The first effect of modern conditions of life has been to increase and

vastly complicate the economic interdependence of strange and distant

peoples, i.e., to destroy distances and make the world, as far as

national relations are concerned, small and tight.

The second effect has been to break down family, local, and national

ties, and emancipate the individual man.

When the family ceases, as it does in the city, to be an

economic unit, when parents and children have vocations that

not only intercept the traditional relations of family life,

but make them well nigh impossible, the family ceases to

function as an organ of social control. When the different

nationalities, with their different national cultures, have so

far interpenetrated one another that each has permanent

colonies within the territorial limits of the other, it is

inevitable that the old solidarities, the common loyalties and

the common hatreds that formerly bound men together in

primitive kinship and local groups should be undermined.

A survey of the world today shows that vast changes are everywhere in

progress. Not only in Europe but in Asia and in Africa new cultural

contacts have undermined and broken down the old cultures. The effect

has been to loosen all the social bonds and reduce society to its

individual atoms. The energies thus freed have produced a world-wide

ferment. Individuals released from old associations enter all the more

readily into new ones. Out of this confusion new and strange political

and religious movements arise, which represent the groping of men for a

new social order.

3. The Crowd and the Public

Gustave Le Bon, who was the first writer to call attention to the

significance of the crowd as a social phenomenon,[281] said that mass

movements mark the end of an old régime and the beginning of a new.

"When the structure of a civilization is rotten, it is always the masses

that bring about its downfall."[282] On the other hand, "all founders of

religious or political creeds have established them solely because they

were successful in inspiring crowds with those fanatical sentiments

which have as result that men find their happiness in worship and

obedience and are ready to lay down their lives for their idol."[283]

The crowd was, for Le Bon, not merely any group brought together by the

accident of some chance excitement, but it was above all the emancipated

masses whose bonds of loyalty to the old order had been broken by "the

destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which

all the elements of our civilization are rooted." The crowd, in other

words, typified for Le Bon the existing social order. Ours is an age of

crowds, he said, an age in which men, massed and herded together in

great cities without real convictions or fundamental faiths, are likely

to be stampeded in any direction for any chance purpose under the

influence of any passing excitement.

Le Bon did not attempt to distinguish between the crowd and the public.

This distinction was first made by Tarde in a paper entitled "Le Public

et la foule," published first in _La Revue de Paris_ in 1898, and

included with several others on the same general theme under the title

_L'Opinion et la foule_ which appeared in 1901. The public, according to

Tarde, was a product of the printing press. The limits of the crowd are

determined by the length to which a voice will carry or the distance

that the eye can survey. But the public presupposes a higher stage of

social development in which suggestions are transmitted in the form of

ideas and there is "contagion without contact."[284]

The fundamental distinction between the crowd and the public, however,

is not to be measured by numbers nor by means of communication, but by

the form and effects of the interactions. In the public, interaction

takes the form of discussion. Individuals tend to act upon one another

critically; issues are raised and parties form. Opinions clash and thus

modify and moderate one another.

The crowd does not discuss and hence it does not reflect. It simply

"mills." Out of this milling process a collective impulse is formed

which dominates all members of the crowd. Crowds, when they act, do so

impulsively. The crowd, says Le Bon, "is the slave of its impulses."

"The varying impulses which crowds obey may be, according to their

exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will

always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the

interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them."[285]

When the crowd acts it becomes a mob. What happens when two mobs meet?

We have in the literature no definite record. The nearest approach to it

are the occasional accounts we find in the stories of travelers of the

contacts and conflicts of armies of primitive peoples. These

undisciplined hordes are, as compared with the armies of civilized

peoples, little more than armed mobs. Captain S. L. Hinde in his story

of the Belgian conquest of the Congo describes several such battles.

From the descriptions of battles carried on almost wholly between savage

and undisciplined troops it is evident that the morale of an army of

savages is a precarious thing. A very large part of the warfare consists

in alarms and excursions interspersed with wordy duels to keep up the

courage on one side and cause a corresponding depression on the

other.[286]

Gangs are conflict groups. Their organization is usually quite informal

and is determined by the nature and imminence of its conflicts with

other groups. When one crowd encounters another it either goes to pieces

or it changes its character and becomes a conflict group. When

negotiations and palavers take place as they eventually do between

conflict groups, these two groups, together with the neutrals who have

participated vicariously in the conflict, constitute a public. It is

possible that the two opposing savage hordes which seek, by threats and

boastings and beatings of drums, to play upon each other's fears and so

destroy each other's morale, may be said to constitute a very primitive

type of public.

Discussion, as might be expected, takes curious and interesting forms

among primitive peoples. In a volume, _Iz Derevni: 12 Pisem_ ("From the

Country: 12 Letters"), A. N. Engelgardt describes the way in which the

Slavic peasants reach their decisions in the village council.

In the discussion of some questions by the _mir_ [organization

of neighbors] there are no speeches, no debates, no votes. They

shout, they abuse one another--they seem on the point of coming

to blows; apparently they riot in the most senseless manner.

Some one preserves silence, and then suddenly puts in a word,

one word, or an ejaculation, and by this word, this

ejaculation, he turns the whole thing upside down. In the end,

you look into it and find that an admirable decision has been

formed and, what is most important, a unanimous decision....

(In the division of land) the cries, the noise, the hubbub do

not subside until everyone is satisfied and no doubter is

left.[287]

4. Crowds and Sects

Reference has been made to the crowds that act, but crowds do not always

act. Sometimes they merely dance or, at least, make expressive motions

which relieve their feelings. "The purest and most typical expression of

simple feeling," as Hirn remarks, "is that which consists of mere random

movements."[288] When these motions assume, as they so easily do, the

character of a fixed sequence in time, that is to say when they are

rhythmical, they can be and inevitably are, as by a sort of inner

compulsion, imitated by the onlookers. "As soon as the expression is

fixed in rhythmical form its contagious power is incalculably

increased."[289]

This explains at once the function and social importance of the dance

among primitive people. It is the form in which they prepare for battle

and celebrate their victories. It gives the form at once to their

religious ritual and to their art. Under the influence of the memories

and the emotions which these dances stimulate the primitive group

achieves a sense of corporate unity, which makes corporate action

possible outside of the fixed and sacred routine of ordinary daily life.

If it is true, as has been suggested, that art and religion had their

origin in the choral dance, it is also true that in modern times

religious sects and social movements have had their origin in crowd

excitements and spontaneous mass movements. The very names which have

been commonly applied to them--Quakers, Shakers, Convulsionaires, Holy

Rollers--suggest not merely the derision with which they were at one

time regarded, but indicate likewise their origin in ecstatic or

expressive crowds, the crowds that _do not act_.

All great mass movements tend to display, to a greater or less extent,

the characteristics that Le Bon attributes to crowds. Speaking of the

convictions of crowds, Le Bon says:

When these convictions are closely examined, whether at epochs

marked by fervent religious faith, or by great political

upheavals such as those of the last century, it is apparent

that they always assume a peculiar form which I cannot better

define than by giving it the name of a religious

sentiment.[290]

Le Bon's definition of religion and religious sentiment will hardly find

general acceptance but it indicates at any rate his conception of the

extent to which individual personalities are involved in the excitements

that accompany mass movements.

A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity,

but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete

submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of

fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who

becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.[291]

Just as the gang may be regarded as the perpetuation and permanent form

of "the crowd that acts," so the sect, religious or political, may be

regarded as a perpetuation and permanent form of the orgiastic

(ecstatic) or expressive crowd.

"The sect," says Sighele, "is a crowd _triée_, selected, and permanent,

the crowd is a transient sect, which does not select its members. The

sect is the _chronic_ form of the crowd; the crowd is the _acute_ form

of the sect."[292] It is Sighele's conception that the crowd is an

elementary organism, from which the sect issues, like the chick from the

egg, and that all other types of social groups "may, in this same

manner, be deduced from this primitive social protoplasm." This is a

simplification which the facts hardly justify. It is true that, implicit

in the practices and the doctrines of a religious sect, there is the

kernel of a new independent culture.

5. Sects and Institutions

A sect is a religious organization that is at war with the existing

mores. It seeks to cultivate a state of mind and establish a code of

morals different from that of the world about it and for this it claims

divine authority. In order to accomplish this end it invariably seeks to

set itself off in contrast with the rest of the world. The simplest and

most effective way to achieve this is to adopt a peculiar form of dress

and speech. This, however, invariably makes its members objects of scorn

and derision, and eventually of persecution. It would probably do this

even if there was no assumption of moral superiority to the rest of the

world in this adoption of a peculiar manner and dress.

Persecution tends to dignify and sanctify all the external marks of the

sect, and it becomes a cardinal principle of the sect to maintain them.

Any neglect of them is regarded as disloyalty and is punished as heresy.

Persecution may eventually, as was the case with the Puritans, the

Quakers, the Mormons, compel the sect to seek refuge in some part of the

world where it may practice its way of life in peace.

Once the sect has achieved territorial isolation and territorial

solidarity, so that it is the dominant power within the region that it

occupies, it is able to control the civil organization, establish

schools and a press, and so put the impress of a peculiar culture upon

all the civil and political institutions that it controls. In this case

it tends to assume the form of a state, and become a nationality.

Something approaching this was achieved by the Mormons in Utah. The most

striking illustration of the evolution of a nationality from a sect is

Ulster, which now has a position not quite that of a nation within the

English empire.

This sketch suggests that the sect, like most other social institutions,

originates under conditions that are typical for all institutions of the

same species; then it develops in definite and predictable ways, in

accordance with a form or entelechy that is predetermined by

characteristic internal processes and mechanisms, and that has, in

short, a nature and natural history which can be described and explained

in sociological terms. Sects have their origin in social unrest to which

they give a direction and expression in forms and practices that are

largely determined by historical circumstances; movements which were at

first inchoate impulses and aspirations gradually take form; policies

are defined, doctrine and dogmas formulated; and eventually an

administrative machinery and efficiencies are developed to carry into

effect policies and purposes. The Salvation Army, of which we have a

more adequate history than of most other religious movements, is an

example.

A sect in its final form may be described, then, as a movement of social

reform and regeneration that has become institutionalized. Eventually,

when it has succeeded in accommodating itself to the other rival

organizations, when it has become tolerant and is tolerated, it tends to

assume the form of a denomination. Denominations tend and are perhaps

destined to unite in the form of religious federations--a thing which is

inconceivable of a sect.

