ideas we have been discussing is shown by the fact +of the genuine astonishment and indignation of the burghers when later +their employees made use of this same phrase in the struggles between +labor and capital. Sans-culottism had quite as many psychological +motives as economic behind it. + +How pompous, hateful, and snobbish were those titled folk with their +powdered wigs, carriages, fine clothes, and their exclusive social +gatherings to which honest citizens, often quite as wealthy as +themselves, were not invited. If the "people"--that is, the burghers +themselves--only had a chance they would be just as fine ladies and +gentlemen as those who merely inherited their superiority. Down with the +aristocrats! All men were equal and always had been. There must be +fraternity and the _carier ouvert les talents_, in other words, +brotherhood and free competition. + +I am sure, from all I have ever seen or read of social revolt and +unrest, that this injured self-feeling, or defense against the sense of +personal inferiority, while not the only motive, is the most powerful +one at work. It crops out everywhere, in the layman's hatred of the +clergy during the Reformation, in that curious complex of ideas whereby +the uneducated often look upon a college diploma as something little +short of magical, and defend their ego against this ridiculously +exaggerated mark of distinction and accompanying feeling of +self-reproach by a slur at "high-brows." Few people realize how general +this feeling is; the trick of making fun of the educated is one of the +commonest forms of crowd-humor in America, both in vaudeville and in +popular oratory. I have previously pointed out the fact that the +religious revival in our day is to a great extent characterized by a +popular resistance to scholars. No one can read Mr. Sunday's sermons and +deny this fact. The City of New York gave the largest majority in its +history to the candidate for the office of mayor who made opposition to +"experts" the main issue in his campaign. Scores of times I have heard +popular speakers resort to this trick to gain favor with their +audiences, and I cannot remember ever having known such sentiments to +fail to gain applause--I am not speaking now of strictly academic +groups, but of general gatherings. + +The point of interest here is that these same people have a most +extravagant notion of the value of the academic training which they +encourage the crowd speaker in ridiculing. I have made it a practice of +talking with a great many people personally and drawing them out on this +point, and I have found that this is almost uniformly the case. F. B., a +cigar maker by trade, says, "Oh, if I had only had sense enough to go on +to school when I had the opportunity!" E. L., a mechanic, says, "I might +have been somebody, if I had been given any chance to get an education." +R., a sort of jack-of-all-trades, says, "If I only had N.'s education, +I'd be a millionaire." B., a farmer with limited intellectual interests, +says, "I tell you, my boys are not going to be like me; they have got to +go to college." G., a waiter, says, "I don't know much," and then +proceeds to impress me with the latest bit of academic information which +he has picked up. C., a printer, who has been moderately successful, +says: "I'd give ten thousand dollars right this minute if I knew Greek; +now there is ---- and there is ----, neighbors of mine, they're highly +educated. When I'm with them I'm ashamed and feel like a dub." + +When, on such occasions, I repeatedly say that the average academic +student really learns hardly anything at all of the classic languages, +and cite the small fruits of my own years of tedious study as an +example, the effect produced is invariably comforting--until I add that +one need not attend a university seven years or even four to become +educated, but that nearly everyone with ability to learn and with +genuine intellectual interests may achieve a remarkable degree of +learning. The answer of the perplexed person is then often an +extenuation. "Well, you see, a busy person or a working man is so tired +after the day's work that he has no energy left for study," or it is, +"Wait till the working class have more leisure, then they, too, can be +cultivated." Passing over this extenuation, which ignores the fact that +some of the best informed and clearest thinking people one meets are +working people, while the average university graduate leads anything but +an intellectual life, it can hardly be denied, I think, that our crowd +cult of anti-"highbrowism" is really a defense mechanism against an +inner feeling of inferiority. Now the interesting thing about this +feeling of inferiority is the exaggerated notion of the superiority of +the college-trained, which is entertained chiefly by the uneducated +themselves. What appears here is in fact nothing other than a cheapening +of the idea of superiority. Personal excellence is something which +anyone may attain; it is not something congenital, but something to be +added on; one "gets an education," possesses something of advantage, +merely by a few years of conventional study of books. Anyone might do +that, therefore. "I, too, if I only cared to, or had been given +opportunity, might now be famous." "The difference between myself and +the world's greatest genius is not a spiritual chasm which I could not +myself, at least hypothetically, cross." "It is rather an 'acquired +character,' a mere fruit of special opportunity--which in a few cases it +doubtless may be--but it is something external; at bottom we are all +equal." + +Many facts may be advanced to corroborate the results of our analysis +here. The crowd always resents the Carlyle, William James, Nietzsche, +Goethe theory of genius. Genius is not congenital superiority. It is the +result of hard work. The genius is not a unique personal fact, he is a +"representative man." He says just what his age is thinking. The +inarticulate message of his contemporaries simply becomes articulate in +some one, and behold a genius. In other words, I suppose, all Vienna, +messenger boys and bootblacks especially, were suddenly fascinated by +Schiller's "Ode to Joy" and went about whistling improvised musical +renderings of the theme of this poem, till the deaf Beethoven heard and +wrote these whistlings down in the form of the Ninth Symphony. + +According to the crowd, Luther did not create the Reformation, or +Petrarch the Renaissance; these movements themselves created their +leaders and founders; all that the genius did was to interpret and +faithfully obey the People's will. Ergo, to be a genius one need only +study hard enough to be able to tell the people what they already think. +The superiority of genius is therefore no different from that of any +educated person; except in degree of application. Anyone of us might +possess this superiority. In other words, the "intellectual +snobbishness" which the crowd resents is nothing else than the +crowd-man's own fiction of self-importance, projected upon those whose +imagined superiority he envies. It is recognized, even exaggerated by +the unlearned, because it is precisely the sort of superiority which the +ignorant man himself, in his ignorance, imagines that he himself would +display if he "only had the chance," and even now possesses +unrecognized. + +We have made the foregoing detour because I think it serves to +illustrate, in a way, the psychic processes behind much revolutionary +propaganda and activity. I would not attempt to minimize the extent of +the social injustice and economic slavery which a dominant crowd, +whether ecclesiastical, feudal, or capitalistic, is guilty of in its +dealings with its subjects. But every dominant crowd, certain sections +of the "proletariat" as quickly as any other, will resort to such +practices, and will alike justify them by moral catchwords the minute +its supremacy over other crowds gives it opportunity. Therefore there is +a certain amount of tautology in denouncing the "master class" for its +monstrous abuses. That the real point at issue between the dominant +crowd and the under crowd is the assumed personal superiority of the +members of the former, rather than the economic "exploitation" which it +practices, is shown by the fact that the French Revolution was led by +wealthy bourgeois, and that the leading revolutionary element in the +working class to-day consists, not of the "down and out" victims of +capitalist exploitation, but of the members of the more highly skilled +and better paid trades, also of certain intellectuals who are not +"proletarians" at all. + +And now we come to our point: the fiction of superiority of the dominant +crowd, just as in the case of the assumed personal superiority of the +intellectuals, is resented by the under crowd because it is _secretly +recognized_ by the under crowd. Of course the dominant crowd, like all +crowds, is obsessed by its feelings of self-importance, and this feeling +is apparently vindicated by its very social position. But the fiction is +recognized at its full face value, and therefore resented by the under +crowds, because that is precisely the sort of personal supremacy to +which they also aspire. + +One commonly hears it said to-day, by those who have made the catchwords +of democracy their crowd cult, that the issue in modern society is +between democracy and capitalism. In a sense this may be true, but only +in a superficial sense; the real issue is between the personal self as a +social entity and the crowd. Capitalism is, to my mind, the logical +first fruit of so-called democracy. Capitalism is simply the social +supremacy of the trader-man crowd. For a hundred years and more +commercial ability--that of organizing industry and selling goods--has +been rewarded out of all proportion to any other kind of ability, +because, in the first place, it leads to the kind of success which the +ordinary man most readily recognizes and envies--large houses, fine +clothes, automobiles, exclusive clubs, etc. A Whittier may be ever so +great a poet, and yet sit beside the stove in the general store of his +little country village, and no one thinks he is so very wonderful. Some +may envy him his fame, but few will envy and therefore be fascinated by +that in him which they do not understand. But a multimillionaire in +their community is understood; everyone can see and envy his success; he +is at once both envied and admired. + +Moreover, the commercial ability is the sort which the average man most +commonly thinks he possesses in some degree. While, therefore, he +grumbles at the unjust inequalities in wealth which exist in modern +society, and denounces the successful business man as an exploiter and +fears his power, the average man will nevertheless endure all this, much +in the same spirit that a student being initiated into a fraternity will +take the drubbing, knowing well that his own turn at the fun will come +later. It is not until the members of the under crowd begin to suspect +that their own dreams of "aping the rich" may never come true that they +begin to entertain revolutionary ideas. In other words, forced to +abandon the hope of joining the present dominating crowd, they begin to +dream of supplanting and so dispossessing this crowd by their own crowd. + +That the dominant crowd is just as much to blame for this state of +affairs as the under crowd, perhaps more so, is shown by the history of +every period preceding a revolutionary outbreak. I will dwell at some +length on this fact later. My point here is that, first, a revolution, +in the sense that the word means a violent uprising against the existing +order, is a psychological crowd-phenomenon--and second, that it takes +two crowds to make a revolution. + +Writers, like Le Bon, have ignored the part which the dominant crowd +plays in such events. They have thought of revolution only as the +behavior of the under crowd. They have assumed that the crowd and the +people were the same. Their writings are hardly more than conservative +warnings against the excess and wickedness of the popular mind once it +is aroused. Sumner says: + + Moral traditions are the guides which no one can afford to + neglect. They are in the mores, and they are lost in every great + revolution of the mores. Then the men are morally lost. + +Le Bon says, writing of the French Revolution: + + The people may kill, burn, ravage, commit the most frightful + cruelties, glorify its hero to-day and throw him into the gutter + to-morrow; it is all one; the politicians will not cease to + vaunt its virtues, its high wisdom, and to bow to its every + decision. + + Now in what does this entity really consist, this mysterious + fetich which revolutionists have revered for more than a + century? + + It may be decomposed into two distinct categories. The first + includes the peasants, traders, and workers of all sorts who + need tranquillity and order that they may exercise their + calling. This people forms the majority, but a majority which + never caused a revolution. Living in laborious silence, it is + ignored by historians. + + The second category, which plays a capital part in all national + disturbances, consists of a subversive social residue dominated + by a criminal mentality. Degenerates of alcoholism and poverty, + thieves, beggars, destitute "casuals," indifferent workers + without employment--these constitute the dangerous bulk of the + armies of insurrection.... To this sinister substratum are due + the massacres which stain all revolutions.... To elements + recruited from the lowest dregs of the populace are added by + contagion a host of idle and indifferent persons who are simply + drawn into the movement. They shout because there are men + shouting, and revolt because there is a revolt, without having + the vaguest idea of the cause of the shouting or revolution. The + suggestive power of the environment absolutely hypnotized them. + +This idea, which is held with some variation by Sumner, Gobineau, +Faguet, and Conway, is, I believe, both unhistorical and +unpsychological, because it is but a half-truth. This substratum of the +population does at the moment of revolution become a dangerous mob. Such +people are unadjusted to any social order, and the least deviation from +the routine of daily life throws them off their balance. The relaxation +of authority at the moment when one group is supplanting another in +position of social control, is to these people like the two or three +days of interregnum between the pontificates of Julius and Leo, +described by Cellini. Those who need some one to govern them, and they +are many, find their opportunity in the general disturbance. They +suddenly react to the revolutionary propaganda which up to this minute +they have not heeded, they are controlled by revolutionary crowd-ideas +in a somnambulistic manner, and like automatons carry these ideas +precipitately to their deadly conclusion. But this mob is not the really +revolutionary crowd and in the end it is always put back in its place by +the newly dominant crowd. The really revolutionary crowd consists of the +group who are near enough the dominant crowd to be able to envy its +"airs" with some show of justification, and are strong enough to dare +try issue with it for supreme position. Madame Rolland, it will be +remembered, justified her opposition to aristocrats on the principle of +equality and fraternity, but she could never forget her resentment at +being made, in the home of a member of this aristocracy, to eat with the +servants. + +What Le Bon and others seem to ignore is that the ruling class may be +just as truly a crowd as the insurrectionary mob, and that the violent +behavior of revolutionary crowds is simply the logic of crowd-thinking +carried to its swift practical conclusion. + +It is generally assumed that a revolution is a sudden and violent change +in the form of government. From what has been said it will be seen that +this definition is too narrow. History will bear me out in this. The +Protestant Reformation was certainly a revolution, as Le Bon has shown, +but it affected more than the government or even the organization of the +Church. The French Revolution changed the form of the government in +France several times before it was done, passing through a period of +imperial rule and even a restoration of the monarchy. But the revolution +as such survived. Even though later a Bourbon or a prince of the House +of Orleans sat on the throne of France, the restored king or his +successor was hardly more than a figurehead. A new class, the Third +Estate, remained in fact master of France. There had been a change in +the ownership of the land; power through the control of vested property +rested with the group which in 1789 began its revolt under the +leadership of Mirabeau. A new dictatorship had succeeded the old. And +this is what a revolution is--_the dictatorship of a new crowd_. The +Russian revolutionists now candidly admit this fact in their use of the +phrase "the dictatorship of the proletariat." Of course it is claimed +that this dictatorship is really the dictatorship of "all the people." +But this is simply the old fiction with which every dominant crowd +disguises seizure of power. Capitalist republicanism is also the rule of +all the people, and the pope and the king, deriving their authority from +God, are really but "the servants of all." + +As we have seen, the crowd mind as such wills to dominate. Society is +made up of struggle groups, or organized crowds, each seeking the +opportunity to make its catchwords realities and to establish itself in +the position of social control. The social order is always held intact +by some particular crowd which happens to be dominant. A revolution +occurs when a new crowd pushes the old one out and itself climbs into +the saddle. When the new crowd is only another faction within the +existing dominant crowd, like one of our established political parties, +the succession will be accomplished without resort to violence, since +both elements of the ruling crowd recognize the rules of the game. It +will also not result in far-reaching social changes for the same reason. +A true revolution occurs when the difference between the dominant crowd +and the one which supplants it is so great as to produce a general +social upheaval. The Reformation, the French Revolution, and the +"Bolshevist" _coup d'etat_ in Russia, all were of this nature. A new +social leadership was established and secured by a change in each case +in the personnel of the ownership of such property as would give the +owners the desired control. In the first case there was a transfer of +property in the church estates, either to the local congregations, or +the state, or the denomination. In the second case the property +transferred was property in land, and with the Russian revolutionists +landed property was given to the peasants and vested capital turned +over to the control of industrial workers. + +Those who lay all emphasis on this transfer of property naturally see +only economic causes in revolutionary movements. Economics, however, is +not a science of impersonal things. It treats rather of men's relations +to things, and hence to one another. It has to do with valuations and +principles of exchange and ownership, all of which need psychological +restatement. The transfer of the ownership of property in times of +revolution to a new class is not an end, it is a means to a new crowd's +social dominance. The doctrines, ideals, and principles believed by the +revolutionary crowd also serve this end of securing its dominance, as do +the social changes which it effects, once in power. + +Revolutions do not occur directly from abuses of power, for in that case +there would be nothing but revolution all the time, since every dominant +crowd has abused its power. It is an interesting fact that revolution +generally occurs after the abuses of which the revolutionists complain +have been in great measure stopped--that is, after the ruling crowd has +begun to make efforts at reform. The Reformation occurred in the +pontificate of Leo X. If it had been the result of intolerable abuse +alone, it would have happened in the time of Alexander VI, Borgia. The +French Revolution fell upon the mild head of Louis XVI, though the +wrongs which it tried to right mostly happened in the reign of his +predecessor. In most cases the abuses, the existence of which a +revolutionary crowd uses for propaganda purposes, are in turn repeated +in new form by itself after it becomes dominant. The Reformers in the +sixteenth and seventeenth centuries resorted to much the same kind of +persecution from which they had themselves earlier suffered. The +Constituent Assembly, though it had demanded liberty, soon set up a more +outrageous tyranny through its own committees than any that the Louies +had dreamed of. Bolshevists in capitalist countries are the greatest +advocates of free speech; in Russia they are the authors of a very +effective press-censorship. + +No, it is hardly the abuses which men suffer from their ruling crowds +which cause insurrection. People have borne the most terrible outrages +and suffered in silence for centuries. Russia itself is a good example +of this. + +_A revolution occurs when the dominant crowd begins to weaken._ I think +we find proof of this in the psychology of revolutionary propaganda. A +general revolution is not made in a day, each such cataclysm is preceded +by a long period of unrest and propaganda of opposition to the existing +order and its beneficiaries. The Roman Republic began going to pieces +about a hundred years before the battle of Actium. The social unrest +which followed the Punic Wars and led to the revolt of the brothers +Gracchi was never wholly checked during the century which followed. The +dominant party had scarcely rid itself of these troublesome "demagogues" +than revolt broke out among the slave population of Sicily. This was +followed by the revolt of the Italian peasants, then again by the +insurrection of Spartacus, and this in turn by the civil war between +Marius and Sulla, the conspiracy of Catiline, the brief triumph of +Julius Cæsar over the Senate, the revenge of the latter in the +assassination of Cæsar, and the years of turmoil during the Second +Triumvirate. + +It is doubtful if there was at any time a very clear or widespread +consciousness of the issues which successively arose during that unhappy +century. It would seem that first one counter-crowd and then another, +representing various elements of the populace, tried issue with the +ruling crowd. The one factor which remained constant through all this +was the progressive disintegration of the dominant party. The supremacy +of the _Patres Conscripti et Equites_ became in fact a social +anachronism the day that Tiberius Gracchus demanded the expropriation of +the landed aristocracy. The ideas whereby the dominant crowd sought to +justify its pre-emptions began to lose their functional value. Only the +undisguised use of brute force was left. Such ideas ceased to convince. +Men of unusual independence of mind, or men with ambitious motives, who +had grown up within the dominant crowd, began to throw off the spell of +its control-ideas, and, by leaving it, to weaken it further from within. +No sooner was this weakness detected by other groups than every sort of +grievance and partisan interest became a moral justification for efforts +to supplant the rulers. The attempt of the dominant crowd to retain its +hold by repeating its traditional justification-platitudes, unchanged, +but with greater emphasis, may be seen in the orations of Cicero. It +would be well if some one besides high-school students and their Latin +teachers were to take up the study of Cicero; the social and +psychological situation which this orator and writer of moral essays +reveals has some suggestive similarities to things which are happening +to-day. + +The century and more of unrest which preceded both the Reformation and +the French Revolution is in each instance a long story. But in both +there is the same gradual loss of prestige on the part of the dominant +crowd; the same inability of this crowd to change with the changes of +time; to find new sanctions for itself when the old ones were no longer +believed; the same unadaptability, the same intellectual and moral +bankruptcy, therefore, the same gradual disintegration from within; the +same resort to sentimentalism and ineffective use of force, the same +circle of hungry counter-crowds waiting around with their tongues +hanging out, ready to pounce upon that before which they had previously +groveled, and to justify their ravenousness as devotion to principle; +the same growing fearlessness, beginning as perfectly loyal desire to +reform certain abuses incidental to the existing order, and advancing, +with every sign of disillusionment or weakness, to moral indignation, +open attack upon fundamental control ideas, bitter hostility, augmented +by the repressive measures taken by the dominant crowd to conserve a +_status quo_ which no longer gained assent in the minds of a growing +counter-crowd; finally force, and a new dominant crowd more successful +now in justifying old tyrannies by principles not yet successfully +challenged. + +In the light of these historical analogies the record of events during +the last seventy-five years in western Europe and America is rather +discomforting reading, and I fear the student of social psychology will +find little to reassure him in the pitiable lack of intellectual +leadership, the tendency to muddle through, the unteachableness and +general want of statesmanlike vision displayed by our present dominant +crowds. If a considerable number of people of all classes, those who +desire change as well as those who oppose it, could free their thinking +from the mechanisms of the crowd-mind, it might be possible to find the +working solution of some of our pressing social problems and save our +communities from the dreadful experience of another revolution. Our hope +lies in the socially minded person who is sufficiently in touch with +reality to be also a non-crowd man. + +Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the public mind at present, +knows that _a priori_ arguments against revolution as such are not +convincing, except to those who are already convinced on other ground. +The dominant crowd in each historical epoch gained its original +supremacy by means of revolution. One can hardly make effective use of +the commonplace antirevolutionary propaganda of defense of a certain +order which has among its most ardent supporters people who are proud to +call themselves sons and daughters of the Revolution. Skeptics at once +raise the question whether, according to such abstract social ethics, +revolutionists become respectable only after they are successful or have +been a long time dead. In fact, the tendency to resort to such reasoning +is one among many symptoms that the conservative mind has permitted +itself to become quite as much a crowd-phenomenon as has the radical +mind. + +The correct approach here is psychological and pragmatic. There is an +increasingly critical social situation, demanding far-reaching +reconstructive change; only the most hopeless crowd-man would presume to +deny this fact. The future all depends upon the mental processes with +which we attempt to meet this situation. Nothing but useless misery can +result from dividing crowd against crowd. Crowd-thinking, as I have +said, does not solve problems. It only creates ideal compensations and +defense devices for our inner conflicts. Conservative crowd-behavior has +always done quite as much as anything else to precipitate a +revolutionary outbreak. Radical crowd-behavior does not resolve the +situation, it only inverts it. Any real solution lies wholly outside +present crowd-dilemmas. What the social situation demands most is a +different kind of thinking, a new education, an increasing number of +people who understand themselves and are intellectually and morally +independent of the tyranny of crowd-ideas. + +From what has been said above, it follows that revolutionary propaganda +is not directly the cause of insurrection. Such propaganda is itself an +effect of the unconscious reaction between a waning and a crescent +crowd. It is a symptom of the fact that a large number of people have +ceased to believe in or assent to the continued dominance of the present +controlling crowd and are looking to another. + +There is always a tendency among conservative crowds to hasten their own +downfall by the manner in which they deal with revolutionary propaganda. +The seriousness of the new issue is denied; the crowd seeks to draw +attention back to the old issue which it fought and won years ago in the +hour of its ascendancy. The fact that the old charms and shibboleths no +longer work, that they do not now apply, that the growing counter-crowd +is able to psychoanalyze them, discover the hidden motives which they +disguise, and laugh at them, is stoutly denied. The fiction is +maintained to the effect that present unrest is wholly uncalled-for, +that everything is all right, that the agitators who "make people +discontented" are alien and foreign and need only be silenced with a +time-worn phrase, or, that failing, shut up by force or deported, and +all will be well. + +I do not doubt that before the Reformation and the French Revolution +there were ecclesiastics and nobles aplenty who were quite sure that the +masses would never have known they were miserable if meddling disturbers +had not taken the trouble to tell them so. Even an honest critical +understanding of the demands of the opposing crowd is discouraged, +possibly because it is rightly felt that the critical habit of mind is +as destructive of one crowd-complex as the other and the old crowd +prefers to remain intact and die in the last ditch rather than risk +dissolution, even with the promise of averting a revolution. Hence the +Romans were willing to believe that the Christians worshiped the head of +an ass. The mediæval Catholics, even at Leo's court, failed to grasp the +meaning of the outbreak in north Germany. Thousands saw in the +Reformation only the alleged fact that the monk Luther wanted to marry a +wife. To-day one looks almost in vain among business men, editors, and +politicians for a more intelligent understanding of socialism. A crowd +goes down to its death fighting bogies, and actually running upon the +sword of its real enemy, because a crowd, once its constellation of +ideas is formed, _never learns anything_. + +The crowd-group contains in itself, in the very nature of +crowd-thinking, the germs which sooner or later lay it low. When a crowd +first becomes dominant, it carries into a place of power a number of +heterogeneous elements which have, up to this time, been united in a +great counter-crowd because of their common dissatisfaction with the old +order. Gradually the special interests of these several groups become +separated. The struggle for place is continued as a factional fight +within the newly ruling crowd. This factional struggle greatly +complicates every revolutionary movement. We witness this in the +murderously hostile partisan conflicts which broke out in the +revolutionary Assemblies in France. It is seen again in the Reformation, +which had hardly established itself when the movement was rent by +intense sectarian rivalries of all sorts. The same is true of Russia +since the fall of the Tsar, and of Mexico ever since the overthrow of +the Diaz regime. If these factional struggles go so far as to result in +schism--that is, in a conscious repudiation by one or more factions of +the revolutionary creed which had formerly united them all, there is +disintegration and in all probability a return to the old ruling crowd. + +This reaction may also be made possible by a refusal of one faction to +recognize the others as integral parts of the newly triumphant crowd. If +the new crowd after its victory can hold itself together, the revolution +is established. It then becomes the task of the leading faction in the +newly dominant crowd to grab the lion's share of the spoils for itself, +give the other factions only so much prestige as will keep alive in +their minds the belief that they, too, share in the new victory for +"humanity" and hold the new social order together, while at the same +time justifying its own leadership by the compulsive power of the idea +which they all alike believe. This belief, as we have seen, is the _sine +qua non_ of the continued existence of any crowd. A dominant crowd +survives so long as its belief is held uncritically and repeated and +acted upon automatically both by the members of the crowd and its +victims. When the factions which have been put at a disadvantage by the +leading faction renounce the belief, or awake to the fact that they +"have been cheated," disintegration begins. + +Between the crowd's professed belief and the things which it puts into +practice there is a great chasm. Yet the fiction is uniformly maintained +that the things done are the correct and faithful application of the +great principles to which the crowd is devoted. We saw in our study of +crowd-ideas in general that such ideas are not working programs, but are +screens which disguise and apparently justify the real unconscious +motive of crowd-behavior. The crowd secures its control, first, by +proclaiming in the most abstract form certain generally accepted +principles, such as freedom, righteousness, brotherly love--as though +these universal "truths" were its own invention and exclusive monopoly. +Next, certain logical deductions are made from these principles which, +when carried to their logical conclusions regardless of fact or the +effect produced, make the thing which the crowd really wants and does +appear to be a vindication of the first principles. It is these +inferences which go to make up the conscious thinking or belief of the +crowd. Thus in the revolutionary convention in France all agree to the +principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Fidelity to these +principles would to a non-crowd mean that the believer should not try to +dictate to his fellows what they must believe and choose, that he would +exercise good will in his dealings with them and show them the same +respect which he wished them to have for himself. But the crowd does not +understand principles in this manner. Do all agree to the great slogan +of the revolution? Well, then, fidelity to Liberty, Equality, and +Fraternity demands that the enemies of these principles and the crowd's +definition of them be overthrown. The Mountain is the truly faithful +party, hence to the guillotine with the Gironde. This chasm between +crowd faith and crowd practice is well illustrated in the case of those +Southern patriots in America who were ready to fight and die for the +rights of man as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but +refused to apply the principle of the inalienable rights of all men to +their own black slaves. Or, again in the case of nineteenth-century +capitalism, liberty must be given to all alike. Liberty means equal +opportunity. Equal opportunity means free competition in business. Free +competition exists only where there is an "incentive"; hence the +investor must be encouraged and his gains protected by law. Therefore +anti-capitalistic doctrines must be suppressed as subversive of our free +institutions. Immigrants to whom for a generation we have extended the +hospitality of our slums and labor camps, and the opportunity of freely +competing with our well-intrenched corporations, must be made to feel +their ingratitude if they are so misguided as to conclude, from the fact +that hundreds of leading radicals have been made to serve jail +sentences, while after thirty years of enforcing the antitrust law not a +single person has ever been sent to prison, that possibly this is not a +free land. + +Or again--one convicts himself of being a crowd-man who shows partiality +among crowds--the principle of democracy is generally accepted. Then +there should be industrial democracy as well as political--hence the +"Dictatorship of the Proletariat"--for the workers are "the people." +Parliamentary assemblies elected by all the people do not necessarily +represent labor. Organized labor, therefore, though a minority of the +whole, should establish "industrial democracy" by force. So, according +to Bolshevist crowd-logic, democracy means the rule of a minority by +means of force. + +Now it is this fictitious, paranoiac, crowd-logic which one must be able +to dispel before he can extricate himself from the clutches of his +crowd. If he subjects the whole fabric of abstractions to critical +analysis, revalues it, puts himself above it, assumes a pragmatic +attitude toward whatever truths it contains, dares to test these truths +by their results in experience and to use them for desired ends; if, in +short, he scrutinizes his own disguised impulses, brings them to +consciousness as what they are, and refuses to be deceived as to their +real import, even when they appear dressed in such sheep's clothing as +absolutes and first principles, he becomes a non-crowd man, a social +being in the best sense. + +Those, however, who continue to give assent to the crowd's first +principles, who still accept its habit of _a priori_ reasoning, merely +substituting for its accepted deductions others of their own which in +turn serve to conceal and justify their own unconscious desires, will +turn from the old crowd only to be gobbled up by a new and +counter-crowd. Such people have not really changed. They denounce the +old crowd on the ground that "it has not lived up to its principles." It +is a significant fact that a crowd's rule is generally challenged in +the name of the very abstract ideas of which it has long posed as the +champion. + +For instance, there is liberty. Every crowd demands it when it is +seeking power; no crowd permits it when it is in power. A crowd which is +struggling for supremacy is really trying to free itself and as many +people as possible from the control of another crowd. Naturally, the +struggle for power appears to consciousness as a struggle for liberty as +such. The controlling crowd is correctly seen to be a tyrant and +oppressor. What the opposition crowd does not recognize is its own wish +to oppress, hidden under its struggle for power. We have had occasion to +note the intolerance of the crowd-mind as such. A revolutionary crowd, +with all its lofty idealism about liberty, is commonly just as +intolerant as a reactionary crowd. It must be so in order to remain a +crowd. Once it is triumphant it may exert its pressure in a different +direction, but the pinch is there just the same. Like its predecessor, +it must resort to measures of restraint, possibly even a "reign of +terror," in order that the new-won "liberty"--which is to say, its own +place at the head of the procession--may be preserved. The denial of +freedom appears therefore as its triumph, and for a time people are +deceived. They think they are free because everyone is talking about +liberty. + +Eventually some one makes the discovery that people do not become free +just by repeating the magic word "liberty." A disappointed faction of +the newly emancipated humanity begins to demand its "rights." The crowd +hears its own catchwords quoted against itself. It proceeds to prove +that freedom exists by denouncing the disturbers and silencing them, if +necessary, by force. The once radical crowd has now become reactionary. +Its dream of world emancipation is seen to be a hoax. Lovers of freedom +now yoke themselves in a new rebel crowd so that oppressed humanity may +be liberated from the liberators. Again, the will to power is clothed in +the dream symbols of an emancipated society, and so on around and around +the circle, until people learn that with crowds freedom is impossible. +For men to attain to mastery of themselves is as abhorrent to one crowd +as to another. The crowd merely wants freedom to be a crowd--that is, to +set up its own tyranny in the place of that which offends the +self-feeling of its members. + +The social idealism of revolutionary crowds is very significant for our +view of the crowd-mind. There are certain forms of revolutionary belief +which are repeated again and again with such uniformity that it would +seem the unconscious of the race changes very little from age to age. +The wish-fancy which motivates revolutionary activity always appears to +consciousness as the dream of an ideal society, a world set free; the +reign of brotherly love, peace, and justice. The folly and wickedness of +man is to cease. There will be no more incentive for men to do evil. The +lion and the lamb shall lie down together. Old extortions and tyrannies +are to be left behind. There is to be a new beginning, poverty is to be +abolished, God's will is to be done in earth, or men are at last to live +according to reason, and the inalienable rights of all are to be +secured; or the co-operative commonwealth is to be established, with no +more profit-seeking and each working gladly for the good of all. In +other words, the mind of revolutionary crowds is essentially +_eschatological_, or Messianic. The crowd always imagines its own social +dominance is a millennium. And this trait is common to revolutionary +crowds in all historical periods. + +We have here the psychological explanation of the Messianic faith which +is set forth with tremendous vividness in Biblical literature. The +revolutionary import of the social teaching of both the Hebrew and +Christian religions is so plain that I do not see how any honest and +well-informed person can even attempt to deny it. The telling +effectiveness with which this element in religious teaching may be used +by clever radicals to convict the apologists of the present social +order by the words out of their own mouths is evident in much of the +socialist propaganda to-day. The tendency of the will to revolt, to +express itself in accepted religious symbols, is a thing to be expected +if the unconscious plays the important part in crowd-behavior that we +have contended that it does. + +The eighth-century Hebrew prophet mingles his denunciations of those who +join house to house and field to field, who turn aside the way of the +meek, and sit in Samaria in the corner of a couch and on the silken +cushions of a bed, who have turned justice to wormwood and cast down +righteousness to the earth, etc., etc.,--reserving his choicest woes of +course for the foreign oppressors of "my people"--with promises of "the +day of the Lord" with all that such a day implies, not only of triumph +of the oppressed over their enemies, but of universal happiness. + +Similarly the same complex of ideas appears in the writings which deal +with the Hebrew "Captivity" in the sixth century B.C., with the revolt +of the Maccabeans, and again in the impotent hatred against the Romans +about the time of the origin of Christianity. + +The New Testament dwells upon some phase of this theme on nearly every +page. Blessed are ye poor, and woe unto you who are rich, you who laugh +now. The Messiah has come and with him the Kingdom of the Heavens, but +at present the kingdom is revealed only to the believing few, who are in +the world, but not of it. However, the Lord is soon to return; in fact, +this generation shall not pass away until all these things be +accomplished. After a period of great trial and suffering there is to be +a new world, and a new and holy Jerusalem, coming down from the skies +and establishing itself in place of the old. All the wicked, chiefly +those who oppress the poor, shall be cast into a lake of fire. There +shall be great rejoicing, and weeping and darkness and death shall be no +more. + +The above sketch of the Messianic hope is so brief as to be hardly more +than a caricature, but it will serve to make my point clear, that +_Messianism is a revolutionary crowd phenomenon_. This subject has been +presented in great detail by religious writers in recent years, so that +there is hardly a member of the reading public who is not more or less +familiar with the "social gospel." My point is that _all revolutionary +propaganda is "social gospel_." Even when revolutionists profess an +antireligious creed, as did the Deists of the eighteenth century, and as +do many modern socialists with their "materialist interpretation of +history," nevertheless the element of irreligion extends only to the +superficial trappings of the revolutionary crowd-faith, and even here +is not consistent. At bottom the revolutionists' dream of a new world is +religious. + +I am using the word "religious" in this connection in its popular sense, +meaning no more than that the revolutionary crowd rationalizes its dream +of a new world-order in imagery which repeats over and over again the +essentials of the Biblical "day of the Lord," or "kingdom of heaven" to +be established in earth. This notion of cosmic regeneration is very +evident in the various "utopian" socialist theories. The Fourierists and +St. Simonists of the early part of the nineteenth century were extremely +Messianic. So-called "scientific socialists" are now inclined to +ridicule such idealistic speculation, but one has only to scratch +beneath the surface of present-day socialist propaganda to find under +its materialist jargon the same old dream of the ages. A great +world-change is to come suddenly. With the triumph of the workers there +will be no more poverty or ignorance, no longer any incentive to men to +do evil to one another. The famous "Manifesto" is filled with such +ideas. Bourgeois society is doomed and about to fall. Forces of social +evolution inevitably point to the world-wide supremacy of the working +class, under whose mild sway the laborer is to be given the full product +of his toil, the exploitation of children is to cease, true liberty +will be achieved, prostitution, which is somehow a bourgeois +institution, is to be abolished, everyone will be educated, production +increased till there is enough for all, the cities shall no more lord it +over the rural communities, all alike will perform useful labor, waste +places of the earth will become cultivated lands and the fertility of +the soil will be increased in accordance with a common plan, the state, +an instrument of bourgeois exploitation, will cease to exist; in fact, +the whole wicked past is to be left behind, for as + + The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with + traditional property relations, no wonder that its development + involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. + +In fine, + + In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class + antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free + development of each is the condition for the free development of + all. + +Le Bon says of the French Revolution: + + The principles of the Revolution speedily inspired a wave of + mystic enthusiasm analogous to those provoked by the various + religious beliefs which had preceded it. All they did was to + change the orientation of a mental ancestry which the centuries + had solidified. + + So there is nothing astonishing in the savage zeal of the men of + the Convention. Their mystic mentality was the same as that of + the Protestants at the time of the Reformation. The principal + heroes of the Terror--Couthon, Saint Just, Robespierre, + etc.--were apostles. Like Polyeuctes destroying the altars of + the false gods to propagate his faith, they dreamed of + converting the globe.... The mystic spirit of the leaders of the + Revolution was betrayed in the least details of their public + life. Robespierre, convinced that he was supported by the + Almighty, assured his hearers in a speech that the Supreme Being + had "decreed the Republic since the beginning of time." + +A recent writer, after showing that the Russian revolution has failed to +put the Marxian principles into actual operation, says of Lenin and his +associates: + + They have caught a formula of glittering words; they have + learned the verbal cadences which move the masses to ecstasy; + they have learned to paint a vision of heaven that shall + outflare in the minds of their followers the shabby realities of + a Bolshevik earth. They are master phraseocrats, and in Russia + they have reared an empire on phraseocracy. + + The alarmists who shriek of Russia would do well to turn their + thoughts from Russia's socialistic menace. The peril of Russia + is not to our industries, but to our states. The menace of the + Bolsheviki is not an economic one, it is a political menace. It + is the menace of fanatic armies, drunken with phrases and + sweeping forward under Lenin like a Muscovite scourge. It is the + menace of intoxicated proletarians, goaded by invented visions + to seek to conquer the world. + + In Nicolai Lenin the Socialist, we have naught to fear. In + Nicolai Lenin the political chief of Russia's millions, we may + well find a menace, for his figure looms over the world. His + Bolshevik abracadabra has seduced the workers of every race. His + stealthy propaganda has shattered the morale of every army in + the world. His dreams are winging to Napoleonic flights, and + well he may dream of destiny; for in an age when we bow to + phrases, it is Lenin who is the master phraseocrat of the world. + +Passing over the question of Lenin's personal ambitions, and whether our +own crowd-stupidity, panic, and wrong-headed Allied diplomacy may not +have been contributing causes of the menace of Bolshevism, it can hardly +be denied that Bolshevism, like all other revolutionary crowd-movements, +is swayed by a painted vision of heaven which outflares the miseries of +earth. _Every revolutionary crowd of every description is a pilgrimage +set out to regain our lost Paradise._ + +Now it is this dream of paradise, or ideal society, which deserves +analytical study. Why does it always appear the minute a crowd is +sufficiently powerful to dream of world-power? It will readily be +conceded that this dream has some function in creating certain really +desirable social values. But such values cannot be the psychogenesis of +the dream. If the dream were ever realized, I think William James was +correct in saying that we should find it to be but a "sheep's heaven +and lubberland of joy," and that life in it would be so "mawkish and +dishwatery" that we should gladly return to this world of struggle and +challenge, or anywhere else, if only to escape the deadly inanity. + +We have already noted the fact that this dream has the function of +justifying the crowd in its revolt and will to rule. But this is by no +means all. The social idealism has well been called a dream, for that is +just what it is, the daydream of the ages. It is like belief in fairies, +or the Cinderella myth. It is the Jack-and-the-beanstalk philosophy. The +dream has exactly the same function as the Absolute, and the ideal +world-systems of the paranoiac; _it is an imaginary refuge from the +real_. Like all other dreams, it is the realization of a wish. I have +long been impressed with the static character of this dream; not only is +it much the same in all ages, but it is always regarded as the great +culmination beyond which the imagination cannot stretch. Even those who +hold the evolutionary view of reality and know well that life is +continuous change, and that progress cannot be fixed in any passing +moment, however sweet, are generally unable to imagine progress going on +after the establishment of the ideal society and leaving it behind. + +Revolutionary propaganda habitually stops, like the nineteenth-century +love story, with a general statement, "and so they lived happily ever +after." It is really the end, not the beginning or middle of the story. +It is the divine event toward which the whole creation moves, and having +reached it, _stops_. Evolution having been wound up to run to just this +end, time and change and effort may now be discontinued. There is +nothing further to do. In other words, the ideal is lifted clear out of +time and all historical connections. As in other dreams, the empirically +known sequence of events is ignored. Whole centuries of progress and +struggle and piecemeal experience are telescoped into one imaginary +symbolic moment. The moment now stands for the whole process, or rather +it is _substituted_ for the process. We have taken refuge from the real +into the ideal. The "Kingdom of Heaven," "Paradise," "The Return to Man +in the State of Nature," "Back to Primitive New Testament Christianity," +"The Age of Reason," "Utopia," the "Revolution," the "Co-operative +Commonwealth," all mean psychologically the same thing. And that thing +is not at all a scientific social program, but a symbol of an easier and +better world where desires are realized by magic, and everyone's check +drawn upon the bank of existence is cashed. _Social idealism of +revolutionary crowds is a mechanism of compensation and escape for +suppressed desires._ + +Is there any easier way of denying the true nature and significance of +our objective world than by persuading ourselves that that world is even +now doomed, and is bound suddenly to be transformed into the land of our +heart's desire? Is it not to be expected that people would soon learn +how to give those desires greater unction, and to encourage one another +in holding to the fictions by which those desires could find their +compensation and escape, by resorting to precisely the crowd-devices +which we have been discussing? + +The Messianists of Bible times expected the great transformation and +world cataclysm to come by means of a divine miracle. Those who are +affected by the wave of premillennialism which is now running through +certain evangelical Christian communions are experiencing a revival of +this faith with much of its primitive terminology. + +Evolutionary social revolutionists expect the great day to come as the +culmination of a process of economic evolution. This is what is meant by +"evolutionary and revolutionary socialism." The wish-fancy is here +rationalized as a doctrine of evolution by revolution. Thus the +difference between the social revolutionist and the Second Adventist is +much smaller than either of them suspects. As Freud would doubtless say, +the difference extends only to the "secondary elaboration of the +manifest dream formation"--the latent dream thought is the same in both +cases. The Adventist expresses the wish in the terminology of a +prescientific age, while the social revolutionist makes use of modern +scientific jargon. Each alike finds escape from reality in the +contemplation of a new-world system. The faith of each is a scheme of +redemption--that is, of "compensation." Each contemplates the sudden, +cataclysmic destruction of the "present evil world," and its replacement +by a new order in which the meek shall inherit the earth. To both alike +the great event is destined, in the fullness of time, to come as a thief +in the night. In the one case it is to come as the fulfillment of +prophecy; in the other the promise is underwritten and guaranteed by +impersonal forces of "economic evolution." + +This determinism is in the one case what Bergson calls "radical +finalism," and in the other "radical mechanism." But whether the +universe exists but to reel off a divine plan conceived before all +worlds, or be but the mechanical swinging of the shuttle of cause and +effect, what difference is there if the point arrived at is the same? In +both cases this point was fixed before the beginning of time, and the +meaning of the universe is just that and nothing else, since that is +what it all comes to in the end. + +Whether the hand which turns the crank of the world-machine be called +that of God or merely "Evolution," it is only a verbal difference; it is +in both cases "a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness." And +the righteousness? Why, it is just the righteousness of our own +crowd--in other words, the crowd's bill of rights painted in the sky by +our own wish-fancy, and dancing over our heads like an aurora borealis. +It is the history of all crowds that this dazzling pillar of fire in the +Arctic night is hailed as the "rosy-fingered dawn" of the Day of the +Lord. + +Or, to change the figure somewhat, the faithful crowd has but to follow +its fiery cloud to the promised land which flows with milk and honey; +then march for an appointed time about the walls of the wicked bourgeois +Jericho, playing its propaganda tune until the walls fall down by magic +and the world is ours. _No revolution is possible without a miracle and +a brass band._ + +I have no desire to discourage those who have gone to work at the real +tasks of social reconstruction--certainly no wish to make this study an +apology for the existing social order. In the face of the ugly facts +which on every hand stand as indictments of what is called "capitalism," +it is doubtful if anyone could defend the present system without +recourse to a certain amount of cynicism or cant. The widespread social +unrest which has enlisted in its service so much of the intellectual +spirit of this generation surely could never have come about without +provocation more real than the work of a mere handful of +"mischief-making agitators." The challenge to modern society is not +wholly of crowd origin. + +But it is one thing to face seriously the manifold problems of +reconstruction of our social relations, and it is quite another thing to +persuade oneself that all these entangled problems have but one +imaginary neck which is waiting to be cut with a single stroke of the +sword of revolution in the hands of "the people." Hundreds of times I +have heard radicals, while discussing certain evils of present society, +say, "All these things are but symptoms, effects; to get rid of them you +must remove the cause." That cause is always, in substance, the present +economic system. + +If this argument means that, instead of thinking of the various phases +of social behavior as isolated from one another, we should conceive of +them as so interrelated as to form something like a more or less +causally connected organic whole, I agree. But if it means something +else--and it frequently does--the argument is based upon a logical +fallacy. The word "system" is not a causal term; it is purely +descriptive. The facts referred to, whatever connections we may discover +among them, are not the effects of a mysterious "system" behind the +facts of human behavior; the facts themselves, taken together, are the +system. + +The confusion of causal and descriptive ideas is a habit common to both +the intellectualist philosopher and the crowd-minded. It enables people +to turn their gaze from the empirical Many to the fictitious One, from +the real to the imaginary. The idea of a system behind, over, outside, +and something different from the related facts which the term "system" +is properly used to describe, whether that system be a world-system, a +logical system, or a social system, whether it be capitalism or +socialism, "system" so conceived is a favorite crowd-spook. It is the +same logical fallacy as if one spoke of the temperature of this May day +as the effect of the climate, when all know that the term climate is +simply (to paraphrase James) the term by which we characterize the +temperature, weather, etc., which we experience on this and other days. +We have already seen to what use the crowd-mind puts all such +generalizations. + +A popular revolutionary philosophy of history pictures the procession of +the ages as made up of a pageant of spook-social systems, each distinct +from the others and coming in its appointed time. But social systems do +not follow in a row, like elephants in a circus parade--each huge beast +with its trunk coiled about the end of his predecessor's tail. The +greater part of this "evolutionary and revolutionary" pageantry is +simply dream-stuff. Those who try to march into Utopia in such an +imaginary parade are not even trying to reconstruct society; they are +sociological somnambulists. + +The crowd-mind clings to such pageantry because, as we saw in another +connection, the crowd desires to believe that evolution guarantees its +own future supremacy. It then becomes unnecessary to solve concrete +problems. One need only possess an official program of the order of the +parade. In other words, the crowd must persuade itself that only one +solution of the social problem is possible, and that one inevitable--its +own. + +Such thinking wholly misconceives the nature of the social problem. Like +all the practical dilemmas of life, this problem, assuming it to be in +any sense a single problem, is real just because more than one solution +is possible. The task here is like that of choosing a career. Whole +series of partially foreseen possibilities are contingent upon certain +definite choices. Aside from our choosing, many sorts of futures may be +equally possible. Our intervention at this or that definite point is an +act by which we will one series of possibilities rather than another +into reality. But the act of intervention is never performed once for +all. Each intervention leads only to new dilemmas, among which we must +again choose and intervene. It is mainly in order to escape from the +necessity of facing this terrifying series of unforeseeable dilemmas +that the crowd-man walketh in a vain show. + +In pointing out the futility of present-day revolutionary +crowd-thinking, I am only striving to direct, in however small a degree, +our thought and energies into channels which lead toward desired +results. It is not by trombones that we are to redeem society, nor is +the old order going to tumble down like the walls of Jericho, and a +complete new start be given. Civilization cannot be wiped out and begun +all over again. It constitutes the environment within which our +reconstructive thinking must, by tedious effort, make certain definite +modifications. Each such modification is a problem in itself, to be +dealt with, not by belief in miracle, but by what Dewey calls "creative +intelligence." Each such modification must be achieved by taking all the +known facts, which are relevant, into account. As such it is a new +adaptation, and the result of a series of such adaptations may be as +great and radical a social transformation as one may have the courage +to set as the goal of a definite policy of social effort. But there is a +world of difference between social thinking of this kind, where faith is +a working hypothesis, and that which ignores the concrete problems that +must be solved to reach the desired goal, and, after the manner of +crowds, dreams of entering fairyland, or of pulling a new world _en +bloc_ down out of the blue, by the magic of substituting new tyrannies +for old. + +Revolutionary crowd-thinking is not "creative intelligence." It is +_hocus-pocus_, a sort of social magic formula like the "mutabor" in the +Arabian Nights; it is an _Aladdin's-lamp_ philosophy. And here we may +sum up this part of our argument. The idea of the revolution is to the +crowd a symbol, the function of which is compensation for the burdens of +the struggle for existence, for the feeling of social inferiority, and +for desires suppressed by civilization. It is an imaginary escape from +hard reality, a new-world system in which the ego seeks refuge, a +defense mechanism under the compulsive influence of which crowds behave +like somnambulistic individuals. It is the apotheosis of the under crowd +itself and the transcendental expression and justification of its will +to rule. It is made up of just those broad generalizations which are of +use in keeping that crowd together. It gives the new crowd unction in +its fight with the old, since it was precisely these same dream-thoughts +which the old crowd wrote on its banners in the day when it, too, was +blowing trumpets outside the walls of Jericho. + + + + +VIII + +THE FRUITS OF REVOLUTION--NEW CROWD-TYRANNIES FOR OLD + + +So much for the psychology of the revolutionary propaganda. Now let us +look at what happens in the moment of revolutionary outbreak. We have +dwelt at some length on the fact that a revolution occurs when a new +crowd succeeds in displacing an old one in position of social control. +At first there is a general feeling of release and of freedom. There is +a brief period of ecstasy, of good will, a strange, almost mystical +magnanimity. A flood of oratory is released in praise of the "new day of +the people." Everyone is a "comrade." Everyone is important. There is an +inclination to trust everyone. This Easter-morning state of mind +generally lasts for some days--until people are driven by the pinch of +hunger to stop talking and take up again the routine tasks of daily +living. We have all read how the "citizens" of the French Revolution +danced in the streets for sheer joy in their new-won liberty. Those who +were in Petrograd during the days which immediately followed the +downfall of the Tsar bear witness to a like almost mystical sense of the +general goodness of human kind and of joy in human fellowship. + +With the return to the commonplace tasks of daily life, some effort, and +indeed further rationalization, is needed to keep up the feeling that +the new and wonderful age has really come to stay. Conflicts of interest +and special grievances are viewed as involving the vital principles of +the Revolution. People become impatient and censorious. There is a +searching of hearts. People watch their neighbors, especially their +rivals, to make sure that nothing in their behavior shall confirm the +misgivings which are vaguely felt in their own minds. The rejoicing and +comradeship which before were spontaneous are now demanded. Intolerance +toward the vanquished crowd reappears with increased intensity, not a +little augmented by the knowledge that the old enemies are now at "the +people's" mercy. + +There is a demand for revenge for old abuses. The displaced crowd likely +as not, foreseeing the doom which awaits its members, seeks escape by +attempting a counter-revolution. A propaganda of sympathy is carried on +among members of this same class who remain in the dominant crowd in +communities not affected by the revolution. There is secret plotting +and suspicion of treason on every hand. People resort to extravagant +expressions of their revolutionary principles, not only to keep up their +own faith in them, but to show their loyalty to the great cause. The +most fanatical and uncompromising members of the group gain prominence +because of their excessive devotion. By the very logic of +crowd-thinking, leadership passes to men who are less and less competent +to deal with facts and more and more extreme in their zeal. Hence the +usual decline from the Mirabeaus to the Dantons and Cariers, and from +these to the Marats and Robespierres, from the Milukoffs to the +Kerenskys and from the Kerenskys to the Trotzkys. With each excess the +crowd must erect some still new defense against the inevitable +disclosure of the fact that the people are not behaving at all as if +they were living in the kingdom of heaven. With each farther deviation +from the plain meaning of facts, the revolution must resort to more +severe measures to sustain itself, until finally an unsurmountable +barrier is reached, such as the arrival on the scene of a Napoleon. Then +the majority are forced to abandon the vain hope of really attaining +Utopia, and content themselves with fictions to the effect that what +they have really _is_ Utopia--or with such other mechanisms as will +serve to excuse and minimize the significance of existing facts and put +off the complete realization of the ideal until some future stage of +progress. It is needless to add that those who have most profited by the +revolutionary change are also most ready to take the lead in persuading +their neighbors to be content with these rational compromises. + +Meanwhile, however, the revolutionary leaders have set up a dictatorship +of their own, which, while necessary to "save the revolution," is itself +a practical negation of the revolutionary dream of a free world. This +dictatorship, finally passing into the hands of the more competent +element of the revolutionary crowd, justifies itself to the many; +professing and requiring of all a verbal assent to the revolutionary +creed of which its very existence is a fundamental repudiation. This +group becomes in time the nucleus about which society finally settles +down again in comparative peace and equilibrium. + +In general, then, it may be said that a revolution does not and cannot +realize the age-long dream of a world set free. Its results may be +summed up as follows: a newly dominant crowd, a new statement of old +beliefs, new owners of property in the places of the old, new names for +old tyrannies. Looking back over the history of the several great tidal +waves of revolution which have swept over the civilization which is +to-day ours, it would appear that one effect of them has been to +intensify the hold which crowd-thinking has upon all of us, also to +widen the range of the things which we submit to the crowd-mind for +final judgment. In confirmation of this it is to be noted that it is on +the whole those nations which have been burnt over by both the +Reformation and the eighteenth-century revolution which exhibit the most +chauvian brand of nationalism and crowd-patriotism. It is these same +nations also which have most highly depersonalized their social +relationships, political structures, and ideals. It is these nations +also whose councils are most determined by spasms of crowd-propaganda. + +The modern man doubtless has a sense of self in a degree unknown--except +by the few--in earlier ages, but along with this there exists in "modern +ideas," a complete system of crowd-ideas with which the conscious self +comes into conflict at every turn. Just how far the revolutionary crowds +of the past have operated to provide the stereotyped forms in which +present crowd-thinking is carried on, it is almost impossible to learn. +But that their influence has been great may be seen by anyone who +attempts a psychological study of "public opinion." + +Aside from the results mentioned, I think the deposit of revolutionary +movements in history has been very small. It may be that, in the +general shake-up of such a period, a few vigorous spirits are tossed +into a place where their genius has an opportunity which it would +otherwise have failed to get. But it would seem that on the whole the +idea that revolutions help the progress of the race is a hoax. Where +advancement has been achieved in freedom, in intelligence, in ethical +values, in art or science, in consideration for humanity, in +legislation, it has in each instance been achieved by unique +individuals, and has spread chiefly by personal influence, never gaining +assent except among those who have power to recreate the new values won +in their own experience. + +Whenever we take up a new idea as a crowd, we at once turn it into a +catchword and a fad. Faddism, instead of being merely a hunger for the +new is rather an expression of the crowd-will to uniformity. To be +"old-fashioned" and out of date is as truly to be a nonconformist as to +be a freak or an originator. Faddism is neither radicalism nor a symptom +of progress. It is a mark of the passion for uniformity or _the +conservatism of the crowd-mind_. It is change; but its change is +insignificant. + +It is often said that religious liberty is the fruit of the Reformation. +If so it is an indirect result and one which the reformers certainly +did not desire. They sought liberty only for their own particular +propaganda, a fact which is abundantly proved by Calvin's treatment of +Servetus and of the Anabaptists, by Luther's attitude toward the Saxon +peasants, by the treatment of Catholics in England, by the whole history +of Cromwell's rule, by the persecution of Quakers and all other +"heretics" in our American colonies--Pennsylvania, I believe, +excepted--down to the date of the American Revolution. + +It just happened that Protestantism as _the religion of the bourgeois_ +fell into the hands of a group, who, outside their religious-crowd +interests were destined to be the greatest practical beneficiaries of +the advancement of applied science. Between applied science and science +as a cultural discipline--that is, science as a humanistic study--the +line is hard to draw. The Humanist spirit of the sciences attained a +certain freedom, notwithstanding the fact that the whole Reformation was +really a reactionary movement against the Renaissance; in spite, +moreover, of the patent fact that the Protestant churches still, +officially at least, resist the free spirit of scientific culture. + +It is to the free spirits of the Italian Renaissance, also to the +Jeffersons and Franklins and Paines, the Lincolns and Ingersolls, the +Huxleys and Darwins and Spencers, the men who dared alone to resist the +religious crowd-mind and to undermine the abstract ideas in which it had +intrenched itself, to whom the modern world owes its religious and +intellectual liberty. + +The same is true of political liberty. England, which is the most free +country in the world to-day, never really experienced the revolutionary +crowd-movement of the eighteenth century. Instead, the changes came by a +process of gradual reconstruction. And it is with just such an +opportunist reconstructive process that England promises now to meet and +solve the problems of the threatened social revolution. In contrast with +Russia, Socialism in England has much ground for hope of success. The +radical movement in England is on the whole wisely led by men who with +few exceptions can think realistically and pragmatically, and refuse to +be swept off their feet by crowd-abstractions. The British Labor party +is the least crowd-minded of any of the socialistic organizations of our +day. The Rochdale group has demonstrated that if it is co-operation that +people desire as a solution of the economic problem, the way to solve it +is to co-operate along definite and practicable lines; the co-operators +have given up belief in the miracle of Jericho. The British trade-union +movement has demonstrated the fact that organization of this kind +succeeds in just the degree that it can rise above crowd-thinking and +deal with a suggestion of concrete problems according to a statesmanlike +policy of concerted action. + +To be sure it cannot be denied that the social reconstruction in England +is seriously menaced by the tendency to crowd-behavior. At best it +reveals hardly more than the superior advantage to the whole community +of a slightly less degree of crowd-behavior; but when compared with the +Socialist movement in Russia, Germany, and the United States, it would +seem that radicalism in England has at least a remote promise of +reaching a working solution of the social problem; and that is more than +can at present be said for the others. + +In the light of what has been said about the psychology of revolution, I +think we may hazard an opinion about the vaunted "Dictatorship of the +Proletariat"--an idea that has provided some new catchwords for the +crowd which is fascinated by the soviet revolution in Russia. Granting +for the sake of argument that such a dictatorship would be desirable +from any point of view--I do not see how the mere fact that people work +proves their capacity to rule, horses also work--would it be possible? I +think not. Even the temporary rule of Lenin in Russia can hardly be +called a rule of the working class. Bolshevist propaganda will have it +that such a dictatorship of the working class is positively necessary +if we are ever to get away from the abuses of present "capitalistic +society." Moreover, it is argued that this dictatorship of the organized +workers could not be undemocratic, for since vested property is to be +abolished and everyone forced to work for his living, all will belong to +the working class, and therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat is +but the dictatorship of all. + +In the first place, assuming that it is the dictatorship of all who +survive the revolution, this dictatorship of all over each is not +liberty for anyone; it may leave not the tiniest corner where one may be +permitted to be master of himself. The tyranny of all over each is as +different from freedom as is pharisaism from spiritual living. + +Again, what is there to show that this imagined dictatorship of all is +to be shared equally by all, and if not have we not merely set up a new +privileged class--the very thing which the Socialist Talmud has always +declared it is the mission of the workers to destroy forever? While the +workers are still a counter-crowd, struggling for power against the +present ruling class, they are of course held together by a common +cause--namely, their opposition to capital. But with labor's triumph, +everybody becomes a worker, and there is no one longer to oppose. That +which held the various elements of labor together in a common crowd of +revolt has now ceased to exist, "class consciousness" has therefore no +longer any meaning. Labor itself has ceased to exist _as a class_ by +reason of its very triumph. What then remains to hold its various +elements together in a common cause? Nothing at all. The solidarity of +the workers vanishes, when the struggle which gave rise to that +solidarity ceases. There remains now nothing but the humanitarian +principle of the solidarity of the human race. Solidarity has ceased to +be an economic fact, and has become purely "ideological." + +Since by hypothesis everyone is a worker, the dictatorship of the +workers is a dictatorship based not on labor as such, but upon a +universal human quality. It would be quite as truly a dictatorship of +everyone if based upon any other common human quality--say, the fact +that we are all bipeds, that we all have noses, or the fact of the +circulation of the blood. As the purely proletarian character of this +dictatorship becomes meaningless, the crowd-struggle switches from that +of labor as a whole against capital, to a series of struggles within the +dominant labor group itself. + +The experience of Russia has even now shown that if the soviets are to +save themselves from nation-wide bankruptcy, specially trained men must +be found to take charge of their industrial and political activities. +Long training is necessary for the successful management of large +affairs, and becomes all the more indispensable as industry, education, +and political affairs are organized on a large scale. Are specially +promising youths to be set apart from early childhood to prepare +themselves for these positions of authority? Or shall such places be +filled by those vigorous few who have the ambition and the strength to +acquire the necessary training while at the same time working at their +daily tasks? In either case an _intellectual class_ must be developed. +Does anyone imagine that this new class of rulers will hesitate to make +use of every opportunity to make itself a privileged class? + +"But what opportunity can there be," is the reply, "since private +capital is to be abolished?" Very well, there have been ruling classes +before in history who did not enjoy the privilege of owning private +property. The clergy of the Middle Ages was such a class, and their +dominance was quite as effective and as enduring as is that of our +commercial classes today. But let us not deceive ourselves; in a soviet +republic there would be opportunity aplenty for exploitation. As the +solidarity of labor vanished, each important trade-group would enter +into rivalry with the others for leadership in the co-operative +commonwealth. Every economic advantage which any group possessed would +be used in order to lord it over the rest. + +For instance, let us suppose that the workers in a strategic industry, +such as the railways, or coal mines, should make the discovery that by +going on a strike they could starve the community as a whole into +submission and gain practically anything they might demand. Loyalty to +the rest of labor would act no more as a check to such ambitions than +does loyalty to humanity in general now. As we have seen, the crowd is +always formed for the unconscious purpose of relaxing the social control +by mechanisms which mutually justify such antisocial conduct on the part +of members of the crowd. There is every reason, both economic and +psychological, why the workers in each industry would become organized +crowds seeking to gain for their particular groups the lion's share of +the spoils of the social revolution. What would there be, then, to +prevent the workers of the railroads or some other essential industry +from exploiting the community quite as mercilessly as the capitalists +are alleged to do at present? Nothing but the rivalry of other crowds +who were seeking the same dominance. In time a _modus vivendi_ would +doubtless be reached whereby social control would be shared by a few of +the stronger unions--and their leaders. + +The strike has already demonstrated the fact that in the hands of a +well-organized body of laborers, especially in those trades where the +number of apprentices may be controlled, industrial power becomes a much +more effective weapon than it is in the hands of the present +capitalistic owners. + +A new dictatorship, therefore, must inevitably follow the social +revolution, in support of which a favored minority will make use of the +industrial power of the community, just as earlier privileged classes +used military power and the power of private property. And this new +dominance would be just as predatory, and would justify itself, as did +the others, by the platitudes of crowd-thinking. The so-called +dictatorship turns out, on examination, to be the dictatorship of one +section of the proletariat over the rest of it. The dream of social +redemption by such means is a pure _crowd-idea_. + + + + +IX + +FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT BY CROWDS + + +The whole philosophy of politics comes down at last to a question of +four words. Who is to govern? Compared with this question the problem of +the form of government is relatively unimportant. Crowd-men, whatever +political faith they profess, behave much the same when they are in +power. The particular forms of political organization through which +their power is exerted are mere incidentals. There is the same +self-laudation, the same tawdry array of abstract principles, the same +exploitation of under crowds, the same cunning in keeping up +appearances, the same preference of the charlatan for positions of +leadership and authority. Machiavelli's Prince, or Dostoievsky's Grand +Inquisitor, would serve just as well as the model for the guidance of a +Cæsar Borgia, a leader of Tammany Hall, a chairman of the National +Committee of a political party, or a Nicolai Lenin. + +Ever since the days of Rousseau certain crowds have persisted in the +conviction that all tyrannies were foisted upon an innocent humanity by +a designing few. There may have been a few instances in history where +such was the case, but tyrannies of that kind have never lasted long. +For the most part the tyrant is merely the instrument and official +symbol of a dominant crowd. His acts are his crowd's acts, and without +his crowd to support him he very soon goes the way of the late Sultan of +Turkey. The Cæsars were hardly more than "walking delegates," +representing the ancient Roman Soldiers' soviet. They were made and +unmade by the army which, though Cæsars might come and Cæsars might go, +continued to lord it over the Roman world. While the army was pagan, +even the mild Marcus Aurelius followed Nero's example of killing +Christians. When finally the army itself became largely Christian, and +the fiction that the Christians drank human blood, worshiped the head of +an ass, and were sexually promiscuous was no longer good patriotic +propaganda, the Emperor Constantine began to see visions of the Cross in +the sky. The Pope, who is doubtless the most absolute monarch in the +Occident, is, however, "infallible" only when he speaks +_ex-cathedra_--that is, as the "Church Herself." His infallibility is +that of the Church. All crowds in one way or another claim +infallibility. The tyrant Robespierre survived only so long as did his +particular revolutionary crowd in France. + +The fate of Savonarola was similar. From his pulpit he could rule +Florence with absolute power just so long as he told his crowd what it +wished to hear, and so long as his crowd was able to keep itself +together and remain dominant. The Stuarts, Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, and +Romanoffs, with all their claims to divine rights, were little more than +the living symbols of their respective nation-crowds. They vanished when +they ceased to represent successfully the crowd-will. + +In general, then, it may be said that _where the crowd is, there is +tyranny_. Tyranny may be exercised through one agent or through many, +but it nearly always comes from the same source--the crowd. Crowd-rule +may exist in a monarchical form of government, or in a republic. The +personnel of the dominant crowd will vary with a change in the form of +the state, but the spirit will be much the same. Conservative writers +are in the habit of assuming that democracy is the rule of crowds pure +and simple. Whether crowd-government is more absolute in a democracy +than in differently constituted states is a question. The aim of +democratic constitutions like our own is to prevent any special crowd +from intrenching itself in a position of social control and thus +becoming a ruling class. As the experiment has worked out thus far it +can hardly be said that it has freed us from the rule of crowds. It has, +however, multiplied the number of mutually suspicious crowds, so that no +one of them has for long enjoyed a sufficiently great majority to make +itself clearly supreme, though it must be admitted that up to the +present the business-man crowd has had the best of the deal. The story +of the recent Eighteenth Amendment shows how easy it is for a determined +crowd, even though in a minority, to force its favorite dogmas upon the +whole community. We shall doubtless see a great deal more of this sort +of thing in the future than we have in the past. And if the various +labor groups should become sufficiently united in a "proletarian" crowd +there is nothing to prevent their going to any extreme. + +We are passing through a period of socialization. All signs point to the +establishment of some sort of social state or industrial commonwealth. +No one can foresee the extent, to which capital now privately owned is +to be transferred to the public. It is doubtful if anything can be done +to check this process. The tendency is no sooner blocked along one +channel than it begins to seep through another. In itself there need be +nothing alarming about this transition. If industry could be better +co-ordinated and more wisely administered by non-crowd men for the +common good, the change might work out to our national advantage. + +It is possible to conceive of a society in which a high degree of social +democracy, even communism, might exist along with a maximum of freedom +and practical achievement. But we should first have to get over our +crowd-ways of thinking and acting. People would have to regard the state +as a purely administrative affair. They would have to organize for +definite practical ends, and select their leaders and administrators +very much as certain corporations now do, strictly on the basis of their +competency. Political institutions would have to be made such that they +could not be seized by special groups to enhance themselves at the +expense of the rest. Partisanship would have to cease. Every effort +would have to be made to loosen the social control over the individual's +personal habits. The kind of people who have an inner gnawing to +regulate their neighbors, the kind who cannot accept the fact of their +psychic inferiority and must consequently make crowds by way of +compensation, would have to be content to mind their own business. +Police power would have to be reduced to the minimum necessary to +protect life and keep the industries running. People would have to +become much more capable of self-direction as well as of voluntary +co-operation than they are now. They would have to be more resentful of +petty official tyranny, more independent in their judgments and at the +same time more willing to accept the advice and authority of experts. +They would have to place the control of affairs in the hands of the type +of man against whose dominance the weaker brethren have in all ages +waged war--that is, the free spirits and natural masters of men. All pet +dogmas and cult ideas that clashed with practical considerations would +have to be swept away. + +Such a conception of society is, of course, wholly utopian. It could not +possibly be realized by people behaving and thinking as crowds. With our +present crowd-making habits, the process of greater socialization of +industry means only increased opportunities for crowd-tyranny. In the +hands of a dominant crowd an industrial state would be indeed what +Herbert Spencer called the "coming slavery." + +As it is, the state has become overgrown and bureaucratic. Commissions +of all sorts are being multiplied year by year. Public debts are piled +up till they approach the point of bankruptcy. Taxes are increasing in +the same degree. Statutes are increased in number until one can hardly +breathe without violating some decree, ordinance, or bit of sumptuary +legislation. Every legislative assembly is constantly besieged by the +professional lobbyists of a swarm of reformist crowds. Busybodies of +every description twist the making and the enforcement of law into +conformity with their peculiar prejudices. Censorships of various kinds +are growing in number and effrontery. Prohibition is insincerely put +forth as a war measure. Ignorant societies for the "suppression of vice" +maul over our literature and our art. Parents of already more children +than they can support may not be permitted lawfully to possess +scientific knowledge of the means of the prevention of conception. The +government, both state and national, takes advantage of the war for +freedom to pass again the hated sort of "alien and sedition" laws from +which the country thought it had freed itself a century ago. A host of +secret agents and volunteer "guardians of public safety" are ready to +place every citizen under suspicion of disloyalty to the government. Any +advocacy of significant change in established political practices is +regarded as sedition. An inquisition is set up for the purpose of +inquiring into people's private political opinions. Reputable citizens +are, on the flimsiest hearsay evidence or rumor that they entertain +nonconformist views, subjected to public censure by notoriety-seeking +"investigation commissions"--and by an irresponsible press. Only members +of an established political party in good standing are permitted to +criticize the acts of the President of the United States. Newspapers and +magazines are suppressed and denied the privilege of the mails at the +whim of opinionated post-office officers or of ignorant employees of the +Department of Justice. An intensely patriotic weekly paper in New York, +which happened to hold unconventional views on the subject of religion, +has had certain issues of its paper suppressed for the offense of +publishing accounts of the alleged misconduct of the Y. M. C. A. + +The stupidity and irresponsibility of the Russian spy-system which has +grown up in this country along with our overweening state is illustrated +by an amusing little experience which happened to myself several months +after the signing of the armistice with Germany. All through the trying +months of the war the great audience at Cooper Union had followed me +with a loyalty and tolerance which was truly wonderful. Though I knew +that many had not always been in hearty accord with my rather +spontaneous and outspoken Americanism, the Cooper Union Forum was one of +the few places in America where foreign and labor elements were present +in large numbers in which there was no outbreak or demonstration of any +kind which could possibly be interpreted as un-American. We all felt +that perhaps the People's Institute with its record of twenty years' +work behind it had been of some real service to the nation in adhering +strictly to its educational method and keeping its discussions wholly +above the level of any sort of crowd-propaganda. + +However, in the course of our educational work, it became my task to +give to a selected group of advanced students a course of lectures upon +the Theory of Knowledge. The course was announced with the title, "How +Free Men Think," and the little folder contained the statement that it +was to be a study of the Humanist logic, with Professor F. C. S. +Schiller's philosophical writings to be used as textbooks. The +publication of this folder announcing the course was held up by the +printer, and we learned that he had been told not to print it by some +official personage whose identity was not revealed. Notwithstanding the +fact that Schiller is professor of philosophy in Corpus Christi College, +Oxford, and is one of the best-known philosophical writers in the +English-speaking world, and holds views practically identical with what +is called the "American School," led by the late William James, it +developed that the government agents--or whoever they were--objected to +the publication of the announcement on the ground that they _thought +Schiller was a German_. Such is our intellectual freedom regarding +matters which have no political significance whatever, in a world made +"safe for democracy." But we must not permit ourselves to despair or +grow weary of life in this "safety first" world--waves of +pseudo-patriotic panic often follow on the heels of easily won victory. +Crowd-phenomena of such intensity are usually of short duration, as +these very excesses soon produce the inevitable reaction. + +The question, however, arises, is democracy more conducive to freedom +than other forms of political organization? To most minds the terms +"liberty" and "democracy" are almost synonymous. Those who consider that +liberty consists in having a vote, in giving everyone a voice regardless +of whether he has anything to say, will have no doubts in the matter. +But to those whose thinking means more than the mere repetition of +eighteenth-century crowd-ideas, the question will reduce itself to this: +Is democracy more conducive to crowd-behavior than other forms of +government? Le Bon and those who identify the crowd with the masses +would answer with an _a priori_ affirmative. I do not believe the +question may be answered in any such off-hand manner. It is a question +of fact rather than of theory. Theoretically, since we have +demonstrated I think that the crowd is not the common people as such, +but is a peculiar form of psychic behavior, it would seem that there is +no logical necessity for holding that democracy must always and +everywhere be the rule of the mob. And we have seen that other forms of +society may also suffer from crowd-rule. I suspect that the repugnance +which certain aristocratic, and bourgeois writers also, show for +democracy is less the horror of crowd-rule as such, than dislike of +seeing control pass over to a crowd other than their own. Theoretically +at least, democracy calls for a maximum of self-government and personal +freedom. The fact that democracy is rapidly degenerating into tyranny of +all over each may be due, not to the democratic ideal itself, but the +growing tendency to crowd-behavior in modern times. It may be that +certain democratic ideals are not so much causes as effects of +crowd-thinking and action. It cannot be denied that such ideals come in +very handy these days in the way of furnishing crowds with effective +catchwords for their propaganda and of providing them with ready-made +justifications for their will to power. I should say that democracy has +_indirectly permitted_, rather than directly caused, an extension in the +range of thought and behavior over which the crowd assumes +dictatorship. + +In comparing democracy with more autocratic forms of government, this +extent or range of crowd-control over the individual is important. Of +course, human beings will never permit to one another a very large +degree of personal freedom. It is to the advantage of everyone in the +struggle for existence to reduce his neighbors as much as possible to +automatons. In this way one's own adjustment to the behavior of others +is made easier. If we can induce or compel all about us to confine their +actions to perfect routine, then we may predict with a fair degree of +accuracy their future behavior, and be prepared in advance to meet it. +We all dread the element of the unexpected, and nowhere so much as in +the conduct of our neighbors. If we could only get rid of the humanly +unexpected, society would be almost fool-proof. Hence the resistance to +new truths, social change, progress, nonconformity of any sort; hence +our orthodoxies and conventions; hence our incessant preaching to our +neighbors to "be good"; hence the fanaticism with which every crowd +strives to keep its believers in line. Much of this insistence on +regularity is positively necessary. Without it there could be no social +or moral order at all. It is in fact the source and security of the +accepted values of civilization, as Schiller has shown. + +But the process of keeping one another in line is carried much farther +than is necessary to preserve the social order. It is insisted upon to +the extent that will guarantee the survival, even the dominance, of the +spiritually sick, the morally timid, the trained-animal men, those who +would revert to savagery, or stand utterly helpless the moment a new +situation demanded that they do some original thinking in the place of +performing the few stereotyped tricks which they have acquired; the +dog-in-the-manger people, who because they can eat no meat insist that +all play the dyspeptic lest the well-fed outdistance them in the race of +life or set them an example in following which they get the stomach +ache; the people who, because they cannot pass a saloon door without +going in and getting drunk, cannot see a moving-picture, or read a +modern book, or visit a bathing beach without being tormented with their +gnawing promiscuous eroticism, insist upon setting up their own +perverted dilemmas as the moral standard for everybody. + +Such people exist in great numbers in every society. They are always +strong for "brotherly love," for keeping up appearances, for removing +temptation from the path of life, for uniform standards of belief and +conduct. Each crowd, in its desire to become the majority, to hold the +weaker brethren within its fold, and especially as everyone of us has a +certain amount of this "little brother" weakness in his own nature, +which longs to be pampered if only the pampering can be done without +hurting our pride--the crowd invariably plays to this sort of thing and +bids for its support. As the little brother always expresses his +survival-values in terms of accepted crowd-ideas, no crowd can really +turn him down without repudiating its abstract principles. In fact, it +is just this weakness in our nature which, as we have seen, leads us to +become crowd-men in the first place. Furthermore, we have seen that any +assertion of personal independence is resented by the crowd because it +weakens the crowd-faith of all. + +The measure of freedom granted to men will depend, therefore, upon how +many things the crowd attempts to consider its business. There is a law +of inertia at work here. In monarchical forms of government, where the +crowd-will is exercised through a single human agent, the monarch may be +absolute in regard to certain things which are necessary to his own and +his crowd's survival. In such matters "he can do no wrong"; there is +little or no appeal from his decisions. But the very thoroughness with +which he hunts down nonconformity in matters which directly concern his +authority, leaves him little energy for other things. Arbitrary power +is therefore usually limited to relatively few things, since the +autocrat cannot busy himself with everything that is going on. Within +the radius of the things which the monarch attempts to regulate he may +be an intolerable tyrant, but so long as he is obeyed in these matters, +so long as things run on smoothly on the surface, there are all sorts of +things which he would prefer not to have brought to his attention, as +witness, for instance, the letter of Trajan to the younger Pliny. + +With a democracy it is different. While the exercise of authority is +never so inexorable--indeed democratic states frequently pass laws for +the purpose of placing the community on record "for righteousness," +rather than with the intention of enforcing such laws--the number of +things which a democracy will presume to regulate is vastly greater than +in monarchical states. As sovereignty is universal, everybody becomes +lawmaker and regulator of his neighbors. As the lawmaking power is +present everywhere, nothing can escape its multieyed scrutiny. All sorts +of foibles, sectional interests, group demands, class prejudices become +part of the law of the land. A democracy is no respecter of persons and +can, under its dogma of equality before the law, admit of no exceptions. +The whole body politic is weighed down with all the several bits of +legislation which may be demanded by any of the various groups within +it. An unusual inducement and opportunity are thus provided for every +crowd to force its own crowd-dilemmas upon all. + +The majority not only usurps the place of the king, but it tends to +subject the whole range of human thought and behavior to its +authority--everything, in fact, that anyone, disliking in his neighbors +or finding himself tempted to do, may wish to "pass a law against." +Every personal habit and private opinion becomes a matter for public +concern. Custom no longer regulates; all is rationalized according to +the logic of the crowd-mind. Public policy sits on the doorstep of every +man's personal conscience. The citizen in us eats up the man. Not the +tiniest personal comfort may yet be left us in private enjoyment. All +that cannot be translated into propaganda or hold its own in a +legislative lobby succumbs. If we are to preserve anything of our +personal independence, we must organize ourselves into a crowd like the +rest and get out in the streets and set up a public howl. Unless some +one pretty soon starts a pro-tobacco crusade and proves to the +newspaper-reading public that the use of nicotine by everybody in equal +amount is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the American +home, for economic efficiency and future military supremacy, we shall +doubtless all soon be obliged to sneak down into the cellar and smoke +our pipes in the dark. + +Here we see the true argument for a written constitution, and also, I +think, a psychological principle which helps us to decide what should be +in a constitution and what should not. The aim of a constitution is to +put a limit to the number of things concerning which a majority-crowd +may lord it over the individual. I am aware that the appeal to the +Constitution is often abused by predatory interests which skulk behind +its phraseology in their defense of special economic privilege. But, +nevertheless, people in a democracy may be free only so long as they +submit to the dictation of the majority in _just and only those few +interests concerning which a monarch, were he in existence, would take +advantage of them for his personal ends_. There are certain political +and economic relations which cannot be left to the chance exploitation +of any individual or group that happens