What is true of the sect, we may assume, and must assume if social

movements are to become subjects for sociological investigation, is true

of other social institutions. Existing institutions represent social

movements that survived the conflict of cultures and the struggle for

existence.

Sects, and that is what characterizes and distinguishes them from

secular institutions, at least, have had their origin in movements that

aimed to reform the mores--movements that sought to renovate and renew

the inner life of the community. They have wrought upon society from

within outwardly. Revolutionary and reform movements, on the contrary,

have been directed against the outward fabric and formal structure of

society. Revolutionary movements in particular have assumed that if the

existing structure could be destroyed it would then be possible to erect

a new moral order upon the ruins of the old social structures.

A cursory survey of the history of revolutions suggests that the most

radical and the most successful of them have been religious. Of this

type of revolution Christianity is the most conspicuous example.

6. Classification of the Materials

The materials in this chapter have been arranged under the headings:

(a) social contagion, (b) the crowd, and (c) types of mass

movements. The order of materials follows, in a general way, the order

of institutional evolution. Social unrest is first communicated, then

takes form in crowd and mass movements, and finally crystallizes in

institutions. The history of almost any single social movement--woman's

suffrage, prohibition, protestantism--exhibit in a general way, if not

in detail, this progressive change in character. There is at first a

vague general discontent and distress. Then a violent, confused, and

disorderly, but enthusiastic and popular movement, and finally the

movement takes form; develops leadership, organization; formulates

doctrines and dogmas. Eventually it is accepted, established, legalized.

The movement dies, but the institution remains.

a) _Social contagion._--The ease and the rapidity with which a

cultural trait originating in one cultural group finds its way to other

distant groups is familiar to students of folklore and ethnology. The

manner in which fashions are initiated in some metropolitan community,

and thence make their way, with more or less rapidity, to the provinces

is an illustration of the same phenomenon in a different context.

Fashion plays a much larger rôle in social life than most of us

imagine. Fashion dominates our manners and dress but it

influences also our sentiments and our modes of thought.

Everything in literature, art or philosophy that was

characteristic of the middle of the nineteenth century, the

"mid-Victorian period," is now quite out of date and no one who

is intelligent now-a-days practices the pruderies, defends the

doctrines, nor shares the enthusiasms of that period.

Philosophy, also, changes with the fashion and Sumner says that

even mathematics and science do the same. Lecky in his history

of Rationalism in Europe describes in great detail how the

belief in witches, so characteristic of the Middle Ages,

gradually disappeared with the period of enlightenment and

progress.[293] But the enlightenment of the eighteenth century

was itself a fashion and is now quite out of date. In the

meantime a new popular and scientific interest is growing up in

obscure mental phenomena which no man with scientific training

would have paid any attention to a few years ago because he did

not believe in such things. It was not good form to do so.

But the changes of fashion are so pervasive, so familiar, and, indeed,

universal phenomena that we do not regard the changes which they bring,

no matter how fantastic, as quite out of the usual and expected order.

Gabriel Tarde, however, regards the "social contagion" represented in

fashion (imitation) as the fundamental social phenomenon.[294]

The term social epidemic, which is, like fashion, a form of social

contagion, has a different origin and a different connotation. J. F. C.

Hecker, whose study of the Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages, published

in 1832, was an incident of his investigation of the Black Death, was

perhaps the first to give currency to the term.[295] Both the Black

Death and the Dancing Mania assumed the form of epidemics and the

latter, the Dancing Mania, was in his estimation the sequel of the

former, the Black Death. It was perhaps this similarity in the manner in

which they spread--the one by physical and the other by psychical

infection--that led him to speak of the spread of a popular delusion in

terms of a physical science. Furthermore, the hysteria was directly

traceable, as he believed, to the prevailing conditions of the time, and

this seemed to put the manifestations in the world of intelligible and

controllable phenomena, where they could be investigated.

It is this notion, then, that unrest which manifests itself in social

epidemics is an indication of pathological social conditions, and the

further, the more general, conception that unrest does not become social

and hence contagious except when there are contributing causes in the

environment--it is this that gives its special significance to the term

and the facts. Unrest in the social organism with the social ferments

that it induces is like fever in the individual organism, a highly

important diagnostic symptom.

b) _The crowd._--Neither Le Bon nor any of the other writers upon the

subject of mass psychology has succeeded in distinguishing clearly

between the organized or "psychological" crowd, as Le Bon calls it, and

other similar types of social groups. These distinctions, if they are to

be made objectively, must be made on the basis of case studies. It is

the purpose of the materials under the general heading of "The 'Animal'

Crowd," not so much to furnish a definition, as to indicate the nature

and sources of materials from which a definition can be formulated. It

is apparent that the different animal groups behave in ways that are

distinctive and characteristic, ways which are predetermined in the

organism to an extent that is not true of human beings.

One other distinction may possibly be made between the so-called

"animal" and the human crowd. The organized crowd is controlled by _a

common purpose_ and acts to achieve, no matter how vaguely it is

defined, a common end. The herd, on the other hand, has apparently no

common purpose. Every sheep in the flock, at least as the behavior of

the flock is ordinarily interpreted, behaves like every other. Action in

a stampede, for example, is collective but it is not concerted. It is

very difficult to understand how there can be concerted action in the

herd or the flock unless it is on an instinctive basis. The crowd,

however, responds to collective representations. The crowd does not

imitate or follow its leader as sheep do a bellwether. On the contrary,

the crowd _carries out the suggestions of the leader_, and even though

there be no division of labor each individual acts more or less in his

own way to achieve a common end.

In the case of a panic or a stampede, however, where there is no common

end, the crowd acts like a flock of sheep. But a stampede or a panic is

not a crowd in Le Bon's sense. It is not a psychological unity, nor a

"single being," subject to "the mental unity of crowds."[296] The panic

is the crowd in dissolution. All effective methods of dispersing crowds

involve some method of distracting attention, breaking up the tension,

and dissolving the mob into its individual units.

c) _Types of mass movements._--The most elementary form of mass

movement is a mass migration. Such a mass movement displays, in fact,

many of the characteristics of the "animal" crowd. It is the "human"

herd. The migration of a people, either as individuals or in organized

groups, may be compared to the swarming of the hive. Peoples migrate in

search of better living conditions, or merely in search of new

experience. It is usually the younger generation, the more restless,

active, and adaptable, who go out from the security of the old home to

seek their fortunes in the new. Once settled on the new land, however,

immigrants inevitably remember and idealize the home they have left.

Their first disposition is to reproduce as far as possible in the new

world the institutions and the social order of the old. Just as the

spider spins his web out of his own body, so the immigrant tends to spin

out of his experience and traditions, a social organization which

reproduces, as far as circumstances will permit, the organization and

the life of the ancestral community. In this way the older culture is

transplanted and renews itself, under somewhat altered circumstances, in

the new home. That explains, in part, at any rate, the fact that

migration tends to follow the isotherms, since all the more fundamental

cultural devices and experience are likely to be accommodations to

geographical and climatic conditions.

In contrast with migrations are movements which are sometimes referred

to as crusades, partly because of the religious fervor and fanaticism

with which they are usually conducted and partly because they are an

appeal to the masses of the people for direct action and depend for

their success upon their ability to appeal to some universal human

interest or to common experiences and interests that are keenly

comprehended by the common man.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Crusade, referred to in the materials,

may be regarded, if we are permitted to compare great things with small,

as an illustration of collective behavior not unlike the crusades of the

eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Crusades are reformatory and religious. This was true at any rate of the

early crusades, inspired by Peter the Hermit, whatever may have been the

political purposes of the popes who encouraged them. It was the same

motive that led the people of the Middle Ages to make pilgrimages which

led them to join the crusades. At bottom it was an inner restlessness,

that sought peace in great hardship and inspiring action, which moved

the masses.

Somewhat the same widespread contagious restlessness is the source of

most of our revolutions. It is not, however, hardships and actual

distress that inspire revolutions but hopes and dreams, dreams which

find expression in those myths and "vital lies," as Vernon Lee calls

them,[297] which according to Sorel are the only means of moving the

masses.

The distinction between crusades, like the Woman's Temperance Crusade,

and revolutions, like the French Revolution, is that one is a radical

attempt to correct a recognized evil and the other is a radical attempt

to reform an existing social order.

II. MATERIALS

A. SOCIAL CONTAGION

1. An Incident in a Lancashire Cotton Mill[298]

At a cotton manufactory at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire, a girl, on the

fifteenth of February, 1787, put a mouse into the bosom of another girl,

who had a great dread of mice. The girl was immediately thrown into a

fit, and continued in it with the most violent convulsions for

twenty-four hours. On the following day three more girls were seized in

the same manner; and on the seventeenth, six more. By this time the

alarm was so great that the whole work, in which 200 or 300 were

employed, was totally stopped, and an idea prevailed that a particular

disease had been introduced by a bag of cotton opened in the house. On

Sunday, the eighteenth, Dr. St. Clare was sent for from Preston; before

he arrived three more were seized, and during that night and the morning

of the nineteenth, eleven more, making in all twenty-four. Of these,

twenty-one were young women, two were girls of about ten years of age,

and one man, who had been much fatigued with holding the girls. Three of

the number lived about two miles from the place where the disorder

first broke out, and three at another factory in Clitheroe, about five

miles distant, which last and two more were infected entirely from

report, not having seen the other patients, but, like them and the rest

of the country, strongly impressed with the idea of the plague being

caught from the cotton. The symptoms were anxiety, strangulation, and

very strong convulsions; and these were so violent as to last without

any intermission from a quarter of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to

require four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their

hair and dashing their heads against the floor or walls. Dr. St. Clare

had taken with him a portable electrical machine, and by electric shocks

the patients were universally relieved without exception. As soon as the

patients and the country were assured that the complaint was merely

nervous, easily cured, and not introduced by the cotton, no fresh person

was affected. To dissipate their apprehension still further, the best

effects were obtained by causing them to take a cheerful glass and join

in a dance. On Tuesday, the twentieth, they danced, and the next day

were all at work, except two or three, who were much weakened by their

fits.

2. The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages[299]

So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at

Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany and who, united by one

common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the

churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in

hand and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses,

continued dancing, regardless of the by-standers, for hours together in

wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of

exhaustion. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible

to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions,

their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and

some of them afterward asserted that they felt as if they had been

immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high.

Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour

enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of

the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.

Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with

epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless,

panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly

springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady

doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by

temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but

imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to

confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the

world of spirits.

It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from

Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighboring

Netherlands. Wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in

crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At

length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety

than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they

took possession of the religious houses, processions were everywhere

instituted on their account, and masses were said and hymns were sung,

while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one

entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror.

In Liége the priests had recourse to exorcisms and endeavored by every

means in their power to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to

themselves; for the possessed, assembling in multitudes, frequently

poured forth imprecations against them and menaced their destruction.

A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at

Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those

possessed amounted to more than five hundred; and about the same time at

Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with

eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their plows, mechanics their

workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels,

and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous

disorder. Secret desires were excited and but too often found

opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by

vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a

temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and

servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those

possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a

hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and

unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of

idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures

and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place

seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went,

spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in

maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the

appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive

away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the

exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not,

however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to

suppress these impostures, which had so alarmingly increased the

original evil. In the meantime, when once called into existence, the

plague crept on and found abundant food in the tone of thought which

prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in

a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a

permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose

inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.

B. THE CROWD

1. The "Animal" Crowd

_a. The Flock_[300]

Understand that a flock is not the same thing as a number of sheep. On

the stark, wild headlands of the White Mountains, as many as thirty

Bighorn are known to run in loose, fluctuating hordes; in fenced

pastures, two to three hundred; close-herded on the range, two to three

thousand; but however artificially augmented, the flock is always a

conscious adjustment. There are always leaders, middlers, and tailers,

each insisting on its own place in the order of going. Should the flock

be rounded up suddenly in alarm it mills within itself until these have

come to their own places.

There is much debate between herders as to the advantage of goats over

sheep as leaders. In any case there are always a few goats in a flock,

and most American owners prefer them; but the Frenchmen choose

bell-wethers. Goats lead naturally by reason of a quicker instinct,

forage more freely, and can find water on their own account. But

wethers, if trained with care, learn what goats abhor, to take broken

ground sedately, to walk through the water rather than set the whole

flock leaping and scrambling; but never to give voice to alarm, as goats

will, and call the herder.

It appears that leaders understand their office, and goats particularly

exhibit a jealousy of their rights to be first over the stepping-stones

or to walk the teetering log-bridges at the roaring creeks. By this

facile reference of the initiative to the wisest one, the shepherd is

served most. The dogs learn to which of the flock to communicate orders,

at which heels a bark or a bite soonest sets the flock in motion. But

the flock-mind obsesses equally the best-trained, flashes as instantly

from the meanest of the flock.

By very little the herder may turn the flock-mind to his advantage, but

chiefly it works against him. Suppose on the open range the impulse to

forward movement overtakes them, set in motion by some eager leaders

that remember enough of what lies ahead to make them oblivious to what

they pass. They press ahead. The flock draws on. The momentum of travel

grows. The bells clang soft and hurriedly; the sheep forget to feed;

they neglect the tender pastures; they will not stay to drink. Under an

unwise or indolent herder the sheep going on an unaccustomed trail will

overtravel and underfeed, until in the midst of good pasture they starve

upon their feet. So it is on the Long Trail you so often see the herder

walking with his dogs ahead of his sheep to hold them back to feed. But

if it should be new ground he must go after and press them skilfully,

for the flock-mind balks chiefly at the unknown.

In sudden attacks from several quarters, or inexplicable man-thwarting

of their instincts, the flock-mind teaches them to turn a solid front,

revolving about in the smallest compass with the lambs in their midst,

narrowing and indrawing until they perish by suffocation. So they did in

the intricate defiles of Red Rock, where Carrier lost 250 in '74, and at

Poison Springs, as Narcisse Duplin told me, where he had to choose

between leaving them to the deadly waters, or, prevented from the

spring, made witless by thirst, to mill about until they piled up and

killed threescore in their midst. By no urgency of the dogs could they

be moved forward or scattered until night fell with coolness and

returning sanity. Nor does the imperfect gregariousness of man always

save us from ill-considered rushes or strangulous in-turnings of the

social mass. Notwithstanding there are those who would have us to be

flock-minded.

It is doubtful if the herder is anything more to the flock than an

incident of the range, except as a giver of salt, for the only cry they

make to him is the salt cry. When the natural craving is at the point of

urgency, they circle about his camp or his cabin, leaving off feeding

for that business; and nothing else offering, they will continue this

headlong circling about a bowlder or any object bulking large in their

immediate neighborhood remotely resembling the appurtenances of man, as

if they had learned nothing since they were free to find licks for

themselves, except that salt comes by bestowal and in conjunction with

the vaguely indeterminate lumps of matter that associate with man. As if

in fifty centuries of man-herding they had made but one step out of the

terrible isolation of brute species, an isolation impenetrable except by

fear to every other brute, but now admitting the fact without knowledge,

of the God of the Salt. Accustomed to receiving this miracle on open

bowlders, when the craving is strong upon them, they seek such as these

to run about, vociferating, as if they said, In such a place our God has

been wont to bless us, come now, let us greatly entreat Him. This one

quavering bleat, unmistakable to the sheepman even at a distance, is the

only new note in the sheep's vocabulary, and the only one which passes

with intention from himself to man. As for the call of distress which a

leader raised by hand may make to his master, it is not new, is not

common to flock usage, and is swamped utterly in the obsession of the

flock-mind.

_b. The Herd_[301]

My purpose in this paper is to discuss a group of curious and useless

emotional instincts of social animals, which have not yet been properly

explained. Excepting two of the number, placed first and last in the

list, they are not related in their origin; consequently they are here

grouped together arbitrarily, only for the reason that we are very

familiar with them on account of their survival in our domestic animals,

and because they are, as I have said, useless; also because they

resemble each other, among the passions and actions of the lower

animals, in their effect on our minds. This is in all cases unpleasant,

and sometimes exceedingly painful, as when species that rank next to

ourselves in their developed intelligence and organized societies, such

as elephants, monkeys, dogs, and cattle, are seen under the domination

of impulses, in some cases resembling insanity, and in others simulating

the darkest passions of man.

These instincts are:

(1) The excitement caused by the smell of blood, noticeable in horses

and cattle among our domestic animals, and varying greatly in degree,

from an emotion so slight as to be scarcely perceptible to the greatest

extremes of rage or terror.

(2) The angry excitement roused in some animals when a scarlet or bright

red cloth is shown to them. So well known is this apparently insane

instinct in our cattle that it has given rise to a proverb and metaphor

familiar in a variety of forms to everyone.

(3) The persecution of a sick or weakly animal by its companions.

(4) The sudden deadly fury that seizes on the herd or family at the

sight of a companion in extreme distress. Herbivorous mammals at such

times will trample and gore the distressed one to death. In the case of

wolves, and other savage-tempered carnivorous species, the distressed

fellow is frequently torn to pieces and devoured on the spot.

To take the first two together. When we consider that blood is red; that

the smell of it is, or may be, or has been, associated with that vivid

hue in the animal's mind; that blood, seen and smelt, is, or has been,

associated with the sight of wounds and with cries of pain and rage or

terror from the wounded or captive animal, there appears at first sight

to be some reason for connecting these two instinctive passions as

having the same origin--namely, terror and rage caused by the sight of a

member of the herd struck down and bleeding, or struggling for life in

the grasp of an enemy. I do not mean to say that such an image is

actually present in the animal's mind, but that the inherited or

instinctive passion is one in kind and in its working with the passion

of the animal when experience and reason were its guides.

But the more I consider the point, the more am I inclined to regard

these two instincts as separate in their origin, although I retain the

belief that cattle and horses and several wild animals are violently

excited by the smell of blood for the reason just given--namely, their

inherited memory associates the smell of blood with the presence among

them of some powerful enemy that threatens their life.

The following incident will show how violently this blood passion

sometimes affects cattle, when they are permitted to exist in a

half-wild condition, as on the Pampas. I was out with my gun one day, a

few miles from home, when I came across a patch on the ground where the

grass was pressed or trodden down and stained with blood. I concluded

that some thievish Gauchos had slaughtered a fat cow there on the

previous night, and, to avoid detection, had somehow managed to carry

the whole of it away on their horses. As I walked on, a herd of cattle,

numbering about three hundred, appeared moving slowly on to a small

stream a mile away; they were traveling in a thin, long line, and would

pass the blood-stained spot at a distance of seven to eight hundred

yards, but the wind from it would blow across their track. When the

tainted wind struck the leaders of the herd they instantly stood still,

raising their heads, then broke out into loud, excited bellowings; and

finally turning, they started off at a fast trot, following up the scent

in a straight line, until they arrived at the place where one of their

kind had met its death. The contagion spread, and before long all the

cattle were congregated on the fatal spot, and began moving round in a

dense mass, bellowing continually.

It may be remarked here that the animal has a peculiar language on

occasions like this; it emits a succession of short, bellowing cries,

like excited exclamations, followed by a very loud cry, alternately

sinking into a hoarse murmur and rising to a kind of scream that grates

harshly on the sense. Of the ordinary "cow-music" I am a great admirer,

and take as much pleasure in it as in the cries and melody of birds and

the sound of the wind in trees; but this performance of cattle excited

by the smell of blood is most distressing to hear.

The animals that had forced their way into the center of the mass to the

spot where the blood was, pawed the earth, and dug it up with their

horns, and trampled each other down in their frantic excitement. It was

terrible to see and hear them. The action of those on the border of the

living mass, in perpetually moving round in a circle with dolorous

bellowings, was like that of the women in an Indian village when a

warrior dies, and all night they shriek and howl with simulated grief,

going round and round the dead man's hut in an endless procession.

_c. The Pack_[302]

Wolves are the most sociable of beasts of prey. Not only do they gather

in bands, but they arrange to render each other assistance, which is the

most important test of sociability. The most gray wolves I ever saw in a

band was five. This was in northern New Mexico in January, 1894. The

most I ever heard of in a band was thirty-two that were seen in the same

region. These bands are apparently formed in winter only. The packs are

probably temporary associations of personal acquaintances, for some

temporary purpose, or passing reason, such as food question or

mating-instinct. As soon as this is settled, they scatter.

An instance in point was related to me by Mr. Gordon Wright of Carberry,

Manitoba. During the winter of 1865 he was logging at Sturgeon Lake,

Ontario. One Sunday he and some companions strolled out on the ice of

the lake to look at the logs there. They heard the hunting-cry of

wolves, then a deer (a female) darted from the woods to the open ice.

Her sides were heaving, her tongue out, and her legs cut by the slight

crust of the snow. Evidently she was hard pressed. She was coming toward

them, but one of the men gave a shout which caused her to sheer off. A

minute later six timber wolves appeared galloping on her trail, heads

low, tails horizontal, and howling continuously. They were uttering

their hunting-cry, but as soon as they saw her they broke into a louder,

different note, left the trail and made straight for her. Five of the

wolves were abreast and one that seemed much darker was behind. Within

half a mile they overtook her and pulled her down, all seemed to seize

her at once. For a few minutes she bleated like a sheep in distress;

after that the only sound was the snarling and the crunching of the

wolves as they feasted. Within fifteen minutes nothing was left of the

deer but hair and some of the larger bones, and the wolves fighting

among themselves for even these. Then they scattered, each going a

quarter of a mile or so, no two in the same direction, and those that

remained in view curled up there on the open lake to sleep. This

happened about ten in the morning within three hundred yards of several

witnesses.

2. The Psychological Crowd[303]

In its ordinary sense the word "crowd" means a gathering of individuals

of whatever nationality, profession, or sex, and whatever be the chances

that have brought them together. From the psychological point of view

the expression "crowd" assumes quite a different signification. Under

certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an

agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from

those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all

the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their

conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless

transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The

gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I

will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable,

a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected to the

law of the mental unity of crowds.

It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals

finding themselves accidentally side by side that they acquire the

character of an organized crowd. A thousand individuals accidentally

gathered in a public place without any determined object in no way

constitute a crowd, from the psychological point of view. To acquire the

special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of

certain predisposing causes, of which we shall have to determine the

nature.

The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings

and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary

characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always

involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one

spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments,

and under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example,

as a great national event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd.

It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them

together for their acts at once to assume the characteristics peculiar

to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men might

constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of

hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an

entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become

a crowd under the action of certain influences.

It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because

its organization varies not only according to race and composition but

also according to the nature and intensity of the exciting causes to

which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty, however, presents

itself in the psychological study of an individual. It is only in novels

that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an

unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that

creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere

that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which

may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This

explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French

Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary

circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous

magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of

quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile

servants.

It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of

organization of crowds, we shall concern ourselves more especially with

such crowds as have attained to the phase of complete organization. In

this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what they

invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organization that

certain new and special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying

and dominant character of the race; then takes place that turning,

already alluded to, of all the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity

in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too,

that what I have called above the psychological law of the mental unity

of crowds comes into play.

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. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come

into being or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case

of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional

being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined,

exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their

reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from

these possessed by each of the cells singly.

Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished to find coming from the

pen of so acute a philosopher as Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate which

constitutes a crowd there is in no sort a summing-up of or an average

struck between its elements. What really takes place is a combination

followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry

certain elements, when brought into contact--bases and acids, for

example--combine to form a new body possessing properties quite

different from those of the bodies that have served to form it.

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 the intelligence. The conscious life of the mind is of small

importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most subtle

analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in discovering

more than a very small number of the unconscious motives that determine

his conduct.

The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives

which escape our observation. It is more especially with respect to

those unconscious elements that all the individuals belonging to it

resemble each other, while it is principally in respect to the conscious

elements of their character--the fruit of education, and yet more of

exceptional hereditary conditions--that they differ from each other. Men

most unlike in the matter of their intelligence possess instincts,

passions, and feelings that are very similar. In the case of everything

that belongs to the realm of sentiment--religion, politics, morality,

the affections and antipathies, etc.--the most eminent men seldom

surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the

intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great

mathematician and his bootmaker, but from the point of view of character

the difference is most often slight or nonexistent.

It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces

of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority of the normal

individuals of a race in much the same degree, it is precisely these

qualities 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 by the

homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains

why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of

intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come

to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different

walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be

adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring

to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are

the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity

and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is

so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly

Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world"

crowds are to be understood.

If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common

the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would

merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is

actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that

these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to

investigate.

Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics

peculiar to crowds and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first

is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from

numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows

him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce

have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself

from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous and in consequence

irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls

individuals disappears entirely.

The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the

manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the

same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which

it is easy to establish the presence, but which it is not easy to

explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order.

In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such

a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to

the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his

nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable except when he makes part

of a crowd.

A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the

individuals of a crowd special characteristics which are quite contrary

at times to those presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that

suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is

neither more nor less than an effect.

The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immerged

for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself--either

in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from

some other cause of which we are ignorant--in a special state, which

much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized

individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer.

Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a

psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case,

as in the case of the hypnotized subject, at the same time that certain

faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of

exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the

accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This

impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of crowds than in that

of the hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the

same for all the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by

reciprocity. The individualities in the crowd who might possess a

personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in

number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able

to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this

way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked,

have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.

We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the

predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of

suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical

direction, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas

into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the

individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has

become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.

Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a

man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he

may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian--that is,

a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the

violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive

beings.

An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand,

which the wind stirs up at will. It is for these reasons that juries are

seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would

disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of

which each of their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken

separately, the men of the Convention were enlightened citizens of

peaceful habits. United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their

adhesion to the most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most

clearly innocent, and, contrary to their interest, to renounce their

inviolability and to decimate themselves.

The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes is that the crowd is

always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but that,

from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these feelings

provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, be better or worse

than the individual. All depends on the nature of the suggestion to

which the crowd is exposed. This is the point that has been completely

misunderstood by writers who have only studied crowds from the criminal

point of view. Doubtless a crowd is often criminal, but also it is often

heroic. It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be

induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an

idea, that may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honor, that are

led on--almost without bread and without arms, as in the age of the

Crusades--to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel, or, as in '93,

to defend the fatherland. Such heroism is without doubt somewhat

unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made. Were

peoples only to be credited with the great actions performed in cold

blood, the annals of the world would register but few of them.

3. The Crowd Defined[304]

A crowd in the ordinary sense of that term is any chance collection of

individuals. Such a collectivity becomes a crowd in the sociological

sense only when a condition of _rapport_ has been established among the

individuals who compose it.

_Rapport_ implies the existence of a mutual responsiveness, such that

every member of the group reacts immediately, spontaneously, and

sympathetically to the sentiments and attitudes of every other member.

The fact that A responds sympathetically toward B and C implies the

existence in A of an attitude of receptivity and suggestibility toward

the sentiments and attitudes of B and C. Where A, B, and C are mutually

sympathetic, the inhibitions which, under ordinary circumstances, serve

to preserve the isolation and self-consciousness of individuals are

relaxed or completely broken down. Under these circumstances each

individual, in so far as he may be said to reflect, in his own

consciousness and in his emotional reactions, the sentiments and

emotions of all the others, tends at the same time to modify the

sentiments and attitudes of those others. The effect is to produce a

heightened, intensified, and relatively impersonal state of

consciousness in which all seem to share, but which is, at the same

time, relatively independent of each.

The development of this so-called "group-consciousness" represents a

certain amount of loss of self-control on the part of the individual.

Such control as the individual loses over himself is thus automatically

transferred to the group as a whole or to the leader.

What is meant by _rapport_ in the group may be illustrated by a somewhat

similar phenomenon which occurs in hypnosis. In this case a relation is

established between the experimenter and his subject such that the

subject responds automatically to every suggestion of the experimenter

but is apparently oblivious of suggestions coming from other persons

whose existence he does not perceive or ignores. This is the condition

called "isolated rapport."[305]

In the case of the crowd this mutual and exclusive responsiveness of

each member of the crowd to the suggestions emanating from the other

members produces here also a kind of mental isolation which is

accompanied by an inhibition of the stimuli and suggestions that control

the behavior of individuals under the conditions of ordinary life. Under

these conditions impulses long repressed in the individual may find an

expression in the crowd. It is this, no doubt, which accounts for those

so-called criminal and atavistic tendencies of crowds, of which Le Bon

and Sighele speak.[306]

The organization of the crowd is only finally effected when the

attention of the individuals who compose it becomes focused upon some

particular object or some particular objective. This object thus fixed

in the focus of the attention of the group tends to assume the character

of a _collective representation_.[307] It becomes this because it is the

focus of the collectively enhanced emotion and sentiment of the group.

It becomes the representation and the symbol of what the crowd feels and

wills at the moment when all members are suffused with a common

collective excitement and dominated by a common and collective idea.

This excitement and this idea with the meanings that attach to it are

called collective because they are a product of the interactions of the

members of the crowd. They are not individual but corporate products.

Le Bon describes the organization thus effected in a chance-met

collection of individuals as a "collective mind," and refers to the

group, transitory and ephemeral though it be, as a "single being."

The positive factors in determining the organization of the crowd are

then:

(1) A condition of _rapport_ among the members of the group with a

certain amount of contagious excitement and heightened suggestibility

incident to it.

(2) A certain degree of mental isolation of the group following as a

consequence of the _rapport_ and sympathetic responsiveness of members

of the group.

(3) Focus of attention; and finally the consequent.

(4) Collective representation.

C. TYPES OF MASS MOVEMENTS

1. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements: The Klondike Rush[308]

It was near the middle of July when the steamer _Excelsior_ arrived in

San Francisco from St. Michael's, on the west coast of Alaska, with

forty miners, having among them seven hundred and fifty thousand

dollars' worth of gold, brought down from the Klondike. When the bags

and cans and jars containing it had been emptied and the gold piled on

the counters of the establishment to which it was brought, no such sight

had been seen in San Francisco since the famous year of 1849.

On July 18 the _Portland_ arrived in Seattle, on Puget Sound, having on

board sixty-eight miners, who brought ashore bullion worth a million

dollars. The next day it was stated that these miners had in addition

enough gold concealed about their persons and in their baggage to double

the first estimate. Whether all these statements were correct or not

does not signify, for those were the reports that were spread throughout

the states. From this last source alone, the mint at San Francisco

received half a million dollars' worth of gold in one week, and it was

certain that men who had gone away poor had come back with fortunes. It

was stated that a poor blacksmith who had gone up from Seattle returned

with $115,000, and that a man from Fresno, who had failed as a farmer,

had secured $135,000.