to come along. Some one is sure +to come along, for you may be sure that if there is a possible +opportunity to take advantage, some one will do it sooner or later. + +Now because people have discovered that there is no possible individual +freedom in respect to certain definite phases of their common life which +are always exposed to seizure by exploiters, democrats have substituted +a tyranny of the majority for the tyranny of the one or the favored few +which would otherwise be erected at these points. Since it is necessary +to give up freedom in these regions anyway, there is some compensation +in spreading the tyrannizing around so that each gets a little share of +it. But every effort should be made to _limit the tyranny of the +majority to just these points_. And the line limiting the number of +things that the majority may meddle with must be drawn as hard and fast +as possible, since every dominant crowd, as we have seen, will squeeze +the life out of everything human it can get its hands on. The minute a +majority finds that it can extend its tyranny beyond this strictly +constitutionally limited sphere, nothing remains to stop it; it becomes +worse than an autocracy. Tyranny is no less abhorrent just because the +number of tyrants is increased. A nation composed of a hundred million +little tyrants snooping and prying into every corner may be democratic, +but, personally, if that ever comes to be the choice I think I should +prefer one tyrant. He might occasionally look the other way and leave me +a free man, long enough at least for me to light my pipe. + +True democrats will be very jealous of government. Necessary as it is, +there is no magic about government, no saving grace. Government cannot +redeem us from our sins; it will always require all the decency we +possess to redeem the government. Government always represents the moral +dilemmas of the worst people, not the best. It cannot give us freedom; +it can give or grant us nothing but what it first takes from us. It is +we who grant to the government certain powers and privileges necessary +for its proper functioning. We do not exist for the government; it +exists for us. We are not its servants; it is our servant. Government at +best is a useful and necessary machine, a mechanism by which we protect +ourselves from one another. It has no more rights and dignities of its +own than are possessed by any other machine. Its laws should be obeyed, +for the same reason that the laws of mechanics should be +obeyed--otherwise the machine will not run. + +As a matter of fact it is not so much government itself against which +the democrat must be on guard, but the various crowds which are always +seeking to make use of the machinery of government in order to impose +their peculiar tyranny upon all and invade the privacy of everyone. By +widening the radius of governmental control, the crowd thus pinches down +the individuality of everyone with the same restrictions as are imposed +by the crowd upon its own members. + +Conway says: + + Present-day Democracy rests on a few organized parties. What + would a democracy be like if based on millions of independent + Joneses each of whom decided to vote this or that way as he + pleased? The dominion of the crowd would be at an end, both for + better and for worse. We shall not behold any such revolution in + the world as we know it.... + + Thus we must conclude that the crowd by its very nature tends, + and always must tend, to diminish (if possible, to the vanishing + point) the freedom of its members, and not in one or two + respects alone, but in all. The crowd's desire is to swallow up + the individuality of its members and reduce them one and all to + the condition of crowd units whose whole life is lived according + to the crowd-pattern and is sacrificed and devoted to + crowd-interests.... + + An excellent illustration of this crowd-dominance crops up in my + afternoon paper.... It appears that in certain parts of the + country artisans, by drinking too much alcohol, are reducing + their capacity of doing their proper work, which happens at the + moment to be of great importance to the country at war. Many + interferences with liberty are permitted in war time by general + consent. It is accordingly proposed to put difficulties in the + way of these drinkers by executive orders. One would suppose + that the just way to do this would be to make a list of the + drinkers and prohibit their indulgence. But this is not the way + the crowd works. To it everyone of its constituent members is + like another, and all must be drilled and controlled alike.... + Whatever measure is adopted must fall evenly on all classes, + upon club, restaurant and hotel as upon public house. Could + anything be more absurd? Lest a gunmaker or a shipbuilder in + Glasgow should drink too much, Mr. Asquith must not take a glass + of sherry with his lunch at the Athenæum!... + + We live in days when crowd dominion over individuals has been + advancing at a headlong pace.... If he is not to drink in London + lest a Glasgow engineer should get drunk, why should not his + eating be alike limited? Why not the style and cut of his + clothes? Why not the size and character of his house? He must + cause his children to be taught at least the minimum of muddled + information which the government calls education. He must insure + for his dependents the attention of an all-educated physician, + and the administration of drugs known to be useless. If the + crowd had its way every mother and infant would be under the + orders of inspectors, regardless of the capacity of the parent. + We should all be ordered about in every relation of life from + infancy to manhood.... Freedom would utterly vanish, and this, + not because the crowd can arrange things better than the + individual. It cannot. It lacks the individual's brains. The + ultimate reason for all this interference is the crowd's desire + to swallow up and control the unit. The instinct of all crowds + is to dominate, to capture and overwhelm the individual, to make + him their slave, to absorb all his life for their service. + +The criticism has often been made of democracy that it permits too much +freedom; the reverse of this is nearer the truth. It was de Tocqueville, +I think, who first called attention to the "tyranny of the majority" in +democratic America. Probably one of the most comprehensive and +discriminating studies that have ever been made of the habits and +institutions of any nation may be found in the work of this observing +young Frenchman who visited our country at the close of its first half +century of political independence. De Tocqueville's account of Democracy +in America is still good reading, much of it being applicable to the +present. This writer was in no sense an unfriendly critic. He praised +much that he saw, but even in those days (the period of 1830) he was not +taken in by the fiction that, because the American people live under +laws of their own making, they are therefore free. Much of the following +passages taken here and there from Chapters XIV and XV is as true today +as it was when it was written: + + America is therefore a free country in which, lest anybody be + hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of + private individuals, of the State, or the citizens, or the + authorities, of public or private undertakings, in short of + anything at all, except perhaps the climate and the soil, and + even then Americans will be found ready to defend both as if + they had concurred in producing them. + + The American submits without a murmur to the authority of the + pettiest magistrate. This truth prevails even in the trivial + details of national life. An American cannot converse--he speaks + to you as if he were addressing a meeting. If an American were + condemned to confine himself to his own affairs, he would be + robbed of one-half of his existence; his wretchedness would be + unbearable.... + + The moral authority of the majority in America is based on the + notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of + men united than in a single individual.... The theory of + equality is thus applied to the intellects of men. + + The French, under the old regime, held it for a maxim that the + King could do no wrong. The Americans entertain the same opinion + with regard to the majority. + + In the United States, all parties are willing to recognize the + rights of the majority, because they all hope at some time to be + able to exercise them to their own advantage. The majority + therefore in that country exercises a prodigious actual + authority and a power of opinion which is nearly as great (as + that of the absolute autocrat). No obstacles exist which can + impair or even retard its progress so as to make it heed the + complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of + things is harmful in itself and dangerous for the future. + + As the majority is the only power which it is important to + court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest ardor; + but no sooner is its attention distracted than all this ardor + ceases. + + There is no power on earth so worthy of honor in itself, or + clothed with rights so sacred, that I would admit its + uncontrolled and all-predominant authority. + + In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic + institutions of the United States does not arise, as is so often + asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their + irresistible strength.... I am not so much alarmed by the + excessive liberty which reigns in that country, as by the + inadequate securities which one finds against tyranny. When an + individual or party is wronged in the United States, to whom can + he apply for redress? + + It is in the examination of the exercise of thought in the + United States that we clearly perceive how far the power of the + majority surpasses all the powers with which we are acquainted + in Europe. At the present time the most absolute monarchs in + Europe cannot prevent certain opinions hostile to their + authority from circulating in secret through their dominions and + even in their courts. + + It is not so in America. So long as the majority is undecided, + discussion is carried on, but as soon as its decision is + announced everyone is silent.... + + I know of no country in which there is so little independence of + mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. In America + the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of + opinion. Within these barriers an author may write what he + pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is + in danger of an _auto-da-fe_, but he is exposed to continued + obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed for + ever. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is + refused him. Those who think like him have not the courage to + speak out, and abandon him to silence. He yields at length, + overcome by the daily effort which he has to make, and subsides + into silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth. + + Fetters and headsmen were coarse instruments ... but + civilization has perfected despotism itself. Under absolute + despotism of one man, the body was attacked to subdue the soul, + but the soul escaped the blows and rose superior. Such is not + the course adopted in democratic republics; there the body is + left free, but the soul is enslaved.... + + The ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of. + The smallest reproach irritates its sensibilities. The slightest + joke which has any foundation in truth renders it indignant. + Everything must be the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever + his eminence, can escape paying his tribute of adoration to his + fellow citizens. + + The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause, + and there are certain truths which Americans can only learn from + strangers, or from experience. If America has not yet had any + great writers, the reason is given in these facts--there can be + no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of + opinion does not exist in America. + +Such passages as the above, quoted from the words of a friendly student +of American democracy, show the impression which, notwithstanding our +popular prattle about freedom, thoughtful foreigners have since the +beginning received. And de Tocqueville wrote long before crowd-thinking +had reached anything like the development we see at present. To-day the +tyrannizing is not confined to the majority-crowd. All sorts of +minority-crowds, impatient of waiting until they can by fair means +persuade the majority to agree with them, begin to practice coercion +upon everyone within reach the minute they fall into possession of some +slight advantage which may be used as a weapon. From the industrial side +we were first menaced by the "invisible government" of organized vested +interests; now, by a growing tendency to government by strikes. +Organized gangs of all sorts have at last learned the amusing trick of +pointing a pistol at the public's head and threatening it with +starvation, and up go its hands, and the gang gains whatever it wants +for itself, regardless of anyone else. But this "hold-up game" is by no +means confined to labor. Capitalistic soviets have since the beginning +of the war taken advantage of situations to enhance their special +crowd-interests. The following, quoted from a letter written during the +war to the _Atlantic Monthly_, by a thoroughly American writer, Charles +D. Stewart, describes a type of mob rule which existed in almost every +part of the nation while we were fighting for freedom abroad: + + Carlyle said that "Of all forms of government, a government of + busybodies is the worst." This is true. It is worse than + Prussianism, because that is one form of government, at least; + and worse than Socialism, because Socialism would be run by law, + anyway. But government by busybodies has neither head nor tail; + working outside the law, it becomes lawless; and having no law + to support it, it finally depends for its enforcement upon + hoodlums and mob rule. When the respectable and wealthy elements + are resorting to this sort of government, abetted by the + newspapers and by all sorts of busybody societies intent upon + "government by public sentiment," we finally have a new thing in + the world and a most obnoxious one--mob rule by the rich; with + the able assistance of the hoodlums--always looking for a + chance. + + It starts as follows: + + The government wishes a certain amount of money. It therefore + appeals to local pride; it sets a "quota," which has been + apportioned to each locality, and promises of a fine + "over-the-top" flag to be hoisted over the courthouse. All well + and good; local pride is a very fine thing, competition is + wholesome. + + But the struggle that ensues is not so much local pride as it + looks to be. + + Milwaukee, for instance, a big manufacturing center, is noted + for its German population. This, the local proprietors fear, may + affect its trade. It may be boycotted to some extent. A + traveling man comes back and says that a certain dealer in + stoves refuses to buy stoves made in Milwaukee! + + Ha!--Milwaukee must redeem its reputation; it must always go + over the top: it must be able to affix this stamp to all its + letters. + + Now, as the state has a quota, and the county and city has each + its quota, so each individual must have his quota. Each + individual must be "assessed" to buy a certain quota [government + war loan] of bonds. Success must be made sure: the manufacturers + must see the honor of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin, maintained. + + It is not compulsory to give a certain "assessed" amount to the + Y. M. C. A.; and the government does not make a certain quota of + bonds compulsory on citizens--oh, no! it is not compulsory, only + you must abide by your assessment. And we will see that you do. + No excuse accepted.... + + Picture to yourself the following "collection committee" + traveling out of the highly civilized, "kultured" city of + Milwaukee. + + Twenty-five automobiles containing sixty to seventy respectable + citizens of Milwaukee. + + One color guard (a flag at the head) with two home guardsmen in + citizens' clothes. + + Two deputy sheriffs. + + One "official" photographer. + + One "official" stenographer. + + One banker (this personage to make arrangements to lend a farmer + the money in case he protests that he has subscribed too much + already). + + This phalanx, entirely lawless, moves down upon a farmer who is + urging two horses along a cloddy furrow, doing his fall plowing. + + They form a semicircle about him; the speechmaker says, "Let us + salute the flag" (watching him to see that he does it promptly); + and while his horses stand there the speechmaker delivers a + speech. He must subscribe his "assessed" amount--no excuses + accepted. If he owes for the farm, and has just paid his + interest, and has only fifteen dollars to go on with, it makes + no difference. He must subscribe the amount of his "assessment," + and "sign here." + + If not, what happens? The farmer all the time, of course, is + probably scared out of his wits, or does not know what to make + of this delegation of notables bearing down upon his solitary + task in the fields. But if he argues too much, he finds this. + They have a large package of yellow placards reading: + + THE OCCUPANT OF THESE PREMISES HAS REFUSED TO TAKE + HIS JUST SHARE OF LIBERTY BONDS. + + And they put them all over his place. He probably signs. + + Now bear in mind that this method is not practiced merely + against farmers who have made unpatriotic remarks, or have + refused to support the war. It is practiced against a farmer who + has taken only one hundred dollars when he was assessed a + hundred and fifty--and this is to make him "come across" with + the remainder. + + You might ask, Is this comic opera or is it government? + + And now we come to the conclusion. Imagine yourself either a + workman in Milwaukee, or a farmer out in the country. You are + dealt with in this entirely Prussian manner--possibly the + committee, which knows little of your financial difficulties in + your home, has just assessed you arbitrarily. + + Your constitutional rights do not count. There is no remedy. If + you are painted yellow, the District Attorney will pass the + buck--he knows what the manufacturer expects of him, and the + financier. The state officers of these drives, Federal + representatives, are always Milwaukee bankers. + + But for you there is no remedy if you are "assessed" too high. + + With the Y. M. C. A., and other religious society drives, the + same assessment scheme is worked. You cannot give to the + Y. M. C. A. You are told right off how much you are to pay. + +It would seem that in our democracy freedom consists first of freedom to +vote; second, of freedom to make commercial profit; third, of freedom to +make propaganda; fourth, of freedom from intellectual and moral +responsibility. Each of these "liberties" is little more than a +characteristic form of crowd-behavior. The vote, our most highly prized +modern right, is nearly always so determined by crowd-thinking that as +an exercise of individual choice it is a joke. Men are herded in droves +and delivered by counties in almost solid blocks by professional traders +of political influence. Before each election a campaign of crowd-making +is conducted in which every sort of vulgarity and insincerity has +survival value, in which real issues are so lost in partisan propaganda +as to become unrecognizable. When the vote is cast it is commonly a +choice between professional crowd-leaders whose competency consists in +their ability to Billy Sundayize the mob rather than in any marked +fitness for the office to which they aspire--also between the horns of a +dilemma which wholly misstates the issue involved and is trumped up +chiefly for purposes of political advertising. Time and again the +franchise thus becomes an agency by which rival crowds may fasten their +own tyrannies upon one another. + +Freedom to make commercial profit, to get ahead of others in the race +for dollars, is what democracy generally means by "opportunity." Nothing +is such a give-away of the modern man as the popular use of the word +"individualism." It is no longer a philosophy of _becoming_ something +genuine and unique, but of _getting_ something and using it according to +your own whims and for personal ends regardless of the effect upon +others. This pseudo-individualism encourages the rankest selfishness and +exploitation to go hand in hand with the most deadly spiritual +conformity and inanity. Such "individualism" is, as I have pointed out, +a crowd-idea, for it is motivated by a cheaply disguised ideal of +personal superiority through the mere fact of possessing things. +Paradoxical as it may appear at first sight, this is really the old +crowd notion of "equality," for, great as are the differences of wealth +which result, every man may cherish the fiction that he possesses the +sort of ability necessary for this kind of social distinction. Such +superiority thus has little to do with personal excellence; it is the +result of the external accident of success. One man may still be "as +good as another." + +Against this competitive struggle now there has grown up a counter-crowd +ideal of collectivism. But here also the fiction of universal spiritual +equality is maintained; the competitive struggle is changed from an +individual to a gang struggle, while the notion that personal worth is +the result of the environment and may be achieved by anyone whose belly +is filled still persists. Proletarians for the most part wish, +chinch-bug fashion, to crawl into the Elysian fields now occupied by the +hated capitalists. The growing tendency to industrial democracy will +probably in the near future cut off this freedom to make money, which +has been the chief "liberty" of political democracy until now, but +whether liberty in general will be the gainer thereby remains to be +seen. One rather prominent Socialist in New York declares that liberty +is a "myth." He is correct, in so far as the democratic movement, either +political or social, is a crowd-phenomenon. Socialist agitators are +always demanding "liberty" nevertheless, but the liberty which they +demand is little more than freedom to make their own propaganda. And +this leads us to the third liberty permitted by modern democracy. + +The "freedom of speech" which is everywhere demanded in the name of +democracy is not at all freedom in the expression of individual opinion. +It is only the demand for advertising space on the part of various +crowds for the publication of their shibboleths and propaganda. Each +crowd, while demanding this freedom for itself, seeks to deny it to +other crowds, and all unite in denying it to the non-crowd man wherever +possible. The Puritan's "right to worship according to the dictates of a +man's own conscience" did not apply to Quakers, Deists, or Catholics. +When Republicans were "black abolitionists" they would have regarded any +attempt to suppress _The Liberator_, as edited by William Lloyd +Garrison, as an assault upon the constitutional liberties of the whole +nation. But they are not now particularly interested in preserving the +constitutional liberties of the nation as represented in the right of +circulation of _The Liberator_, edited by Max Eastman. In Jefferson's +time, when Democrats were accused of "Jacobinism," they invoked the +"spirit of 1776" in opposition to the alien and sedition laws under +which their partisan propaganda suffered limitation. To-day, when they +are striving to outdo the Republicans in "Americanization propaganda," +they actually stand sponsor for an espionage law which would have made +Jefferson or Andrew Jackson froth at the mouth. Socialists are convinced +that liberty is dead because Berger and Debs are convicted of uttering +opinions out of harmony with temporarily dominant crowd-ideas of +patriotism. But when Theodore Dreiser was put under the ban for the +crime of writing one of the few good novels produced in America, I do +not recall that Socialists held any meetings of protest in Madison +Square Garden. I have myself struggled in vain for three hours or more +on a street corner in Green Point trying to tell liberty-loving +Socialists the truth about the Gary schools. When the politicians in our +legislative assemblies were tricked into passing the obviously unliberal +Eighteenth Amendment, I was much interested in learning how the bulk of +the Socialists in the Cooper Union audiences felt about it. As I had +expected, they regarded it as an unpardonable infringement of personal +freedom, as a typical piece of American Puritan hypocrisy and +pharisaism. But they were, on the whole, in favor of it because they +thought it would be an aid to Bolshevist propaganda, since it would make +the working class still more discontented! Such is liberty in a +crowd-governed democracy.... It is nothing but the _liberty of crowds to +be crowds_. + +The fourth liberty in democratic society to-day is freedom from moral and +intellectual responsibility. This is accomplished by the magic of +substituting the machinery of the law for self-government, bureaucratic +meddlesomeness for conscience, crowd-tyranny for personal decency. +Professor Faguet has called democracy the "cult of incompetence" and the +"dread of responsibility." He is not far wrong, but these epithets apply +not so much to democracy as such as to democracy under the heel of the +crowd. The original aim of democracy, so far as its philosophical +thinkers conceived of it, was to set genius free from the trammels of +tradition, realize a maximum of self-government, and make living +something of an adventure. But crowds do not so understand democracy. +Every crowd looks upon democracy simply as a scheme whereby it may have +its own way. We have seen that the crowd-mind as such is a device for +"kidding" ourselves, for