The gold fever set in with fury and attacked all classes. Men in good

positions, with plenty of money to spend on an outfit, and men with

little beyond the amount of their fare, country men and city men, clerks

and professional men without the faintest notion of the meaning of

"roughing it," flocked in impossible numbers to secure a passage. There

were no means of taking them. Even in distant New York, the offices of

railroad companies and local agencies were besieged by anxious

inquirers eager to join the throng. On Puget Sound, mills, factories,

and smelting works were deserted by their employees, and all the miners

on the upper Skeena left their work in a body. On July 21 the North

American Transportation Company (one of two companies which monopolized

the trade of the Yukon) was reincorporated in Chicago with a quadrupled

capital, to cope with the demands of traffic. At the different Pacific

ports every available vessel was pressed into the service, and still the

wild rush could not be met. Before the end of July the _Portland_ left

Seattle again for St. Michael's, and the _Mexico_ and _Topeka_ for Dyea;

the _Islander_ and _Tees_ sailed for Dyea from Victoria, and the _G. W.

Elder_ from Portland; while from San Francisco the _Excelsior_, of the

Alaska Company, which had brought the first gold down, left again for

St. Michael's on July 28, being the last of the company's fleet

scheduled to connect with the Yukon river boats for the season. Three

times the original price was offered for the passage, and one passenger

accepted an offer of $1,500 for the ticket for which he had paid only

$150.

This, however, was only the beginning of the rush. Three more steamers

were announced to sail in August for the mouth of the Yukon, and at

least a dozen more for the Lynn Canal, among which were old tubs, which,

after being tied up for years, were now overhauled and refitted for the

voyage north. One of these was the _Williamette_, an old collier with

only sleeping quarters for the officers and crew, which, however, was

fitted up with bunks and left Seattle for Dyea and Skagway with 850

passengers, 1,200 tons of freight, and 300 horses, men, live stock, and

freight being wedged between decks till the atmosphere was like that of

a dungeon; and even with such a prospect in view, it was only by a

lavish amount of tipping that a man could get his effects taken aboard.

Besides all these, there were numerous scows loaded with provisions and

fuel, and barges conveying horses for packing purposes.

A frightful state of congestion followed as each successive steamer on

its arrival at the head of the Lynn Canal poured forth its crowds of

passengers and added to the enormous loads of freight already

accumulated. Matters became so serious that on August 10 the United

States Secretary of the Interior, having received information that 3,000

persons with 2,000 tons of baggage and freight were then waiting to

cross the mountains to Yukon, and that many more were preparing to join

them, issued a warning to the public (following that of the Dominion

Government of the previous week) in which he called attention to the

exposure, privation, suffering, and danger incident to the journey at

that advanced period of the season, and further referred to the gravity

of the possible consequences to people detained in the mountainous

wilderness during five or six months of Arctic winter, where no relief

could reach them.

To come now to the state of things at the head of the Lynn Canal, where

the steamers discharged their loads of passengers, horses, and freight.

This was done either at Dyea or Skagway, the former being the

landing-place for the Chilcoot Pass, and the latter for the White Pass,

the distance between the two places being about four miles by sea. There

were no towns at these places, nor any convenience for landing except a

small wharf at Skagway, which was not completed, the workmen having been

smitten with the gold fever. Every man had to bring with him, if he

wanted to get through and live, supplies for a year: sacks of flour,

slabs of bacon, beans, and so forth, his cooking utensils, his mining

outfit and building tools, his tent, and all the heavy clothing and

blankets suitable for the northern winter, one thousand pounds' weight

at least. Imagine the frightful mass of stuff disgorged as each

successive vessel arrived, with no adequate means of taking it inland!

Before the end of September people were preparing to winter on the

coast, and Skagway was growing into a substantial town. Where in the

beginning of August there were only a couple of shacks, there were in

the middle of October 700 wooden buildings and a population of about

1,500. Businesses of all kinds were carried on, saloons and low gaming

houses and haunts of all sorts abounded, but of law and order there was

none. Dyea also, which at one time was almost deserted, was growing into

a place of importance, but the title of every lot in both towns was in

dispute. Rain was still pouring down, and without high rubber boots

walking was impossible. None indeed but the most hardy could stand

existence in such places, and every steamer from the south carried fresh

loads of people back to their homes.

Of the 6,000 people who went in this fall, 200 at the most got over to

the Dawson Route by the White Pass, and perhaps 700 by the Chilcoot.

There were probably 1,000 camped at Lake Bennett, and all the rest,

except the 1,500 remaining on the coast, had returned home to wait till

midwinter or the spring before venturing up again. The question of which

was the best trail was still undecided, and men vehemently debated it

every day with the assistance of the most powerful language at their

command.

As to the crowds who had gone to St. Michael's, it is doubtful whether

any of them got through to Dawson City, since the lower Yukon is

impassable by the end of September, and, at any rate, in view of the

prospects of short rations, it would have been rash to try. The

consequence would be that they would have to remain on that desolate

island during nine months of almost Arctic winter, for the river does

not open again till the end of June. Here they would be absolutely

without employment unless they chose to stack wood for the steamboat

companies, and their only amusements (save the mark) would be drinking

bad rye whiskey--for Alaska is a "prohibition" country--and

poker-playing. For men with a soul above such delights, the

heart-breaking monotony of a northern winter would be appalling, and it

is only to be understood by those who have had to endure similar

experiences themselves on the western prairies.

2. Mass Movements and the Mores: The Woman's Crusade[309]

On the evening of December 23, 1873, there might have been seen in the

streets of Hillsboro, Ohio, persons singly or in groups wending their

way to Music Hall, where a lecture on temperance was to be delivered by

Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, Massachusetts.

Hillsboro is a small place, containing something more than 3,000 people.

The inhabitants are rather better educated than is usually the case in

small towns, and its society is indeed noted in that part of the country

for its quietude, culture, and refinement.

But Hillsboro was by no means exempt from the prevailing scourge of

intemperance. The early settlers of Hillsboro were mostly from Virginia,

and brought with them the old-fashioned ideas of hospitality. For many

years previous to the crusade the professional men, and especially of

the bar, were nearly all habitual drinkers, and many of them very

dissipated. When a few earnest temperance men, among whom was Governor

Allen Trimble, initiated a total-abstinence movement in or about the

year 1830, the pulpit took up arms against them, and a condemnatory

sermon was preached in one of the churches.

Thus it was that, although from time to time men, good and true, banded

themselves together in efforts to break up this dreadful state of things

and reform society, all endeavors seemed to fail of any permanent

effect.

The plan laid down by Dr. Lewis challenged attention by its novelty at

least. He believed the work of temperance reform might be successfully

carried on by women if they would set about it in the right

manner--going to the saloon-keeper in a spirit of Christian love, and

persuading him for the sake of humanity and his own eternal welfare to

quit the hateful, soul-destroying business. The doctor spoke with

enthusiasm; and seeing him so full of faith, the hearts of the women

seized the hope--a forlorn one, 'tis true, but still a hope--and when

Dr. Lewis asked if they were willing to undertake the task, scores of

women rose to their feet, and there was no lack of good men who pledged

themselves to encourage and sustain the women in their work.

At a subsequent meeting an organization was effected and Mrs. Eliza J.

Thompson, a daughter of ex-Governor Trimble of Ohio, was elected

chairman. Mrs. Thompson gives the following account of the manner in

which the crusade was organized:

My boy came home from Dr. Dio Lewis' lecture and said, "Ma,

they've got you into business"; and went on to tell that Dio

Lewis had incidentally related the successful effort of his

mother, by prayer and persuasion, to close the saloon in a town

where he lived when a boy, and that he had exhorted the women

of Hillsboro to do the same, and fifty had risen up to signify

their willingness, and that they looked to me to help them to

carry out their promise. As I'm talking to you here familiarly,

I'll go on to say that my husband, who had retired, and was in

an adjoining room, raised up on his elbow and called out, "Oh!

that's all tomfoolery!" I remember I answered him something

like this: "Well, husband, the men have been in the tomfoolery

business a long time; perhaps the Lord is going to call us into

partnership with them." I said no more. The next morning my

brother-in-law, Colonel ----, came in and told me about the

meeting, and said, "Now, you must be sure to go to the women's

meeting at the church this morning; they look to see you

there." Our folks talked it all over, and my husband said,

"Well, we all know where your mother'll take this case for

counsel," and then he pointed to the Bible and left the room.

I went into the corner of my room, and knelt down and opened my

Bible to see what God would say to me. Just at that moment

there was a tap on the door and my daughter entered. She was in

tears; she held her Bible in her hand, open to the 146th Psalm.

She said, "Ma, I just opened to this, and I think it is for

you," and then she went away, and I sat down and read

THIS WONDERFUL MESSAGE FROM GOD

"Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom

there is no help. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for

his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God; which keepeth

truth forever; which executeth judgment for the oppressed; the

Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the

blind; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down; the Lord

loveth the righteous; the Lord relieveth the fatherless and the

widow--_but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down_. The

Lord shall reign forever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all

generations. Praise ye the Lord!"

I knew that was for me, and I got up, put on my shoes, and

started. I went to the church, in this town where I was born. I

sat down quietly in the back part of the audience room, by the

stove. A hundred ladies were assembled. I heard my name--heard

the whisper pass through the company, "Here she is!" "She's

come!" and before I could get to the pulpit, they had put me

"in office"--I was their leader.

Many of our citizens were there, and our ministers also. They

stayed a few minutes, and then rose and went out, saying, "This

is your work--we leave it with the women and the Lord." When

they had gone, I just opened the big pulpit Bible and read that

146th Psalm, and told them the circumstance of my selecting it.

The women sobbed so I could hardly go on. When I had finished,

I felt inspired to call on a dear Presbyterian lady to pray.

She did so without the least hesitation, though it was the

first audible prayer in her life. I can't tell you anything

about that prayer, only that the words were like fire.

When she had prayed, I said--and it all came to me just at the

moment--"Now, ladies, let us file out, two by two, the smallest

first, and let us sing as we go, 'Give to the winds thy

fears.'"

We went first to John ----'s saloon. Now, John was a German,

and his sister had lived in my family thirteen years, and she

was very mild and gentle, and I hoped it might prove a family

trait, but I found out it wasn't. He fumed about dreadfully and

said, "It's awful; it's a sin and a shame to pray in a saloon!"

But we prayed right on just the same.

Next day the ladies held another meeting, but decided not to make any

visitations, it being Christmas day, and the hotel-keepers more than

usually busy and not likely to listen very attentively to our

proposition.

On the twenty-sixth, the hotels and saloons were visited; Mrs. Thompson

presenting the appeal. And it was on this morning, and at the saloon of

Robert Ward, that there came a break in the established routine. "Bob"

was a social, jolly sort of fellow, and his saloon was a favorite

resort, and there were many women in the company that morning whose

hearts were aching in consequence of his wrong-doing. Ward was evidently

touched. He confessed that it was a "bad business," said if he could

only "afford to quit it he would," and then tears began to flow from his

eyes. Many of the ladies were weeping, and at length, as if by

inspiration, Mrs. Thompson kneeled on the floor of the saloon, all

kneeling with her, even the saloonist, and prayed, pleading with

indescribable pathos and earnestness for the conversion and salvation of

this and all saloon-keepers. When the amen was sobbed rather than

spoken, Mrs. Washington Doggett's sweet voice began, "There is a

fountain," etc., in which all joined; the effect was most solemn, and

when the hymn was finished the ladies went quietly away, and that was

the first saloon prayer meeting.

There was a saloon-keeper brought from Greenfield to H---- to be tried

under the Adair law. The poor mother who brought the suit had besought

him not to sell to her son--"her only son." He replied roughly that he

would sell to him "as long as he had a dime." Another mother, an old

lady, made the same request, "lest," she said, "he may some day fill a

drunkard's grave." "Madam," he replied, "your son has as good a right to

fill a drunkard's grave as any other mother's son." And in one of the

Hillsboro saloons a lady saw her nephew. "O, Mr. B----," said she,

"don't sell whiskey to that boy: if he has one drink he will want

another, and he may die a drunkard." "Madam, I will sell to him if it

sends his soul to hell," was the awful reply. The last man is a

peculiarly hard, stony sort of man; his lips look as if chiseled out of

flint, a man to be afraid of. One morning, when the visiting band

reached his door, they found him in a very bad humor. He locked his door

and seated himself on the horse block in front in a perfect rage,

clenched his fist, swore furiously, and ordered us to go home. Some

gentlemen, on the opposite side of the street, afterward said that they

were watching the scene, ready to rush over and defend the ladies from

an attack, and they were sure it would come; but one of the ladies, a

sweet-souled woman, gentle and placid, kneeled just at his feet, and

poured out such a tender, earnest prayer for him, that he quieted down

entirely, and when she rose and offered him her hand in token of kind

feeling, he could not refuse to take it.

During the Crusade, a saloon-keeper (at Ocean Grove) consented

to close his business. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and

interest, and we women decided to compensate the man for his

whiskey and make a bonfire of it in the street. A great crowd

gathered about the saloon, and the barrels of whiskey were

rolled out to the public square where we were to have our

bonfire. Myself and two other little women, who had been chosen

to knock in the heads, and had come to the place with axes

concealed under our shawls, went to our work with a will.

I didn't know I was so strong, but I lifted that axe like a

woodman and brought it down with such force that the first blow

stove in the head of a barrel and splashed the whiskey in every

direction. I was literally baptized with the noxious stuff. The

intention was to set it on fire, and we had brought matches for

that purpose, _but it would not burn_! It was a villainous

compound of some sort, but we had set out to have a fire, and

were determined by some means or other to make it burn, so we

sent for some coal oil and poured it on and we soon had a

blaze. The man who could sell such liquors would not be likely

to keep the pledge. He is selling liquors again.

The crusade began at Washington C.H. only two days later than at

Hillsboro. And Washington C.H. was the first place where the crusade was

made prominent and successful.

On Friday morning, December 26, 1873, after an hour of prayer in the

M.E. Church, forty-four women filed slowly and solemnly down the aisle,

and started forth upon their strange mission with fear and trembling,

while the male portion of the audience remained at the church to pray

for the success of this new undertaking; the tolling of the church-bell

keeping time to the solemn march of the women, as they wended their way

to the first drug-store on the list. (The number of places within the

city limits where intoxicating drinks were sold was fourteen--eleven

saloons and three drug-stores.) Here, as in every place, they entered

singing, every woman taking up the sacred strain as she crossed the

threshold. This was followed by the reading of the appeal and prayer;

then earnest pleading to desist from their soul-destroying traffic and

sign the dealer's pledge.

Thus, all the day long, they went from place to place, without stopping

even for dinner or lunch, till five o'clock, meeting with no marked

success; but invariably courtesy was extended to them; not even their

reiterated promise, "We will call again," seeming to offend.

No woman who has ever entered one of these dens of iniquity on such an

errand needs to be told of the heartsickness that almost over-came them

as they, for the first time, saw behind those painted windows or green

blinds, or entered the little stifling "back room," or found their way

down winding steps into the damp, dark cellars, and realized that into

_such places_ those they loved best were being landed, through the

allurements of the brilliantly lighted drug-store, the fascinating

billiard table, or the enticing beer gardens, with their siren

attractions. A crowded house at night, to hear the report of the day's

work, betrayed the rapidly increasing interest in this mission.

On the twenty-seventh the contest really began, and, at the first place,

the doors were found locked. With hearts full of compassion, the women

knelt in the snow upon the pavement, to plead for the divine influence

upon the heart of the liquor-dealer, and there held their first street

prayer meeting.

At night the weary but zealous workers reported at a mass meeting of the

various rebuffs, and the success in having two druggists sign the pledge

not to sell, except upon the written prescription of a physician.

The Sabbath, was devoted to union mass meeting, with direct reference to

the work in hand; and on Monday the number of ladies had increased to

near one hundred. That day, December 29, is one long to be remembered in

Washington, as the day upon which occurred the first surrender ever made

by a liquor-dealer, of his stock of liquors of every kind and variety,

to the women, in answer to their prayers and entreaties, and by them

poured into the street. Nearly a thousand men, women, and children

witnessed the mingling of beer, ale, wine, and whiskey, as they filled

the gutters and were drunk up by the earth, while the bells were

ringing, men and boys shouting, and women singing and praying to God who

had given the victory. But on the fourth day, "stock sale-day," the

campaign had reached its height, the town being filled with visitors

from all parts of the county and adjoining villages. Another public

surrender, and another pouring into the street of a larger stock of

liquors than on the previous day, and more intense excitement and

enthusiasm.

Mass meetings were held nightly, with new victories reported constantly,

until on Friday, January 21, one week from the beginning of the work, at

the public meeting held in the evening, the secretary's report announced

the unconditional surrender of every liquor-dealer, some having shipped

their liquors back to wholesale dealers, others having poured them into

the gutters, and the druggists as all having signed the pledge. Thus a

campaign of prayer and song had, in eight days, closed eleven saloons,

and pledged three drug-stores to sell only on prescription. At first men

had wondered, scoffed, and laughed, then criticized, respected, and

yielded.

Morning prayer and evening mass meetings continued daily, and the

personal pledge was circulated till over one thousand signatures were

obtained. Physicians were called upon to sign a pledge not to prescribe

ardent spirits when any other substitute could be found, and in no case

without a personal examination of the patient.

Early in the third week the discouraging intelligence came that a new

man had taken out a license to sell liquor in one of the deserted

saloons, and that he was backed by a whiskey house in Cincinnati, to the

amount of $5,000, to break down this movement. On Wednesday, 'the

fourteenth, the whiskey was unloaded at his room. About forty women were

on the ground and followed the liquor in, and remained holding an

uninterrupted prayer meeting all day and until eleven o'clock at night.

The next day, bitterly cold, was spent in the same place and manner,

without fire or chairs, two hours of that time the women being locked

in, while the proprietor was off attending a trial. On the following

day, the coldest of the winter of 1874, the women were locked out, and

stood on the street holding religious services all day long.

Next morning a tabernacle was built in the street, just in front of the

house, and was occupied for the double purpose of _watching_ and prayer

through the day; and before night the sheriff closed the saloon, and the

proprietor surrendered; thus ended the third week.

A short time after, on a dying-bed, this four days' liquor-dealer sent

for some of these women, telling them their songs and prayers had never

ceased to ring in his ears, and urging them to pray again in his behalf;

so he passed away.

Thus, through most of the winter of 1874 no alcoholic drinks were

publicly sold as a beverage in the county.

During the two intervening years weekly temperance-league meetings have

been kept up by the faithful few, while frequent union mass meetings

have been held, thus keeping the subject always before the people. Today

the disgraceful and humiliating fact exists that there are more places

where liquors are sold than before the crusade.

3. Mass Movements and Revolution

_a. The French Revolution_[310]

The outward life of men in every age is molded upon an inward life

consisting of a framework of traditions, sentiments, and moral

influences which direct their conduct and maintain certain fundamental

notions which they accept without discussion.

Let the resistance of this social framework weaken, and ideas which

could have had no force before will germinate and develop. Certain

theories whose success was enormous at the time of the Revolution would

have encountered an impregnable wall two centuries earlier.

The aim of these considerations is to recall to the reader the fact that

the outward events of revolutions are always a consequence of invisible

transformations which have slowly gone forward in men's minds. Any

profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil

upon which the ideas that direct its courses have to germinate.

Generally slow in the extreme, the evolution of ideas is often invisible

for a whole generation. Its extent can only be grasped by comparing the

mental condition of the same social classes at the two extremities of

the curve which the mind has followed.

The actual influence of the philosophers in the genesis of the

Revolution was not that which was attributed to them. They revealed

nothing new, but they developed the critical spirit which no dogma can

resist, once the way is prepared for its downfall.

Under the influence of this developing critical spirit things which were

no longer very greatly respected came to be respected less and less.

When tradition and prestige had disappeared, the social edifice suddenly

fell. This progressive disaggregation finally descended to the people,

but was not commenced by them. The people follow examples, but never set

them.

The philosophers, who could not have exerted any influence over the

people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the

nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old

functions and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed

their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to

break with the traditions that were their only _raison d'être_. As

steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the _bourgeoisie_ of

today, they continually sapped their own privileges by their criticisms.

As today, the most ardent reformers were found among the favorites of

fortune. The aristocracy encouraged dissertations on the social

contract, the rights of man, and the equality of citizens. At the

theater it applauded plays which criticized privileges, the

arbitrariness and the incapacity of men in high places, and abuses of

all kinds.