representing the easiest path to the +enhancement of our self-feeling as something highly moral, for making +our personal right appear like universal righteousness, for dressing up +our will to lord it over others, as if it were devotion to impersonal +principle. As we have seen, the crowd therefore insists upon universal +conformity; goodness means only making everyone alike. By taking refuge +in the abstract and ready-made system of crowd-ideas, the unconscious +will to power is made to appear what it is not; the burden of +responsibility is transferred to the group with its fiction of absolute +truth. Le Bon noted the fact of the irresponsibility of crowds, but +thought that such irresponsibility was due to the fact that the crowd, +being an anonymous gathering, the individual could lose his identity in +the multitude. The psychology of the unconscious has provided us with +what I think is a better explanation, but the fact of irresponsibility +remains and is evident in all the influence of crowd-thinking upon +democratic institutions. The crowd-ideal of society is one in which +every individual is protected not only against exploitation, but against +temptation--protected therefore _against himself_. The whole tendency of +democracy in our times is toward just such inanity. Without the least +critical analysis of accepted moral dilemmas, we are all to be made +moral in spite of ourselves, regardless of our worth, without effort on +our part, moral in the same way that machines are moral, by reducing the +will to mere automatic action, leaving no place for choice and +uncertainty, having everyone wound up and oiled and regulated to run at +the same speed. Each crowd therefore strives to make its own moral +ideas the law of the land. Law becomes thus a sort of anthology of +various existing crowd-hobbies. In the end moral responsibility is +passed over to legislatures, commissions, detectives, inspectors, and +bureaucrats. Anything that "gets by" the public censor, however rotten, +we may wallow in with a perfect feeling of respectability. The right and +necessity of choosing our way is superseded by a system of statutory +taboos, which as often as not represent the survival values of the +meanest little people in the community--the kind who cannot look upon a +nude picture without a struggle with their perverted eroticism, or +entertain a significant idea without losing their faith. + +The effect of all this upon the intellectual progress and the freedom of +art in democratic society is obvious, and is just what, to one who +understands the mechanisms of the crowd-mind, might be expected. No +wonder de Tocqueville said he found less freedom of opinion in America +than elsewhere. Explain it as you will, the fact is here staring us in +the face. Genius in our democracy is not free. It must beg the +permission of little crowd-men for its right to exist. It must stand, +hat in hand, at the window of the commissioner of licenses and may gain +a permit for only so much of its inspiration as happens to be of +use-value to the uninspired. It must play the conformist, pretend to be +hydra-headed rather than unique, useful rather than genuine, a servant +of the "least of these" rather than their natural master. It must +advertise, but it may not prophesy. It may flatter and patronize the +stupid, but it may not stand up taller than they. In short, democracy +everywhere puts out the eyes of its Samson, cuts off his golden-rayed +locks, and makes him grind corn to fill the bellies of the Philistines. + +From the beginning of the nineteenth century until now it has been +chiefly the business man, the political charlatan, the organizer of +trade, the rediscoverer of popular prejudices who have been preferred in +our free modern societies. Keats died of a broken heart; Shelley and +Wagner were exiled; Beethoven and Schubert were left to starve; Darwin +was condemned to hell fire; Huxley was denied his professorship; +Schopenhauer was ostracized by the élite; Nietzsche ate his heart out in +solitude; Walt Whitman had to be fed by a few English admirers, while +his poems were prohibited as obscene in free America; Emerson was for +the greater part of his life _persona non grata_ at his own college; +Ingersoll was denied the political career which his genius merited; Poe +lived and died in poverty; Theodore Parker was consigned to perdition; +Percival Lowell and Simon Newcomb lived and died almost unrecognized by +the American public. Nearly every artist and writer and public teacher +is made to understand from the beginning that he will be popular in just +the degree that he strangles his genius and becomes a vulgar, +commonplace, insincere clown. + +On the other hand steel manufacturers and railroad kings, whose business +record will often scarcely stand the light, are rewarded with fabulous +millions and everyone grovels before them. When one turns from the +"commercialism," which everywhere seems to be the dominant and most +sincere interest in democratic society, when one seeks for spiritual +values to counterbalance this weight of materialism, one finds in the +prevailing spirit little more than a cult of naïve sentimentality. + +It can hardly be denied that if Shakespeare, Boccaccio, Rabelais, +Montaigne, Cassanova, Goethe, Dostoievsky, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Rousseau, St. +Augustine, Milton, Nietzsche, Swinburne, Rossetti, or even Flaubert, +were alive and writing his masterpiece in America to-day, he would be +instantly silenced by some sort of society for the prevention of vice, +and held up to the public scorn and ridicule as a destroyer of our +innocence and a corrupter of public morals. The guardians of our +characters are ceaselessly expurgating the classics lest we come to harm +reading them. I often think that the only reason why the Bible is +permitted to pass through our mails is because hardly anyone ever reads +it. + +It is this same habit of crowd-thinking which accounts to a great extent +for the dearth of intellectual curiosity in this country. From what we +have seen to be the nature of the crowd-mind, it is to be expected that +in a democracy in which crowds play an important part the condition +described by de Tocqueville will generally prevail. There is much truth +in his statement that it seems at first as if the minds of all the +Americans "were formed upon the same model." Spiritual variation will be +encouraged only in respect to matters in which one crowd differs from +another. The conformist spirit will prevail in all. Intellectual +leadership will inevitably pass to the "tight-minded." There will be +violent conflicts of ideas, but they will be crowd ideas. + +The opinions about which people differ are for the most part ready-made. +They are concerned with the choice of social mechanisms, but hardly with +valuations. With nearly all alike, there is a notion that mankind may be +redeemed by the magic of externally manipulating the social environment. +There is a wearisome monotony of professions of optimism, idealism, +humanitarianism, with little knowledge of what these terms mean. + +I am thinking of all those young people who, in the decade and a half +which preceded the war, represented the finished product of our +colleges and universities. What a stretch of imagination is needed +before one may call these young people educated! How little of +intellectual interest they have brought back from school to their +respective communities! How little cerebral activity they have stirred +up! Habits of study, of independent thinking, have seldom been acquired. +The "educated" have possibly gained a little in social grace; they have +in some cases learned things which are of advantage to them in the +struggle for position. Out of the confused mass of unassimilated +information which they dimly remember as the education which they "got," +a sum of knowledge doubtless remains which is greater in extent than +that possessed by the average man, but, though greater in extent, this +knowledge is seldom different in kind. There is the same superficiality, +the same susceptibility to crowd-thinking on every subject. The mental +habits of American democracy are probably best reflected to-day by the +"best-seller" novel, the _Saturday Evening Post_, the Chautauqua, the +Victrola, the moving picture. + +Nearly everyone in America can read, for the "schoolhouse is the bulwark +of democratic freedom." However, with the decrease in illiteracy there +has gone a corresponding lowering of literary and intellectual +standards, a growing timidity in telling the truth, and a passion for +the sensationally commonplace. If it be true that before people may be +politically free they must be free to function mentally, one wonders how +much of an aid to liberty the public schools in this country have been, +or if, with their colossal impersonal systems and stereotyped methods of +instruction, they have not rather on the whole succeeded chiefly in +making learning uninteresting, dulling curiosity and killing habits of +independent thinking. There is probably no public institution where the +spirit of the crowd reigns to the extent that it does in the public +school. The aim seems to be to mold the child to type, make him the +good, plodding citizen, teaching him only so much as some one thinks it +is to the public's interest that he should know. I am sure that everyone +who is familiar with the actions of the school authorities in New York +City during the two years, 1918 and 1919, will be impelled to look +elsewhere for much of that liberty which is supposed to go with +democracy. + +Some years ago I conducted a little investigation into the mental habits +of the average high-school graduate. An examination was made of twenty +or more young people who had been out of school one year. This is +doubtless too limited a number to give the findings great general +significance, but I give the results in brief for what they are worth. +These students had been in school for eleven years. I thought that they +ought at least to have a minimum of general cultural information and to +be able to express some sort of opinion about the commonplaces of our +spiritual heritage. The questions asked were such as follow: What is the +difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution +of the United States? What is a dicotyledon? Does the name Darwin mean +anything to you? Have you ever heard of William James? What is the +significance of the battle of Tours? Who was Thomas Jefferson? There +were twenty questions in all. The average grade, even with the most +liberal marking, was 44.6. The general average was raised by one pupil +who made a grade of 69. But then we should not be too severe upon the +public-school graduate. One of the brightest college graduates I know +left a large Eastern institution believing that Karl Marx was a +philologist. Another, a graduate from a Western college, thought that +Venus de Milo was an Italian count who had been born without any arms. I +know a prominent physician, whose scientific training is such that he +has been a lecturer in a medical college, who believes that Heaven is +located just a few miles up in the sky, beyond the Milky Way. These are +doubtless exceptional cases, but how many persons with university +degrees are there who have really caught the spirit of the humanistic +culture, or have ever stopped to think why the humanities are taught in +our colleges? How many are capable of discriminating criticism of works +of music, or painting, literature, or philosophy? My own experience +convinces me, and I am sure that other public teachers who have had a +like experience will bear witness to the same lamentable fact, that such +little genuine intellectual interest as there is in this country is +chiefly confined to immigrant Jews, our American youth being, on the +whole, innocent of it. The significance of this fact is obvious, as is +its cause. Due to the conformist spirit of the dominant crowd, +native-born Americans are losing their intellectual leadership. + +We must not ignore the fact that there is among the educated here a +small and, let us hope, growing group of youthful "intellectuals." But +in the first place the proportion of these to the whole mass is +tragically small. In the second place intellectual liberalism has been +content for the most part to tag along behind the labor movement, as if +the chief meaning of the intellectual awakening were economic. It is no +disparagement of labor to say that the intellect in this country of +crowds has also other work to do, and that, until it strikes out for +itself, neither the labor movement nor anything else will rise above +commonplace crowd dilemmas. Too much of our so-called intellectualism is +merely the substitution of ready-made proletarian crowd-ideas for the +traditional crowd-ideas which pass for thinking among the middle +classes. + +All the facts which have been pointed out above are the inevitable +consequences of government by crowds. There can be no real liberty with +crowds because there can be no personal independence. The psychic +mechanisms of the crowd are hostile to conscious personality. The +independent thinker cannot be controlled by catchwords. In our day +intellectual freedom is not smothered in actual martyr fires, but it is +too often strangled in the cradle. The existence of new values, a thing +which will inevitably happen where the human spirit is left free in its +creative impulses, is disturbing to the crowd-mind. Education must +therefore be made "safe for democracy"; it must be guarded carefully +lest the youth become an original personal fact, a new spiritual +creation. I realize the element of truth in the statement often made, +that there is already too much spiritual originality in the youths of +this generation. I am not contending that certain phases of egoism +should not be checked by education. A solid intellectual basis must be +created which will make social living possible. The trouble is, +however, that this task is done too well. It is the merely useful man, +not the unusual man, whom the crowd loves. Skill is encouraged, for, +whether it be skill in serving or in demanding service, skill in itself +does not upset existing crowd-values. Reflection is "wicked" for it +leads to doubt, and doubt is non-gregarious behavior. Education ceases +to be the path of spiritual freedom; it becomes a device for harnessing +the spirit of youth in the treadmill of the survival-values of the +crowd. It is also the revenge of the old against the young, a way of +making them less troublesome. It teaches the rules for success in a +crowd-governed world while taking advantage of the natural credulity of +childhood to draw the curtain with such terrifying mummery about the +figure of wisdom that the average mind, never having the daring or +curiosity to lift it, will remain to its dying day a dullard and a +mental slave without suspecting the fact. Every "dangerous" thought is +denatured and expurgated. The student is skillfully insulated from any +mental shock that might galvanize him into original intellectual life. +The classic languages are taught for purposes of "discipline." After six +or seven years' study of Greek literature in the accepted manner one may +be able to repeat most of the rules of Goodwin's _Greek Grammar_, and +pride himself upon being a cultivated person, knowing in the end less +of the language than a bootblack from modern Athens knows of it, or than +a waiter from Bologna knows of English after one year's residence in +Greenwich Village. And the all-important thing is that never once has +the student been given a glimpse of the beautiful free pagan life which +all this literature is about. + +Science is taught that the student, if he has ability, may learn how to +make a geological survey of oil lands, construct and operate a cement +factory, make poison gas, remove infected tonsils, or grow a culture of +bacteria; but should he cease to hold popular beliefs about the origin +of life or the immortality of the soul it is well for him to keep the +tragic fact to himself. Those who teach history, economics, and +political science in such a way as to stimulate independence of thinking +on the part of the students are likely to be dismissed from their +faculties by the practical business men who constitute the boards of +trustees of our institutions of higher learning; the purpose of these +sciences is to make our youth more patriotic. Finally, the average +instructor receives less pay than a policeman, or a headwaiter, and the +unconscious reason for this is all of a piece with the psychology of the +crowd-mind. The ignorant man's resentment toward superiority, or +"highbrowism," is thereby vindicated. Moreover, the integrity of the +complex of ruling crowd-ideas is less endangered. There is less +likelihood of its being undermined in the process of education when +vigorous, independent spirits are diverted from intellectual pursuits by +richer prizes offered in other fields, and the task of instruction +therefore left largely to the underfed and timid who are destined by +temperament to trot between the shafts. + +In this discussion of the government of crowds I have ignored +consideration of the mechanisms of political and social organizations +which usually characterize the treatment of this subject. It is not that +I wish to divert attention from the necessity of more practical and just +social arrangements and political forms of organizations. These we must +achieve. But the facts which ultimately make for our freedom or slavery +are of the mind. The statement that we cannot be politically or +economically a free people until we attain mental freedom is a +platitude, but it is one which needs special emphasis in this day when +all attention is directed to the external form of organization. + +No tyranny was ever for long maintained by force. All tyrannies begin +and end in the tyranny of ideas uncritically accepted. It is of just +such ideas that the conscious thinking of the crowd consists, and it is +ultimately from the crowd as a psychological mechanism that tyranny as +such proceeds. Democracy in America fails of freedom, not because of our +political constitution, though that would doubtless be modified by a +people who were more free at heart; it fails because freedom of opinion, +intellectual alertness, critical thinking about fundamentals, is not +encouraged. There is, moreover, little promise of greater freedom in the +various revolutionary crowds who to-day want freedom only to add to the +number of crowds which pester us. And for this we have, whether we are +radicals or reactionaries or simply indifferent, no one to blame but +ourselves and our own crowd-thinking. + + + + +X + +EDUCATION AS A POSSIBLE CURE FOR CROWD-THINKING + + +We have seen that Democracy in and of itself is no more sure a guarantee +of liberty than other forms of government. This does not necessarily +mean that we have been forced by our psychological study into an +argument against the idea of democracy as such. In fact, it cannot be +denied that this form of human association may have decided advantages, +both practical and spiritual, if we set about in the right way to +realize them. It does not follow that, because the franchise is +exercised by all, democracy must necessarily be an orgy of mob rule. If, +under our modern political arrangements, it has been shown that the +crowd presumes to regulate acts and thought processes hitherto +considered purely personal matters, it is also true that the dominance +of any particular crowd has, in the long run, been rendered less +absolute and secure by the more openly expressed hostility of rival +crowds. But crowd-behavior has been known in all historic periods. +Democracy cannot be said to have caused it. It may be a mere accident +of history that the present development of crowd-mindedness has come +along with that of democratic institutions. Democracy has indeed given +new kinds of crowds their hope of dominance. It has therefore been made +into a cult for the self-justification of various modern crowds. + +The formula for realizing a more free and humane common life will not be +found in any of the proffered cure-alls and propagandas which to-day +deafen our ears with their din. Neither are we now in such possession of +the best obtainable social order that one would wish to preserve the +_status quo_ against all change, which would mean, in other words, the +survival of the present ruling crowds. Many existing facts belie the +platitudes which these crowds speak in their defense, just as they lay +bare the hidden meaning of the magic remedies which are proposed by +counter-crowds. There is no single formula for social redemption, and +the man who has come to himself will refuse to invest his faith in any +such thing--which does not mean, however, that he will refuse to +consider favorably the practical possibilities of any proposed plan for +improving social conditions. + +The first and greatest effort must be to _free democracy from +crowd-mindedness, by liberating our own thinking_. The way out of this +complex of crowd compulsions is the solitary part of self-analysis and +intellectual courage. It is the way of Socrates, and Protagoras, of +Peter Abelard, and Erasmus, and Montaigne, of Cervantes and Samuel +Butler, of Goethe, and Emerson, of Whitman and William James. + +Just here I know that certain conservatives will heartily agree with me. +"That is it," they will say; "begin with the individual." Yes, but which +individual shall we begin with? Most of those who speak thus mean, begin +with some other individual. Evangelize the heathen, uplift the poor, +Americanize the Bolshevists, do something to some one which will make +him like ourselves; in other words, bring him into our crowd. The +individual with whom I would begin is myself. Somehow or other if I am +to have individuality at all it will be by virtue of being an +individual, a single, "separate person." And that is a dangerous and at +present a more or less lonely thing to do. But the problem is really one +of practical psychology. We must come out of the crowd-self, just as, +before the neurotic may be normal, he must get over his neurosis. To do +that he must trace his malady back to its source in the unconscious, and +learn the meaning of his conscious behavior as it is related to his +unconscious desires. Then he must do a difficult thing--he must _accept +the fact of himself at its real worth_. + +It is much the same with our crowd-mindedness. If psychoanalysis has +therapeutic value by the mere fact of revealing to the neurotic the +hidden meaning of his neurosis, then it would seem that an analysis of +crowd-behavior such as we have tried to make should be of some help in +breaking the hold of the crowd upon our spirits, and thus freeing +democracy to some extent from quackery. + +To see behind the shibboleths and dogmas of crowd-thinking the +"cussedness"--that is, the primitive side--of human nature at work is a +great moral gain. At least the "cussedness" cannot deceive us any more. +We have won our greatest victory over it when we drag it out into the +light. We can at least wrestle with it consciously, and maybe, by +directing it to desirable ends, it will cease to be so "cussed," and +become a useful servant. No such good can come to us so long as this +side of our nature is allowed its way only on condition that it paint +its face and we encourage it to talk piously of things which it really +does not mean. Disillusionment may be painful both to the neurotic and +to the crowd-man, but the gain is worth the shock to our pride. The ego, +when better understood, becomes at once more highly personalized because +more conscious of itself, and more truly social because better adjusted +to the demands of others. It is this socialized and conscious selfhood +which is both the aim and the hope of true democracy. + +Such analysis may possibly give us the gift to see ourselves as others +do not see us, as we have not wished them to see us, and finally enable +us to see ourselves and others and to be seen by them as we really are. + +We shall be free when we cease pampering ourselves, stop lying to +ourselves and to one another, and give up the crowd-mummery in which we +indulge because it happens to flatter our hidden weaknesses! In the end +we shall only begin to solve the social problem when we can cease +together taking refuge from reality in systems made up of general ideas +that we should be using as tools in meeting the tasks from which as +crowd-men and neurotics people run away; when we discontinue making use +of commonly accepted principles and ideals as defense formations for +shameful things in which we can indulge ourselves with a clear +conscience only by all doing them together. + +There must be an increase in the number of unambitious men, men who can +rise above vulgar dilemmas and are deaf to crowd propaganda, men capable +of philosophical tolerance, critical doubt and inquiry, genuine +companionship, and voluntary co-operation in the achievement of common +ends, free spirits who can smile in the face of the mob, who know the +mob and are not to be taken in by it. + +All this sounds much like the old gospel of conviction of sin and +repentance; perhaps it is just that. We must think differently, change +our minds. Again and again people have tried the wide way and the broad +gate, the crowd-road to human happiness, only to find that it led to +destruction in a _cul-de-sac_. Now let us try the other road, "the +strait and narrow path." The crowd-path leads neither to self-mastery +nor social blessedness. People in crowds are not thinking together; they +are not thinking at all, save as a paranoiac thinks. They are not +working together; they are _only sticking together_. We have leaned on +one another till we have all run and fused into a common mass. The +democratic crowd to-day, with its sweet optimism, its warm "brotherly +love," is a sticky, gooey mass which one can hardly touch and come back +to himself clean. By dissolving