As soon as men lose confidence in the foundations of the mental

framework which guides their conduct, they feel at first uneasy and then

discontented. All classes felt their old motives of action gradually

disappearing. Things that had seemed sacred for centuries were now

sacred no longer.

The censorious spirit of the nobility and of the writers of the day

would not have sufficed to move the heavy load of tradition but that its

action was added to that of other powerful influences. We have already

stated, in citing Bossuet, that under the _ancien régime_ the religious

and civil governments, widely separated in our day, were intimately

connected. To injure one was inevitably to injure the other. Now even

before the monarchical idea was shaken, the force of religious tradition

was greatly diminished among cultivated men. The constant progress of

knowledge had sent an increasing number of minds from theology to

science by opposing the truth observed to the truth revealed.

This mental evolution, although as yet very vague, was sufficient to

show that the traditions which for so many centuries had guided men had

not the value which had been attributed to them, and that it would soon

be necessary to replace them.

But where discover the new elements which might take the place of

tradition? Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social

edifice on the remains of that which no longer contented men?

Men were agreed in attributing to reason the power that tradition and

the gods seemed to have lost. How could its force be doubted? Its

discoveries having been innumerable, was it not legitimate to suppose

that by applying it to the construction of societies it would entirely

transform them? Its possible function increased very rapidly in the

thoughts of the more enlightened, in proportion as tradition seemed more

and more to be distrusted.

The sovereign power attributed to reason must be regarded as the

culminating idea which not only engendered the Revolution but governed

it throughout. During the whole Revolution men gave themselves up to the

most persevering efforts to break with the past and to erect society

upon a new plan dictated by logic.

Slowly filtering downward, the rationalistic theories of the

philosophers meant to the people simply that all the things which had

been regarded as worthy of respect were now no longer worthy. Men being

declared equal, the old masters need no longer be obeyed. The multitude

easily succeeded in ceasing to respect what the upper classes themselves

no longer respected. When the barrier of respect was down the Revolution

was accomplished.

The first result of this new mentality was a general insubordination.

Mme. Vigée Lebrun relates that on the promenade at Longchamps men of the

people leaped on the footboards of the carriages, saying, "Next year you

will be behind and we shall be inside."

The populace was not alone in manifesting insubordination and

discontent. These sentiments were general on the eve of the Revolution.

"The lesser clergy," says Taine, "are hostile to the prelates; the

provincial gentry to the nobility of the court; the vassals to the

seigneurs; the peasants to the townsmen, etc."

This state of mind, which had been communicated from the nobles and

clergy to the people, also invaded the army. At the moment the States

General were opened, Necker said: "We are not sure of the troops." The

officers were becoming humanitarian and philosophical. The soldiers,

recruited from the lowest class of the population, did not philosophize,

but they no longer obeyed. In their feeble minds the ideas of equality

meant simply the suppression of all leaders and masters, and therefore

of all obedience. In 1790 more than twenty regiments threatened their

officers, and sometimes, as at Nancy, threw them into prison.

The mental anarchy which, after spreading through all classes of

society, finally invaded the army was the principal cause of the

disappearance of the _ancien régime_. "It was the defection of the army

affected by the ideas of the Third Estate," wrote Rivarol, "that

destroyed royalty."

The genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration, was

conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and collective

nature, each category of which was ruled by a different logic. The

rational element usually invoked as an explanation exerted in reality

but very slight influence. It prepared the way for the Revolution, but

maintained it only at the outset, while it was still exclusively middle

class. Its action was manifested by many measures of the time, such as

the proposals to reform the taxes, the suppression of the privileges of

a useless nobility, etc.

As soon as the Revolution reached the people, the influence of the

rational elements speedily vanished before that of the affective and

collective elements. As for the mystic elements, the foundation of the

revolutionary faith, they made the army fanatical and propagated the new

belief throughout the world.

We shall see these various elements as they appeared in events and in

the psychology of individuals. Perhaps the most important was the mystic

element. The Revolution cannot be clearly comprehended--we cannot repeat

it too often--unless it is considered as the formation of a religious

belief. What I have said elsewhere of all beliefs applies equally to the

Revolution. They impose themselves on men apart from reason and have the

power to polarize men's thoughts and feelings in one direction. Pure

reason had never such a power, for men were never impassioned by reason.

The religious forms rapidly assumed by the Revolution explain its power

of expansion and the prestige which it possessed and has retained. Few

historians have understood that this great monument ought to be regarded

as the foundation of a new religion. The penetrating mind of

Tocqueville, I believe, was the first to perceive as much. He wrote:

The French Revolution was a political revolution which operated

in the manner of and assumed something of the aspect of a

religious revolution. See by what regular and characteristic

traits it finally resembled the latter; not only did it spread

itself far and wide like a religious revolution, but, like the

latter, it spread itself by means of preaching and propaganda.

A political revolution which inspires proselytes, which is

preached as passionately to foreigners as it is accomplished at

home: consider what a novel spectacle was this.

Although the mystic element is always the foundation of beliefs, certain

affective and rational elements are quickly added thereto. A belief thus

serves to group sentiments and passions and interests which belong to

the affective domain. Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify

events in which, however, it played no part whatever.

At the moment of the Revolution everyone, according to his aspirations,

dressed the new belief in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw

in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and

hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe

and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of

reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France "to breathe the air of

liberty and to assist at the obsequies of despotism." These intellectual

illusions did not last long. The evolution of the drama soon revealed

the true foundations of the dream.

_b. Bolshevism_[311]

Great mass movements, whether these be religious or political, are at

first always difficult to understand. Invariably they challenge existing

moral and intellectual values, the revaluation of which is, for the

normal mind, an exceedingly difficult and painful task. Moreover the

definition of their aims and policies into exact and comprehensive

programs is generally slowly achieved. At their inception and during the

early stages of their development there must needs be many crude and

tentative statements and many rhetorical exaggerations. It is safe to

assert as a rule that at no stage of its history can a great movement

of the masses be fully understood and fairly interpreted by a study of

its formal statements and authentic expositions only. These must be

supplemented by a careful study of the psychology of the men and women

whose ideals and yearnings these statements and expositions aim to

represent. It is not enough to know and comprehend the creed: it is

essential that we also know and comprehend the spiritual factors, the

discontent, the hopes, the fears, the inarticulate visionings of the

human units in the movement. This is of greater importance in the

initial stages than later, when the articulation of the soul of the

movement has become more certain and clear.

No one who has attended many bolshevist meetings or is acquainted with

many of the individuals to whom bolshevism makes a strong appeal will

seriously question the statement that an impressively large number of

those who profess to be Bolshevists present a striking likeness to

extreme religious zealots, not only in the manner of manifesting their

enthusiasm, but also in their methods of exposition and argument. Just

as in religious hysteria a single text becomes a whole creed to the

exclusion of every other text, and instead of being itself subject to

rational tests is made the sole test of the rationality of everything

else, so in the case of the average Bolshevist of this type a single

phrase received into the mind in a spasm of emotion, never tested by the

usual criteria of reason, becomes not only the very essence of truth but

also the standard by which the truth or untruth of everything else must

be determined. Most of the preachers who become pro-Bolshevists are of

this type.

People who possess minds thus affected are generally capable of, and

frequently indulge in, the strictest logical deduction and analysis.

Sometimes they acquire the reputation of being exceptionally brilliant

thinkers because of this power. But the fact is that their initial

ideas, upon which everything is pivoted, are derived emotionally and are

not the results of a deliberate weighing of available evidence. The

initial movement is one of feeling, of emotional impulse. The conviction

thereby created is so strong and so dominant that it cannot be affected

by any purely rational functional factors.

People of this type jump at decisions and reach very positive

convictions upon the most difficult matters with bewildering ease. For

them the complexities and intricacies which trouble the normal mind do

not exist. Everything is either black or white: there are no perplexing

intervening grays. Right is right and wrong is wrong; they do not

recognize that there are doubtful twilight zones. Ideas capable of the

most elaborate expansion and the most subtle intricacies of

interpretation are immaturely grasped and preached with naïve assurance.

Statements alleged to be facts, no matter what their source, if they

seem to support the convictions thus emotionally derived, are received

without any examination and used as conclusive proof, notwithstanding

that a brief investigation would prove them to be worthless as evidence.

If we take the group of American intellectuals who at present are ardent

champions of bolshevism we shall find that, with exceptions so few as to

be almost negligible, they have embraced nearly every "ism" as it arose,

seeing in each one the magic solvent of humanity's ills. Those of an

older generation thus regarded bimetallism, for instance. What else

could be required to make the desert bloom like a garden and to usher in

the earthly Paradise? The younger ones, in their turn, took up

anarchist-communism, Marxian socialism, industrial unionism,

syndicalism, birth control, feminism, and many other movements and

propagandas, each of which in its turn induced ecstatic visions of a new

heaven and a new earth. The same individuals have grown lyrical in

praise of every bizarre and eccentric art fad. In the banal and

grotesque travesties of art produced by cubists, futurists, _et al._,

they saw transcendent genius. They are forever seeking new gods and

burying old ones.

It would be going too far to say that these individuals are all

hystericals in the pathological sense, but it is strictly accurate to

say that the class exhibits marked hysterical characteristics and that

it closely resembles the large class of over-emotionalized religious

enthusiasts which furnish so many true hystericals. It is probable that

accidents of environment account for the fact that their emotionalism

takes sociological rather than religious forms. If the sociological

impetus were absent, most of them would be religiously motived to a

state not less abnormal.

To understand the spread of bolshevist agitation and sympathy among a

very considerable part of the working class in this country, we must

take into account the fact that its logical and natural nucleus is the

I.W.W. It is necessary also to emancipate our minds from the obsession

that only "ignorant foreigners" are affected. This is not a true

estimate of either the I.W.W. or the bolshevist propaganda as a whole.

There are indeed many of this class in both, but there are also many

native Americans, sturdy, self-reliant, enterprising, and courageous

men. The peculiar group psychology which we are compelled to study is

less the result of those subtle and complex factors which are

comprehended in the vague term "race" than of the political and economic

conditions by which the group concerned is environed.

The typical native-born I.W.W. member, the "Wobbly" one frequently

encounters in our mid-western and western cities, is very unlike the

hideous and repulsive figure conjured up by sensational cartoonists. He

is much more likely to be a very attractive sort of man. Here are some

characteristics of the type: figure robust, sturdy, and virile; dress

rough but not unclean; speech forthright, deliberate, and bold; features

intelligent, frank, and free from signs of alcoholic dissipation;

movements slow and leisurely as of one averse to over-exertion. There

are thousands of "wobblies" to whom the specifications of this

description will apply. Conversation with these men reveals that, as a

general rule, they are above rather than below the average in sobriety.