everything in "one great union" people +who cannot climb alone expect to ooze into the co-operative commonwealth +or kingdom of heaven. I am sick of this oozing democracy. There must be +something crystalline and insoluble left in democratic America. +Somewhere there must be people with sharp edges that cut when they are +pressed too hard, people who are still solid, who have impenetrable +depths in them and hard facets which reflect the sunlight. They are the +hope of democracy, these infusible ones. + +To change the figure, may their tribe increase. And this is the business +of every educator who is not content to be a faker. What we need is not +only more education, but a different kind of education. There is more +hope in an illiterate community where people hate lying than in a +high-school educated nation which reads nothing but trash and is fed up +on advertising, newspapers, popular fiction, and propaganda. + +In the foregoing chapter, reference was made to our traditional +educational systems. The subject is so closely related to the mental +habits of democracy that it would be difficult to overemphasize its +importance for our study. Traditional educational methods have more +often given encouragement to crowd-thinking than to independence of +judgment. Thinking has been divorced from doing. Knowledge, instead of +being regarded as the foresight of ends to be reached and the conscious +direction of activity toward such ends, has been more commonly regarded +as the copying of isolated things to be learned. The act of learning has +been treated as if it were the passive reception of information imposed +from without. The subject to be learned has been sequestered and set +apart from experience as a whole, with the result that ideas easily +come to be regarded as things in themselves. Systems of thought are +built up with little or no sense of their connection with everyday +problems. Thus our present-day education prepares in advance both the +ready-made logical systems in which the crowd-mind takes refuge from the +concretely real and the disposition to accept truth second-hand, upon +the authority of another, which in the crowd-man becomes the spirit of +conformity. + +Even science, taught in this spirit may be destructive of intellectual +freedom. Professor Dewey says that while science has done much to modify +men's thoughts, still + + It must be admitted that to a considerable extent the progress + thus procured has been only technical; it has provided more + efficient means for satisfying pre-existent desires rather than + modified the quality of human purposes. There is, for example, + no modern civilization which is the equal of Greek culture in + all respects. Science is still too recent to have been absorbed + into imaginative and emotional disposition. Men move more + swiftly and surely to the realization of their ends, but their + ends too largely remain what they were prior to scientific + enlightenment. This fact places upon education the + responsibility of using science in a way to modify the habitual + attitude of imagination and feeling, not leave it just an + extension of our physical arms and legs.... + + The problem of an educational use of science is then to create + an intelligence pregnant with belief in the possibility of the + direction of human affairs by itself. The method of science + ingrained through education in habit means emancipation from + rule of thumb and from the routine generated by rule of thumb + procedure.... + + That science may be taught as a set of formal and technical + exercises is only too true. This happens whenever information + about the world is made an end in itself. The failure of such + instruction to procure culture is not, however, evidence of the + antithesis of natural knowledge to humanistic concern, but + evidence of a wrong educational attitude. + +The new kind of education, the education which is to liberate the mind, +will make much of scientific methods. But let us notice what it is to +set a mind free. Mind does not exist in a vacuum, nor in a world of +"pure ideas." The free mind is the functioning mind, the mind which is +not inhibited in its work by any conflict within itself. Thought is not +made free by the mere substitution of naturalistic for theological +dogma. It is possible to make a cult of science itself. Crowd-propaganda +is often full of pseudoscientific jargon of this sort. Specialization in +technical training may produce merely a high-class trained-animal man, +of the purely reflex type, who simply performs a prescribed trick which +he has learned, whenever an expected motor-cue appears. In the presence +of the unexpected such a person may be as helpless as any other animal. +It is possible to train circus dogs, horses, and even horned toads, to +behave in this same way. Much so-called scientific training in our +schools to-day is of this sort. It results not in freedom, but in what +Bergson would call the triumph of mechanism over freedom. + +Science, to be a means of freedom--that is, science as culture--may not +be pursued as pure theorizing apart from practical application. Neither +may a calculating utilitarianism gain freedom to us by ignoring, in the +application of scientific knowledge to given ends, a consideration of +the ends themselves and their value for enriching human experience. It +is human interest which gives scientific knowledge any meaning. Science +must be taught in the humanist spirit. It may not ignore this quality of +human interest which exists in all knowledge. To do so is to cut off our +relations with reality. And the result may become a negation of +personality similar to that with which the crowd compensates itself for +its unconscious ego-mania. + +The reference just made to Humanism leads us next to a consideration of +the humanities. It has long been the habit of traditional education to +oppose to the teaching of science the teaching of the classic languages +and the arts, as if there were two irreconcilable principles involved +here. Dewey says that + + Humanistic studies when set in opposition to study of nature are + hampered. They tend to reduce themselves to exclusively literary + and linguistic studies, which in turn tend to shrink to "the + classics," to languages no longer spoken.... It would be hard to + find anything in history more ironical than the educational + practices which have identified the "humanities" exclusively + with a knowledge of Greek and Latin. Greek and Roman art and + institutions made such important contributions to our + civilization that there should always be the amplest + opportunities for making their acquaintance. But to regard them + as _par excellence_ the humane studies involves a deliberate + neglect of the possibilities of the subject-matter which is + accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate a + narrow snobbery--that of a learned class whose insignia are the + accidents of exclusive opportunity. Knowledge is humanistic in + quality not because it is _about_ human products in the past, + but because of what it _does_ in liberating human intelligence + and human sympathy. Any subject-matter which accomplishes this + result is humane and any subject-matter which does not + accomplish it is not even educational. + +The point is that it is precisely what a correct knowledge of ancient +civilization through a study of the classics _does_ that our traditional +educators most dread. William James once said that the good which came +from such study was the ability to "know a good man when we see him." +The student would thus become more capable of discriminating +appreciation. He would grow to be a judge of values. He would acquire +sharp likes and dislikes and thus set up his own standards of judgment. +He would become an independent-thinker and therefore an enemy of crowds. +Scholars of the Renaissance knew this well, and that is why in their +revolt against the crowd-mindedness of their day they made use of the +_litteræ humanores_ to smash to pieces the whole dogmatic system of the +Middle Ages. + +With the picture of ancient life before him the student could not help +becoming more cosmopolitan in spirit. Here he got a glimpse of a manner +of living in which the controlling ideas and fixations of his +contemporary crowds were frankly challenged. Here were witnesses to +values contrary to those in which his crowd had sought to bring him up +in a docile spirit. Inevitably his thinking would wander into what his +crowd considered forbidden paths. One cannot begin to know the ancients +as they really were without receiving a tremendous intellectual +stimulus. After becoming acquainted with the intellectual freedom and +courage and love of life which are almost everywhere manifest in the +literature of the ancients, something happens to a man. He becomes +acquainted with himself as a valuing animal. Few things are better +calculated to make free spirits than these very classics, once the +student "catches on." + +But that is just the trouble; from the Renaissance till now, the +crowd-mind, whether interested politically, morally, or religiously; +whether Catholic, or Protestant, or merely Rationalist, has done its +level best to keep the student from "catching on." Educational +tradition, which is for the most part only systematized crowd-thinking, +has perverted the classics into instruments for producing spiritual +results of the very opposite nature from the message which these +literatures contain. Latin and Greek are taught for _purposes of +discipline_. The task of learning them has been made as difficult and as +uninteresting as possible, with the idea of forcing the student to do +something he dislikes, of whipping his spirit into line and rendering +him subservient to intellectual authority. Thus, while keeping up the +external appearance of culture, the effect is to make the whole thing so +meaningless and unpleasant that the student will never have the interest +to try to find out what it is all about. + +I have said that the sciences and classics should be approached in the +"humanistic" spirit. The humanist method must be extended to the whole +subject-matter of education, even to a revaluation of knowing itself. I +should not say _even_, but _primarily_. It is impossible here to enter +into an extended discussion of the humanist theories of knowledge as +contrasted with the traditional or "intellectualist" theories. But since +we have seen that the conscious thinking of the crowd-mind consists in +the main of abstract and dogmatic logical systems, similar to the +"rationalizations" of the paranoiac, it is important to note the bearing +of humanism upon these logical systems wherever they are found. + +A number of years ago, while discussing certain phases of this subject +with one of the physicians in charge of a large hospital for the insane, +the significance of education for healthy mental life was brought out +with great emphasis. It was at the time when psychiatrists were just +beginning to make use of analytical psychology in the treatment of +mental and nervous disorders. + +"The trouble with a great many of our patients," said my friend, "is the +fact that they have been wrongly educated." + +"Do you mean," I said, "that they have not received proper moral +instruction?" + +"Yes, but by the proper moral instruction I do not mean quite the same +thing that most people mean by that. It all depends on the way in which +the instruction is given. Many of these patients are the mental slaves +of convention. They have been terrified by it; its weight crushes them; +when they discover that their own impulses or behavior are in conflict +with what they regard as absolute standards, they cannot bear the shock. +They do not know how to use morality; they simply condemn themselves; +they seek reconciliation by all sorts of crazy ideas which develop into +the psychoneurosis. And the only hope there is of cure for them is +re-education. The physician, when it is not too late, often to do any +good has to become an educator." + +The practice of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method is really hardly +anything more than re-education. The patient must first be led to face +the fact of himself as he really is; then he must be taught to revalue +conventional ideas in such a way that he can use these ideas as +instruments with which he may adjust himself in the various relations of +life. This process of education, in a word, is humanistic. It is +pragmatic; the patient is taught that his thinking is a way of +functioning; that ideas are instruments, ways of acting. He learns to +value these tendencies to act and to find himself through the mastery of +his own thinking. + +Now we have seen that the neurosis is but one path of escape from this +conflict of self with the imperatives and abstract ideas through which +social control is exercised. The second way is to deny, unconsciously, +the true meaning of these ideas, and this, as we have seen, is +crowd-thinking. Here, as in the other case, the education which is +needed is that which acquaints the subject with the functional nature of +his own thinking, which directs his attention to results, which +dissolves the fictions into which the unconscious takes refuge, by +showing that systems of ideas have no other reality than what they do +and no other meaning than the difference which their being true makes in +actual experience somewhere. + +We have previously noted the connection between the intellectualist +philosophies with their closed systems of ideas, their absolutists, and +the conscious thinking of crowds. The crowd finds these systems +ready-made and merely backs into them and hides itself like a hermit +crab in a deserted seashell. It follows that the humanist, however +social he may be, cannot be a crowd-man. He, too, will have his ideals, +but they are not made-in-advance goods which all must accept; they are +good only as they may be made good in real experience, true only when +verified in fact. To such a mind there is no unctuousness, by which +ideas may be fastened upon others without their assent. Nothing is +regarded as so final and settled that the spirit of inquiry should be +discouraged from efforts to modify and improve it. + +Generalizations, such as justice, truth, liberty, and all other +intellectualist- and crowd-abstractions, become to the humanist not +transcendental things in themselves, but descriptions of certain +qualities of behavior, actual or possible, existing only where they are +experienced and in definite situations. He will not be swept into a +howling mob by these big words; he will stop to see what particular +things are they which in a given instance are to be called just, what +particular hypothesis is it which it is sought to verify and thus add to +the established body of truth, whose liberty is demanded and what, to be +definite, is it proposed that he shall do with the greater opportunity +for action? Let the crowd yell itself hoarse, chanting its abstract +nouns made out of adjectives, the humanist will know that these are but +words and that the realities which they point to, if they have any +meaning at all, are what "they are known as." + +This humanist doctrine of the concreteness of the real is important. It +is a reaffirmation of the reality of human experience. William James, +who called himself a "radical empiricist," made much of this point. +Experience may not be ruled out for the sake of an _a priori_ notion of +what this world ought to be. As James used to say, we shall never know +what this world really is or is to become until the last man's vote is +in and counted. Here, of course, is an emphasis upon the significance of +unique personality which no crowd will grant. Crowds will admit +personality as an abstract principle, but not as an active will having +something of its own to say about the ultimate outcome of things. + +Another important point in which humanism corrects crowd-thinking is the +fact that it regards intellect as an instrument of acting, and not as a +mere copyist of realities earthly or supermundane. Dewey says: + + If it be true that the self or subject of experience is part and + parcel of the course of events, it follows that the self becomes + a knower. It becomes a mind in virtue of a distinctive way of + partaking in the course of events. The significant distinction + is no longer between a knower _and_ the world, it is between + different ways of being in and of the movement of things; + between a physical way and a purposive way.... + + As a matter of fact the pragmatic theory of intelligence means + that the function of mind is to project new and more complex + ends to free experience from routine and caprice. Not the use of + thought to accomplish purposes already given either in the + mechanism of the body or in that of the existent state of + society, but the use of intelligence to liberate and liberalize + action, is the pragmatic lesson.... Intelligence as intelligence + is inherently forward looking; only by ignoring its primary + function does it become a means for an end already given. The + latter is servile, even when the end is labeled moral, + religious, esthetic. But action directed to ends to which the + agent has not previously been attached inevitably carries with + it a quickened and enlarged spirit. A pragmatic intelligence is + a creative intelligence, not a routine mechanic. + +Hence humanism breaks down the conformist spirit of crowds. From the +simplest to the most complex, ideas are regarded as primarily motor, or, +rather, as guides to our bodily movements among other things in our +environment. James says that the stream of life which runs in at our +eyes and ears is meant to run out at our lips, our feet, and our +fingertips. Bergson says that ideas are like snapshots of a man running. +However closely they are taken together, the movement always occurs +between them. They cannot, therefore, give us reality, or the movement +of life as such, but only cross-sections of it, which serve as guides in +directing the conscious activity of life upon matter. According to James +again, there are no permanently existing ideas, or impersonal ones; each +idea is an individual activity, known only in the thinking, and is +always thought _for a purpose_. As all thinking is purposive, and +therefore partial, emphasizing just those aspects of things which are +useful for our present problem, it follows that the sum total of partial +views cannot give us the whole of reality or anything like a true copy +of it. Existence as a whole cannot be reduced to any logical system. The +One and the Absolute are therefore meaningless and are only logical +fictions, useful, says James, by way of allowing us a sort of temporary +irresponsibility, or "moral holiday." + +From all this follows the humanist view of Truth. Truth is nothing +complete and existing in itself independent of human purpose. The word +is a noun made out of an adjective, as I have said. An idea becomes +true, says James, when it fits into the totality of our experience; +truth is what we say about an idea when it works. It must be made true, +by ourselves--that is, verified. Truth is therefore of human origin, +frankly, man-made. To Schiller it is the same as the good; it is the +attainment of satisfactory relations within experience. Or, to quote the +famous humanist creed of Protagoras, as Schiller is so fond of doing, +"Man is the measure of all things." The meaning of the world is +precisely, for all purposes, its meaning for us. Its worth, both logical +and moral, is not something given, but just what we through our activity +are able to assign to it. + +The humanist is thus thrown upon his own responsibility in the midst of +concrete realities of which he as a knowing, willing being is one. His +task is to make such modifications within his environment, physical and +social, as will make his own activity and that of others with him richer +and more satisfactory in the future. + +The question arises--it is a question commonly put by crowd-minded +people and by intellectual philosophers; Plato asks it of the +Protagoreans--how, if the individual man is the measure of all things, +is there to be any common measure? How any agreement? May not a thing be +good and true for one and not for another? How, then, shall there be any +getting together without an outside authority and an absolute standard? +The answer, as Schiller and James showed, is obvious; life is a matter +of adjustment. We each constitute a part of the other's environment. At +certain points our desires conflict, our valuations are different, and +yet our experience at these points overlaps, as it were. It is to our +common advantage to have agreement at these points. Out of our habitual +adjustments to one another, a body of mutual understanding and agreement +grows up which constitutes the intellectual and moral order of life. But +this order, necessary as it is, is still in the making. It is not +something given; it is not a copy of something transcendent, impersonal, +and final which crowds may write upon their banners and use to gain +uniform submission for anything which they may be able to express in +terms which are general and abstract. This order of life is purely +practical; it exists for us, not we for it, and because we have agreed +that certain things shall be right and true, it does not follow that +righteousness and truth are fixed and final and must be worshiped as +pure ideas in such a way that the mere repetition of these words +paralyzes our cerebral hemispheres. + +Doubtless one of the greatest aids of the humanist way of thinking in +bringing the individual to self-consciousness is the way in which it +orients us in the world of present-day events. It inspires one to +achieve a working harmony, not a fictitious haven of rest for the mind +interested only in its relations to its own ideas. The unity which life +demands of us is not that of a perfect rational system. It is rather the +unity of a healthy organism all the parts of which can work together. + +Cut up as we are into what Emerson called "fragments of men," I think we +are particularly susceptible to crowd-thinking because we are so +disintegrated. Thought and behavior must always be more or less +automatic and compulsory where there is no conscious co-ordination of +the several parts of it. It is partly because we are the heirs of such a +patchwork of civilization that few people to-day are able to think their +lives through. There can be little organic unity in the heterogeneous +and unrelated aggregation of half-baked information, warring interests, +and irreconcilable systems of valuation which are piled together in the +modern man's thinking. + +Life may not be reduced to a logical unity, but it is an organic whole +for each of us, and we do not reach that organic unity by adding +mutually exclusive partial views of it together. + +Something happens to one who grasps the meaning of humanism; he becomes +self-conscious in a new way. His psychic life becomes a fascinating +adventure in a real world. He finds that his choices are real events. He +is "set intellectually on fire," as one of our educators has correctly +defined education. As Jung would doubtless say, he has "extroverted" +himself; his libido, which in the crowd seeks to enhance the ego feeling +by means of the mechanism which we have described, now is drawn out and +attached to the outer world through the intellectual channel. Selfhood +is realized in the satisfactoriness of the results which one is able to +achieve in the very fullness of his activity and the richness of his +interests. + +Such a free spirit needs no crowds to keep up his faith, and he is truly +social, for he approaches his social relationships with intelligent +discrimination and judgments of worth which are his own. He contributes +to the social, not a copy or an imitation, not a childish wish-fancy +furtively disguised, but a psychic reality and a new creative energy. It +is only in the fellowship of such spirits, whatever political or +economic forms their association may take, that we may expect to see the +Republic of the Free. + + + + +INDEX + + + Abelard, 153, 283. + + Absolute, the, 143. + + Absolutism, 133, 144. + + Abstract ideas, 2, 49, 160. + + ---- function of, 154, 155. + + Adler, Dr. Alfred, 59. + + ---- _The Neurotic Constitution_, 20, 61, 63. + (Translated by Bernard Glueck and John A. Land; Moffat, Yard & Co., + New York, 1917.) + + Adventist, 211. + (See also Messianism.) + + Age of Reason, 209. + + Agitators, 192. + + Alcoholic neurosis, 86. + + _Alice in Wonderland_, 2. + + Ambition, 66. + + America, conformist spirit in, 275. + + ---- crowd movements in, 53. + + ---- democracy in, 253, 280. + + ---- education in, 273, 280. + + ---- freedom of opinion in, 268. + + ---- leadership in, 275. + + ---- present condition, 189. + + American colonists, 52. + + ---- Declaration of Independence, 196. + + ---- democracy, mental habits in, 272. + + ---- revolution, 225. + + Americanism, 87. + + Americanisation propaganda, 108. + + Anabaptists, 225. + + Analytical psychology, 12, 294. + (See also Psychoanalysis, Freud, Jung, Adler, Brill, The + Unconscious.) + + Anselm, 153. + + _a priori_ ideas in paranoia, 67. + + Arbitrary power, limits of, 246. + + Aristocrats, 182. + + Armenians, persecution of, 107. + + Armistice, the, 115. + + Athletic contests, 82. + + ---- events, symbols of conflict, 113. + + _Atlantic Monthly_, 258. + + Attention, 36. + + ---- direction of, 29. + + ---- function of, 58. + + Augustine, Saint, 153, 270. + + + Bacon, Francis, 153. + + Baker, Secretary Newton D., 117, 119. + + Beethoven, 175, 269. + + Behavior, social, 5. + + Belief, crowd a creature of, 31. + + Beliefs, as ends in themselves, 33. + + ---- crowd professions of, 195. + + Berger, Victor, 265. + + Bergson, Henri, 153. + + ---- on sleep, 57. + + ---- _Creative Evolution_, 211, 299. + (Translated by Arthur Mitchell; Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1911.) + + ---- _Time_ and _Free Will_, 290. + (Translated by F. L. Pogson; George Allen & Co., London, 1912.) + + Bible, 270. + + Birth control, 239. + + Boccaccio, 270. + + Bolshevism, 166, 186, 207. + (See also Soviets, Revolution, Russia.) + + Bolshevist propaganda, 228. + + Bourgeois, 170, 225. + + Brill, Dr. A. A., 59. + + ---- _Psychoanalysis; Its Theories and Application_ (W. B. + Saunders, Philadelphia, Pa.), 55, 61, 93, 133, 135. + + British Labor Party, 226. + + Butler, Samuel, 283. + + Byron, 62. + + + Cæsar Borgia, 233. + + Calvin, 225. + + Capitalism, 177, 178. + + Carlyle, 258. + + ---- _Heroes and Hero Worshipers_, 175. + + ---- _Sartor Resartus_, 46. + + Cassanova, 270. + + Categorical imperative, 90. + + Catholics, 264. + + ---- in England, 225. + + Censorships, 239. + + Cervantes, 283. + + Chautauqua, the, 272. + + Chauvanism, 223. + + Chesterton, G. K., 135. + + Chicago, riot in, 107. + + Child, egoism of, 62. + + Christianity, primitive, 193, 209. + + Church, the, 83, 114, 170, 234. + + Cicero, 188. + + Citizen, the, 248. + + Civilization, continuity of, 216. + + Class, the master, 177. + + ---- struggle, 43. + (See also Revolution.) + + Classics, the, 292. + + Clergy of Middle Ages, 230. + + Collective Mind, 15. + + College students, egoism of, 78, 79. + + Communion of the saints, 83. + + Compensation, 120. + + ---- mechanisms of, 84. + + Complex formations, causes of, 65. + + Compromise mechanisms, 71. + + Compulsive hatred, 112. + + ---- thinking, 71, 102. + + Conflict, psychic, 3. + + ---- within the psyche, 70. + + Conformist spirit, 275. + + Conformity, insisted upon by crowds, 266. + + Conscientious objector, 120. + + Consciousness, 57. + + Conservatism of the crowd-mind, 224. + + Conservative crowds, 191. + + Conspiracy, delusion of, 105. + (See also Paranoia, Projection, Persecution.) + + Constantine, 234. + + Constituent assembly, French, 186. + + Constitution, 247, 249. + + Constitutional government, 235. + + Convert, the, 86. + + Conway, Sir Martin, 17, 181. + + ---- _The Crowd in Peace and War._ (Longmans, Green & Co., + London, 1915.) + + Co-operation, 226. + + Co-operative commonwealth, 209. + + Cooper Union Forum, 25, 26, 265, 240. + + Counter crowds, 198. + + Couthon, 206. + + _Creative Intelligence_, 298. + + Cromwell, Oliver, 225. + + Crowd, the, 6. + + ---- against some one, 113. + (See also Hatred, Paranoia, Delusion of Persecution, Projection.) + + ---- a creature of belief, 31. + + ---- a state of mind, 19. + + ---- compulsive thinking of, 71, 102. + + ---- defined, 5. + + ---- delusion of conspiracy in, 105. + + ---- delusion of persecution, 99. + + ---- dogma of equality in, 175. + + ---- dominant, 35, 177. + + ---- effect on social peace, 8. + + ---- effect on the individual, 8. + + ---- ego mania of, 74. + + ---- enemy of personality, 159. + + ---- ethics of, 90. + + ---- fear and suspicion in, 104. + + ---- function of ideals in, 84. + + ---- hates in order that it may believe in itself, 132. + + ---- hatred, a motive of self-defense, 113, 125. + + ---- homicidal tendencies of, 106-107. + + ---- ideal of society, 267. + + ---- idealism of, 160. + + ---- idealizes itself, 43. + + ---- itself absolute, 161. + + ---- its resentment of educated man, 172. + + ---- movements in America, 53. + + ---- moral, 124. + + ---- moral dilemmas of, 88. + + ---- motives in education, 271, 272. + + ---- notions of equality, 262. + + ---- parental function of, 44. + + ---- restrictions upon freedom, 25. + + ---- rumor in, 104. + + ---- self-deception of, 54. + + ---- self-pity in, 101. + + ---- sense of responsibility in, 100. + + ---- transference phenomenon, a 136, 138. + + ---- truths are _a priori_ concepts, 141. + + ---- tyranny in, 101. + + ---- tyranny of, 235. + + ---- unconscious egoism of, 73. + + ---- unconscious motives of, 51. + + ---- virtues and vices of, 88. + + ---- virtues of, 164. + + Crowd-behavior, in a democracy, 242. + + ---- pseudo-social, 22. + + Crowd-ethics, 267. + + Crowd-ideas, abstract, 49. + + Crowd-ideas, moral significance of, 35. + + ---- pathology of, 37. + + ---- phenomenon of attention in, 36. + + ---- ready made, 26. + + Crowd man, a dogmatist, 140. + + Crowd mentality, 5. + + Crowd-mind--and paranoia, 92. + + ---- absolutism of, chapter vi, 133. + + ---- conservatism of, 224. + + ---- distorts patriotism, 111. + + ---- influence upon education, 277. + + ---- orthodoxy of, 152. + + ---- similarity--to paranoia, 98. + + ---- tendency to exaggerate, 100. + + Crowd morality, 35, 157-158. + + ---- demands a victim, 106. + + Crowd orator, 99. + + Crowd-propaganda, 289. + + Crowd-thinking--conservative, 191. + + ---- destructive tendencies of, 163. + + ---- finality of, 44. + + ---- function of, 191. + + ---- intensified by revolution, 223. + + ---- logic of, 140. + + ---- not creative, 217. + + ---- pageantry of, 215. + + ---- quest of "magic formulas," 150. + + ---- rationalisation of, 150-151. + + ---- wanting in intellectual curiosity, 271. + + Crowds, claim to infallibility, 234. + + ---- counter, 198. + + ---- credulity of, 139-140. + + ---- dictatorship of, 183. + + ---- dignity of, 83. + + ---- disintegration of, 195. + + ---- dominant, 168. + + ---- faith of, 126. + + ---- function of ideas in, 155-156. + + ---- hostility to freedom, 200. + + ---- idealism of, 112. + + ---- illiberalism of, 276. + + ---- in modern society, 7. + + ---- liberty of, 266. + + ---- Messianic faith of, 201. + + ---- permanent, 42. + + ---- phenomenon of displacement in, 116. + + ---- resist disintegration, 129. + + ---- revolutionary, 180. + + ---- revolutionary phenomena in, 203. + + ---- self-adulation of, 77. + + ---- self-feeling in, 170. + + ---- slow to learn, 193. + + ---- spirit of, 298. + + ---- will to dominance, 79. + + Curiosity of crowds, 271. + + + Darwin, 225, 269. + + Day dreams, 84. + + Day of the Lord, 202. + + Debs, Eugene V., 265. + + Decalogue, 90. + + Defense-mechanism, 94. + + Deists, 264. + + Delusion of conspiracy, 105. + (See also Paranoia, Persecution.) + + ---- of grandeur, 92. + (See also Paranoia, Egoism, Self-feeling.) + + ---- of persecution, 68, 69, 92, 99. + (See also Paranoia, Projection, Hate.) + + Democracy, 178, 266, 282. + + ---- crowd behavior in, 242. + + ---- genius in, 268. + + ---- in America, 253, 272, 280. + + ---- law in, 268. + + ---- lawmaking power in, 247. + + ---- liberty in, 248, 261-267. + + ---- mental habits of, 287. + + ---- not synonymous with liberty, 242. + + Democratic constitutions, 235. + + Democrats, 264. + + Demons, 95. + + Demon worship, 97. + + Demosthenes, 62. + + Department of Justice, United States, 240. + + Determination, unconscious, 5. + + Determinism, psychological motives of, 149. + + Devil, the, 114. + + Dewey, John, _Ethics_, by Dewey and Tufts (Henry Holt & Co., + New York. 1910), 89. + + ---- _Essays in Experimental Logic_ (University of Chicago + Press, 1916), 142. + + ----- Creative Intelligence (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1917), 298. + + ---- _Democracy and Education_ (The Macmillan Company, New + York, 1916), 288-289, 290, 291. + + Dias, 194. + + Dictatorship, 222. + + Dictatorship of crowds, 183. + + Dictatorship of the proletariat, 193, 228, 229-232. + + Dignity of crowds, 83. + (See also Egoism.) + + Disguise, mechanisms of, 73. + + Disintegration of crowds, 129, 195. + + Dogma of infallibility, 234. + + Dogmatism, 140. + + Dominant crowd, 177. + + Dostoievsky, 270. + + ---- _The Brothers Karamasov_, 233. + + Dream, the, 34. + + ---- fancies, 58. + + ---- of Paradise, 207. + + ---- of social redemption, 232. + + ---- of world set free, 222. + + Dreams, 57, 84. + + ---- disguise in, 73. + + Dreiser, Theodore, 265. + + ---- _The Genius_, 265. + + DuBois, W. F. B., 121. + + Duty, 161. + + + East St. Louis, riot in, 107. + + Eastman, Max, 264. + + Economic system, 213. + + Economics, science of, 185. + + Educated man, crowd's resentment of, 172. + + Education, chapter x, 281. + + ---- crowd motive in, 271-272. + + ---- of present day, 288. + + ---- religious, 153. + + ---- the new, 284, 286, 289. + + ---- traditional, 292. + + ---- traditional systems, 277, 278. + + Ego, consciousness, 70. + (See also Self-feeling.) + + ---- mania, 74. + + Egoism of the neurotic, 61. + + ---- unconscious, 73. + + Eighteenth amendment to Constitution of United States, 236, 265. + + Emerson, 9, 269, 283, 302. + + Emotion, theory of, 18. + + Empiricism, 297. + + England, political liberty in, 226. + + ---- Socialism in, 227. + + Environment, social, 35. + + Epicurus, 153. + + Equality, 175, 262. + + Erasmus, 283. + + Espionage, in United States, 241. + + Ethic, of Kant, 162. + + Ethics, 267. + + ---- of crowd, 90. + + Europe, present condition in, 189. + + Evangelists, 114. + (See also Sunday, William.) + + Evolution, 212. + + ---- doctrines of, 210. + + Exaggeration of crowd-mind, 100. + + Exodus of children of Israel, 52. + + Exploitation, 170, 177. + + Extroversion, 303. + + + Fads, 224. + + Faguet, _The Cult of Incompetence_, 17. + (Translated by Beatrice Barstow; E. P. Dutton & Co., New + York, 1916.) + + ---- _The Dread of Responsibility_, 266. + (Translated by Emily James; G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, + 1914.) + + Faith, 126. + + Fanaticism, 86. + + Fear, 104, 128. + + Feeling of importance, 82. + (See also Egoism.) + + Female neurotic, 98. + + Fichte, 152. + + Fiction of justification, 106. + + Fictions, 20, 128. + + Fictitious logic, 198. + + Fixations, phenomenon of, 94. + + Flaubert, 270. + + Forgetting, purposeful, 56. + + Fourierists, 204. + + Franklin, 225. + + Freedom, 154, 244, 248. + + ---- in democracy, 261-267. + + ---- of speech, 264. + + ---- to vote, 261. + + Free spirit, 303. + + French Revolution, 38, 107, 170, 182-183, 192, 194, 219. + + Freud, Dr. Sigmund, 30, 34, 59, 117, 210. + (See Analytical Psychology.) + + ---- _Delusion and Dream_, 55. + (Translated by Helen Downey; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1917.) + + ---- _The Interpretation of Dreams_, 12, 59. + (Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill; The Macmillan Company, New York, + 1915.) + + ---- _Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory._ "Nervous and + Mental Diseases," Monograph Series No. 4, 63. + + ---- _Totem and Taboo_, 12, 90, 95. + (Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, + 1918.) + + ---- influence upon general psychology, 12. + + ---- on dream thoughts, 30. + + + Garrison, William Lloyd, 264. + + Gary schools, 265. + + Genius, 67, 268. + + Germany, 110. + + ---- and the war, 38. + + ---- Socialist movement in, 227. + + Gironde, 196. + (See also French Revolution.) + + Gobineau, 17, 54, 181. + + Goethe, 175, 270, 283. + + Good, the, 90. + + Goodness, 89. + + Government, by crowds, chapter ix, 233. + + Government, functions of, 251. + + Grandeur, delusions of, 92. + (See also Egoism, Paranoia.) + + Greatest happiness, principle of, 167. + + Greece, 143. + + Greek literature, 277. + + + Hapsburg, the, 235. + + Hatred, 132. + + ---- in paranoia, 94, 112. + + Hebrew prophet, 202. + + Hegel, 152-153. + + Heretic, the, 123. + + Hero worship, 81, 82. + + Hohenzollerns, the, 235. + + Homicidal tendencies, 105. + (See also Crowd, Paranoia, Hatred.) + + Homosexuality, 94. + + Human nature, evil of, 284. + + ---- weakness of, 245-246. + + Human sacrifice, 112. + + Humanism, 225, 290, 293, 298, 300, 302. + (See also Pragmatism.) + + Humanist, the, 296. + + Hume, David, 153. + + Huxley, 226, 269. + + Hypocrisy, among crowds, 54. + + Idealism, 141, 144. + + ---- modern, 223. + + ---- of crowds, 112. + + ---- psychology of, 148. + + Ideals, of the crowd, 84. + + Ideas, _a priori_, 67. + + ---- descriptive confused with casual, 214. + + ---- no impersonal, 3. + + ---- political, moral, religious, 44. + + ---- tyranny of, 279. + + Ideational system, 159. + (See also Paranoia, Crowd Thinking.) + + Illusions, 31. + + Imitation and suggestion, theory of, 33. + + Individual, the, 150, 283, 297, 301. + + ---- and society, 1-32. + + Individualism, 153, 262. + + Infallibility, dogma of, 234. + + Inferiority, feeling of, 62, 169-170. + (See also Egoism, Compensation.) + + Ingersoll, Robert, 225, 269. + + Insanity, 3. + + Insanity and emotion, 19. + (See also Paranoia, Psychoanalysis.) + + Instinct, 11. + + Instrumental theory of intellect, 298. + + Intellectualism, 144, 296. + + ---- and conservatism, 18. + + Intellectuals, the, 230. + + + Jackson, Andrew, 265. + + Jacobinism, 264. + + Jacobins, the, 116. + + James, William, 2, 31, 153, 207, 241, 283, 291, 297. + + James, William, _Essays in Radical Empiricism_ (Longmans, Green + & Co., New York, 1912), 142. + + ---- _The Meaning of Truth_, 301. + + ---- _Pragmatism_ (Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1905), 142. + + ---- _Principles of Psychology_ (Henry Holt & Co., New York, + 1890), 37, 127, 298. + + ---- _The Will to Believe_ (Longmans, Green & Co., Reprint, + 1912), 57, 175. + + ---- _Varieties of Religious Experience_, (Longmans, Green & + Co., New York, 1906), 22. + + Jefferson, 225, 264. + + Jericho, fall of a Revolutionary symbol, 212. + + Judgment Day, 81. + + Julius Cæsar, 130. + + Julius II, Pope, 181. + + Jung, Dr. C. G., 59. + (See also Psychoanalysis.) + + ---- _Analytical Psychology_, 85, 303. (Translated by E. Long; + Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1917.) + + ---- Psychology of the Unconscious, 66, 138. (Translated by Beatrice + Hinkle; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1916.) + + Justification, mechanism of, 106. + + Kaiser Wilhelm II, 80, 115. + + Kant, 153, 161. + + ---- _Metaphysics of Morals_, 90, 162-163. (Translated by Thos. + K. Abbot; Longmans, Green & Co., New York. Sixth edition, 1917.) + + Keats, 269. + + Kingdom of Heaven, 202. + + + Labor, assumed triumph of, 229. + + Law, in a democracy, 268. + + Leadership, 271. + + ---- in America, 275. + + L Bon, Gustave, 5, 17, 19, 139, 205, 242, 269. + + ---- on the unconscious, 14. + + ---- summary of his theory, 47. + + ---- _The Crowd, A Study of the Popular Mind_ (Eleventh edition. + T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., London, 1917), 15. + + ---- _The Psychology of Revolution_, 180, 182, 205. (Translated + by Miall; G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1912.) + + Lenin, Nicolai, 206, 227, 233. + + Leo X, Pope, 181, 185. + + Liberator, the, 124, 125, 264. + + Liberty, 199. + + ---- in a democracy, 242, 261-267. + + ---- of crowds, 266, 276. + + Libido, 65, 136, 303. + + Lincoln, 225. + + Livingstone, R. W., _The Greek Genius and Its Meaning for Us_, + 143. + + Locke, John, 153. + + Logic, of crowd-thinking, 140. + + ---- in crowds and in paranoia, 198. + + Louis XVI, 186. + + Lowell, Percival, 269. + + Lusk Committee, the, 103. + + Luther, Martin, 175, 193, 225. + + Lynchings, 38, 106. + + + McDougal, Prof. William, 10. _An Introduction to Social + Psychology_ (John W. Luce & Co., Boston, 1917), 11. + + Machiavelli, _The Prince_, 233. + + Madison Square Garden, 265. + + Majority, as king, 248. + + ---- tyranny of, 250. + + Man in the state of nature, 209. + + Manifesto, Socialist, 204. + (See also Karl Marx.) + + "Man the Measure of all Things," 300. + + Marcus Aurelius, 234. + + Marines' Fathers' Association, 117-118. + + Marx, Karl, 152. + + Masculine protest, 62. + + Masochism, 39, 65. + + Mass meetings, 23. + + Master class, 177. + + Materialism, 150. + + Mechanisms, of compensation, 84. + + ---- of defense, 94. + + ---- of disguise, 73. + + ---- of justification, 40, 106. + + Mechanistic theories, 1. + + Mediæval thinkers, 10. + + Mental habits, 272. + + Messianism as a revolutionary crowd phenomenon, 203, 210. + + Mexico, 194. + + Millennium, 201. + + Milton, 270. + + Milwaukee, pseudo-patriotism in, 259. + + Mind, collective, 15. + + Minority crowds, arrogance of, 257. + + Mirabeau, 183. + + Mob, 6, 165. + + ---- outbreaks, 37. + + Mobs, 107. + + ---- modern, 47. + + ---- Southern, 39. + + Modern society challenged, 213. + + Modernism, 223. + + Montaigne, 270, 283. + + Moral dilemmas, 88. + + Morality, 106. + + ---- of crowd-mind, 157-158. + + ---- of the crowd, 124. + + Motion pictures, 157. + + Multiple personality, 5. + + Mysticism of revolutionary crowds, 219. + + + Napoleon, 221. + + Narcissus, stage, 66. + + Nations as crowds, 83. + + Negation, phenomenon of, 89. + + Nero, 234. + + Neurotic, female, 98. + + ---- similarity to crowd, 71. + + Newcomb, Simon, 269. + + Newspapers, 45. + + New York City, 172. + + ---- crowds in, 115. + + New Testament, 202. + + Nietzsche, Friederich, 153, 269, 270. + + ---- _Antichrist_ (Third English edition. Dr. Oscar Levy; The + Macmillan Company, New York, 1911), 81. + + ---- _Beyond Good and Evil_ (Third English edition. Dr. Oscar + Levy; The Macmillan Company, New York), 17, 124, 194. + + ---- _Genealogy of Morals_ (Edited by Dr. Oscar Levy; The + Macmillan Company, New York. 1911), 91. + + ---- _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, 175. (Translated by Thomas + Gommon.) + + ---- _The Will to Power_, 62. (Translated by A. M. Ludovici; + Oscar Levy edition; The Macmillan Company.) + + Nonconformist, 123. + + Non-crowd man, 226, 285. + + + Obsessions, 134. + + Oedipus complex, 66. + + Omaha, riot in, 107, 116. + + Orators, 25. + + Oratory, 99. + + Orthodoxy, 152. + + + Pageantry, 216. + + Paine, Thomas, 225. + + Parades, 115. + + Paranoia, 22, 67, 92, 93, 94, 102, 294. + + ---- and fanaticism, 86. + + ---- hatred in, 112. + + ---- obsessive ideas in, 134. + + ---- rationalization in, 139. + + ---- similarity to crowd-mind, 98. + + Paranoiac, 84, 163, 208. + + Parker, Theodore, 269. + + Partisanship, 140, 194. + + Pathological types, 58. + + Patriotic crowds, 151. + + Patriotism, 80, 111, 118, 119. + + People's Institute of New York, 241. + + Permanent crowds, 42. + + Persecution, delusion of, 68, 69, 92. + + Personal liberty, 244. + + ---- in a democracy, 248. + + Personality, 297. + + Perversion, 64. + + Petrarch, 175. + + Petrograd, 219. + + Philosophers, intellectualist, 296. + + Philosophical idealism, 148. + (See also Intellectualism, Rationalism.) + + Philosophy, humanist, 293. + + Philosophy of "as if," 128. + + Platitudes in crowd oratory, 26. + + Plato, 150, 153, 300. + + ---- _The Republic_, 143. (Translated by Jowett; Third edition, + Oxford Press, 1892.) + + Pliny, 247. + + Poe, 269. + + Pogroms, 107. + + Poland, 107. + + Political conventions, 27. + + Political liberty in England, 226. + + Politics, philosophy of, 233. + + Pope, the, 62. + + Power, abuses of, 185. + + ---- crowd, will to, 160. + + Pragmatism, 142, 299, 301. + (See also Humanism.) + + Principles, as justification mechanisms, 40. + + ---- as leading ideas, 154. + + Progress, 167. + + Prohibition, 239, 265. + + Prohibition agitator, 88. + + Prohibitionists, the, 80, 114. + + Projection, phenomenon of, 87, 95, 105. + + Proletarian crowd, 236. + + Proletarians, 263. + + Proletariat, the, 183. + + ---- dictatorship of, 197, 229-232. + + Propaganda, 54, 101, 103, 142, 157, 264, 289. + + ---- Bolshevist, 228, 265. + + ---- revolutionary, 181, 189, 208. + + Protagoras, 153, 283, 300. + + Protestantism, 225. + + Prussianism, 258. + + Psychic conflict, 3. + + Psychoanalysis, 34, 59, 165, 295. + + ---- therapeutic value of, 165, 284. + + Psychology of crowd, summary of author's view, 48, 49, 50. + + Psychology, social, 11. + + ---- of the unconscious, 12, 51, 56, 57, 58, 64, 70, 138, 267. + + Psychoneurosis, 92. + + ---- egoism of, 61. + + Psychosexual, 64. + + Public opinion, 4, 46. + + Public schools, 273-274. + + Puritanism, 264, 265. + + + Quakers, the, 225, 264. + + + Rabelais, 270. + + Race riots, 107. + + ---- motive of, 121. + + Radical crowds, 152. + + Rationalism, 144. + (See also Intellectualism.) + + Rationalization, 144, 249. + + ---- in crowds, 156. + + ---- of revolutionary wish-fancy, 210. + + Real, the, concreteness of, 297. + + Reality, criterion of, 32. + + ---- sense of, 37. + + Re-education, 294. + + Reform, "white slavery," 98. + + Reformation, the, 182, 192, 225. + + Reformers, 157, 270. + + Reformist crowds, 151. + + Regression, 111, 135. + + Religion, 201. + + ---- Messianism and revolution, 204. + + Religious convert, 86. + + ---- crowds, 151. + + ---- education, 153. + + ---- symbolism, 66. + + Renaissance, 170, 175, 225, 292. + + Repression, 34, 45, 63, 64. + + Republicans, the, 264. + + Responsibility, sense of, 100. + + Revenge, 220. + + Revival meetings, 76. + (See also Sunday, William.) + + Revolution, chapter vii, 166, 183. + + ---- as a crowd phenomenon, 180. + + ---- psychic causes of, 171. + + ---- small fruits of, 224. + + ---- violence in, 167. + + Revolution, French, 38, 170, 182, 183, 192, 194, 205, 219. + + ---- Russian, 9, 183, 206. + + Revolutionary creed, 222. + + ---- crowds, 151, 200. + + ---- propaganda, 181, 188, 189, 208. + + Riots, 106. + + Robespierre, 206, 235. + + Rochdale movement, 226. + + Rolland, Mme., 182. + + Roman republic, 187. + + Romanoffs, the, 235. + + Rossetti, 270. + + Rousseau, Jean J., 153, 233, 270. + + Rumor, 104. + + Russia, pogroms in, 107. + + ---- revolution in, 186. + + ---- Socialist movement in, 227. + + Russian revolution, 9, 53, 183, 206. + + + Sadism, 39, 65, 111. + + Saint Just, 206. + + Saint Simonists, 204. + + Salem, Massachusetts, 163. + + Sans-culottism, 171. + + _Saturday Evening Post_, 272. + + Savonarola, 235. + + Saxon peasants, 225. + + Schiller, F. C. S., 241, 300, 301. + + ---- _Humanism_ (Second edition. The Macmillan Company, London, + 1912), 142. + + ---- _Studies in Humanism_ (Second edition. The Macmillan + Company, London, 1912), 144-147. + + Schopenhauer, 153, 269. + + Schubert, 269. + + Science, 159, 278. + + ---- humanist spirit of, 225. + + Self-appreciation, 63. + (See also Egoism.) + + ---- consciousness, 301. + + ---- deception of crowds, 54. + + ---- defense, a motive of crowd hatred, 125. + + Self-appreciation, feeling, 170, 223. + + ---- hood, 303. + + ---- pity, 101. + + Senate of United States, 114. + + Servetus, 225. + + Sexuality, repressed, 63. + + Shakespeare, 270. + + Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar," 130. + + Shelley, 269. + + Sioux Indians, 156. + + Social behavior, 1, 2. + + ---- environment, 35, 37. + + ---- idealism, 200. + + ---- order, how possible, 301. + + ---- order, the present, 100. + + ---- psychology, 11. + + ---- reconstruction, task of, 212. + + ---- redemption, dream of, 207, 222, 232. + + ---- redemption, no formula for, 282. + + ---- thinking, 2. + + Socialism in England, 226. + + Socialist, 80. + + ---- movement in Germany, 227. + + ---- movement in Russia, 227. + + ---- movement in United States, 227. + + ---- philosophy, 210. + + Socialists, the, 141, 204, 265. + + Socialisation, present tendencies toward, 236. + + Society, as "Thing-in-itself," 2. + + Society for the Prevention of Vice, 114. + + Socrates, 283. + + South, lynchings in, 106. + + Southern mobs, 39. + + Soviet republic, 9. + + ---- spirit, 9. + + Soviets, 38. + + Spargo, John, 124. + + ---- _The Psychology of Bolshevism_ (Harper & Brothers, + 1919), 8. + + Spencer, Herbert, 16, 226, 238. + + ---- _Principles of Sociology_ (D. Appleton & Co., New York, + 1898), 11. + + Spingarn, Maj. J. E., 122. + + Spirit of 1776, 264. + + Spiritual valuation, 271. + + State, bureaucratic, 238. + + Stewart, Charles D., 258. + + Strikes, 232. + + Stuarts, the, 235. + + Substitution, phenomenon of, 116. + + Suggestion, 33. + + Sumner, William Graham, 181. + + ---- _Folkways_ (Ginn & Co., New York, 1906), 11, 181, 169. + + Sunday, Rev. William, 24, 42, 76, 172. + + Superiority, idea of, 174. + + Suppressed wish, 40. + + Suspicion, 104. + + Survival values, 77. + + Swinburne, 270. + + Symbolic thought, 20. + + Symbolism, religious, 66. + + + Taboo, 117. + + Tammany Hall, 233. + + Tarde, Gabriel, _The Laws of Imitation_, 17. (Translated by + Parsons.) + + Theology, 141. + + Theory of knowledge, 241. + + ---- humanist, 293. + + ---- instrumental, 298. + + Thinking, compulsive, 102. + + ---- function of, 299. + + ---- instrumental nature of, 20. + + ---- of crowds, 142. + + ---- social, 2. + + ---- symbolic nature of, 20. + + Thomas Aquinas, 153. + + Tocqueville, de, democracy in America, 253-257, 268, 271. + + Tolstoi, 270. + + _Totem and Taboo_, 95. + + Tragedy, psychological meaning of, 66. + + Transference phenomenon, 136. + + Tribune, the, New York, 101, 113. + + Truth, 299, 300. + + Truths, 141. + + Truths, independent, 3. + + Turkey, Sultan of, 234. + + Turks, the, 107. + + Tyranny, 101, 235. + + ---- of ideas, 279. + + ---- of the majority, 250. + + + Unconscious, the, chapter iii, 5, 12, 14, 35, 49, 51, 56, 57, 61, + 64, 155, 267. + + ---- desire, 120. + + ---- determinism, 5. + + Unction, 210. + + United States, Socialist movement in, 227. + + Universal judgments, 88. + (See also Absolute, Crowd-thinking, Intellectualism.) + + Unrest, social, 213. + + Utilitarianism, nineteenth century, 10. + + Utopia, 209, 215, 221. + + + Values, 169. + + ---- creation of, 276. + + Variation, 271. + + Violence, causes of, 39. + + Virtues, 88. + + ---- of the crowd, 164. + + Vote, right to, 261. + + + Wagner, 269. + + Wallas, Graham, _The Great Society_ (The Macmillan Company, + New York, 1917), 14, 16. + + War psychology, 108, 109. + + Ward, Lester, _Pure Sociology_ (The Macmillan Company, New + York. Second edition, 1916), 11. + + Washington, D. C., riot in, 107. + + Weakness of human nature, 245-246. + + White, Dr. William, _Mechanisms of Character Formation_ + (The Macmillan Company, New York), 59. + + White slavery, reform, 98. + + Whitman, Walt, 268, 283. + + Whittier, 179. + + Will, healthy, 89. + + Will to dominance, 79. + + Wish-fancy, 303. + + ---- rationalized, 210. + + Wish, suppressed, 40. + + Working class, 18, 204, 227. + (See also Proletariat.) + + World War, 38. + + + Young Men's Christian Association, 240, 259. + + +THE END + + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Punctuation and spelling standardized. + +Inconsistent hyphenation not changed. + +Page 121, 307: "W. F. B. DuBois" probably should be "W. E. B. DuBois" + +Page 197: ambiguous quotation marks resolved. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Behavior of Crowds, by Everett Dean Martin + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40914 *** |