They are generally free from family ties, being either unmarried or, as

often happens, wife-deserters. They are not highly educated, few having

attended any school beyond the grammar-school grade. Many of them have,

however, read a great deal more than the average man, though their

reading has been curiously miscellaneous in selection and nearly always

badly balanced. Theology, philosophy, sociology, and economics seem to

attract most attention. In discussion--and every "Wobbly" seems to

possess a passion for disputation--men of this type will manifest a

surprising familiarity with the broad outlines of certain theological

problems, as well as with the scriptural texts bearing upon them. It is

very likely to be the case, however, that they have only read a few

popular classics of what used to be called rationalism--Paine's _Age of

Reason_, Ingersoll's lectures in pamphlet form, and Haeckel's _Riddle of

the Universe_ are typical. A surprisingly large number can quote

extensively from Buckle's _History of Civilization_ and from the

writings of Marx. They quote statistics freely--statistics of wages,

poverty, crime, vice, and so on--generally derived from the radical

press and implicitly believed because so published, with what they

accept as adequate authority.

Their most marked peculiarity is the migratory nature of their lives.

Whether this is self-determined, a matter of temperament and habit, or

due to uncontrollable factors, it is largely responsible for the

contempt in which they are popularly held. It naturally brings upon them

the reproach and resentment everywhere visited upon "tramps" and

"vagabonds." They rarely remain long enough in any one place to form

local attachments and ties or anything like civic pride. They move from

job to job, city to city, state to state, sometimes tramping afoot,

begging as they go; sometimes stealing rides on railway trains, in

freight cars--"side-door Pullmans"--or on the rods underneath the cars.

Frequently arrested for begging, trespassing, or stealing rides, they

are often victims of injustice at the hands of local judges and

justices. The absence of friends, combined with the prejudice against

vagrants which everywhere exists, subjects them to arbitrary and

high-handed injustice such as no other body of American citizens has to

endure. Moreover, through the conditions of their existence they are

readily suspected of crimes they do not commit; it is all too easy for

the hard-pushed police officer or sheriff to impute a crime to the lone

and defenseless "Wobbly," who frequently can produce no testimony to

prove his innocence, simply because he has no friends in the

neighborhood and has been at pains to conceal his movements. In this

manner the "Wobbly" becomes a veritable son of Ishmael, his hand against

the hand of nearly every man in conventional society. In particular he

becomes a rebel by habit, hating the police and the courts as his

constant enemies.

Doubtless the great majority of these men are temperamentally

predisposed to the unanchored, adventurous, migratory existence which

they lead. Boys so constituted run away to sea, take jobs with traveling

circuses, or enlist as soldiers. The type is familiar and not uncommon.

Such individuals cannot be content with the prosaic, humdrum, monotonous

life of regular employment. As a rule we do not look upon this trait in

boy or man as criminal.

Many a hardworking, intelligent American, who from choice or from

necessity is a migratory worker, following his job, never has an

opportunity to vote for state legislators, for governor, for

congressman or president. He is just as effectively excluded from the

actual electorate as if he were a Chinese coolie, ignorant of our

customs and our speech.

We cannot wonder that such conditions prove prolific breeders of

bolshevism and similar "isms." It would be strange indeed if it were

otherwise. We have no right to expect that men who are so constantly the

victims of arbitrary, unjust, and even brutal treatment at the hands of

our police and our courts will manifest any reverence for the law and

the judicial system. Respect for majority rule in government cannot

fairly be demanded from a disfranchised group. It is not to be wondered

at that the old slogan of socialism, "Strike at the ballot-box!"--the

call to lift the struggle of the classes to the parliamentary level for

peaceful settlement--becomes the desperate, anarchistic I.W.W. slogan,

"Strike at the ballot-box with an ax!" Men who can have no family life

cannot justly be expected to bother about school administration. Men who

can have no home life but only dreary shelter in crowded work-camps or

dirty doss-houses are not going to bother themselves with municipal

housing reforms.

In short, we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our

problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile,

red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of

life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of

reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little

concerned with theories of the state and of social development, which to

our intellectuals seem to be the essence of bolshevism. They are vitally

concerned only with action. Syndicalism and bolshevism involve speedy

and drastic action--hence the force of their appeal.

Finally, if we would understand why millions of people in all lands have

turned away from old ideals, old loyalties, and old faiths to

bolshevism, with something of the passion and frenzy characteristic of

great messianic movements, we must take into account the intense

spiritual agony and hunger which the Great War has brought into the

lives of civilized men. The old gods are dead and men are everywhere

expectantly waiting for the new gods to arise. The aftermath of the war

is a spiritual cataclysm such as civilized mankind has never before

known. The old religions and moralities are shattered and men are

waiting and striving for new ones. It is a time suggestive of the birth

of new religions. Man cannot live as yet without faith, without some

sort of religion. The heart of the world today is strained with yearning

for new and living faiths to replace the old faiths which are dead. Were

some persuasive fanatic to arise proclaiming himself to be a new

Messiah, and preaching the religion of action, the creation of a new

society, he would find an eager, soul-hungry world already predisposed

to believe.

4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism[312]

The corruption of manners which has been general since the restoration

was combated by societies for "the reformation of manners," which in the

last years of the seventeenth century acquired extraordinary dimensions.

They began in certain private societies which arose in the reign of

James II, chiefly under the auspices of Beveridge and Bishop Horneck.

These societies were at first purely devotional, and they appear to have

been almost identical in character with those of the early Methodists.

They held prayer meetings, weekly communions, and Bible-readings; they

sustained charities and distributed religious books, and they cultivated

a warmer and more ascetic type of devotion than was common in the

Church. Societies of this description sprang up in almost every

considerable city in England and even in several of those in Ireland. In

the last years of the seventeenth century we find no less than ten of

them in Dublin. Without, however, altogether discarding their first

character, they assumed, about 1695, new and very important functions.

They divided themselves into several distinct groups, undertaking the

discovery and suppression of houses of ill fame, and the prosecution of

swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. They became a kind of

voluntary police, acting largely as spies, and enforcing the laws

against religious offenses. The energy with which this scheme was

carried out is very remarkable. As many as seventy or eighty persons

were often prosecuted in London and Westminster for cursing and

swearing, in a single week. Sunday markets, which had hitherto been not

uncommon, were effectually suppressed. Hundreds of disorderly houses

were closed. Forty or fifty night-walkers were sent every week to

Bridewell, and numbers were induced to emigrate to the colonies. A great

part of the fines levied for these offenses was bestowed on the poor. In

the fortieth annual report of the "Societies for the Reformation of

Manners" which appeared in 1735, it was stated that the number of

prosecutions for debauchery and profaneness in London and Westminster

alone, since the foundation of the societies, had been 99,380.

The term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society

of students at Oxford, who met together between 1729 and 1735 for the

purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every

week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, and on most days

during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from

most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons and

prisoners in the gaol. John Wesley, the future leader of the religious

revival of the eighteenth century, was the master-spirit of this

society. The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was

the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men

who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was

Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the

favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and

more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for

the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the

movement, and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles

Wesley appears to have originated the society at Oxford; he brought

Whitefield into its pale, and besides being the most popular poet he was

one of the most persuasive preachers of the movement.

In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already

formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia, Charles Wesley had begun

to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in

Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist

societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. They were in

part a continuation of the society at Oxford, in part a revival of those

religious societies that have been already noticed as so common after

the Revolution. The design of each was to be a church within a church, a

seedplot of a more fervent piety, the center of a stricter discipline

and a more energetic propagandism than existed in religious communities

at large. In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts

was revived. The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the

most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual

tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They

were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of

every frailty, to submit to be crossexamined on all their thoughts,

words, and deeds. The following among others were the questions asked at

every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last

meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered?

What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be

sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?"

Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an

overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the

judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in

1739. "Their societies," he wrote to their mother, "are sufficient to

dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common sense

or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five

or ten people everything without reserve that concerns the person's

conscience how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married

persons to be there unless husband and wife be there together?"

From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of

missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to

place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were

admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter

hostility in the Church.

We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all

this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and

Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary

clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. Yet before the end

of 1738 the Methodist leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of

the Church, and were thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish

what they considered a Divine mission, to take steps in the direction of

separation.

Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them

was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended not to oppose

or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the churches, and

to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be faithfully taught

to the people. The other and still more important event was the

institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea had occurred to

him in London, where he found congregations too numerous for the church

in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken in the

neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was himself excluded from the

pulpits at Bristol, and was thus deprived of the chief normal means of

exercising his talents, his attention was called to the condition of the

colliers at Kingswood. He was filled with horror and compassion at

finding in the heart of a Christian country, and in the immediate

neighborhood of a great city, a population of many thousands, sunk in

the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely excluded from the

ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he resolved to address

the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was a bold one, for

field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no

common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke,

and to commence the experiment in the center of a half-savage

population. Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and

in his powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text

the first words of the sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he

addressed with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two

hundred men. The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On

successive occasions, five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were

present. It was February, but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The

lanes were filled with carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom

curiosity had drawn from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with

humbler listeners, and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The

voice of the great preacher pealed with a thrilling power to the

outskirts of that mighty throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion

and of the scene, the contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep

sense of the condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of

the step he was taking, gave an additional solemnity to his eloquence.

His rude auditors were electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and

motionless attention. Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters

down cheeks blackened from the coal mine. Then sobs and groans told how

hard hearts were melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the

outcasts of Kingswood which burnt long and fiercely, and was destined

in a few years to overspread the land.

But for the simultaneous appearance of a great orator and a great

statesman, Methodism would probably have smouldered and at last perished

like the very similar religious societies of the preceding century.

Whitefield was utterly destitute of the organizing skill which could

alone give a permanence to the movement, and no talent is naturally more

ephemeral than popular oratory; while Wesley, though a great and

impressive preacher, could scarcely have kindled a general enthusiasm

had he not been assisted by an orator who had an unrivaled power of

moving the passions of the ignorant. The institution of field-preaching

by Whitefield in the February of 1739 carried the impulse through the

great masses of the poor, while the foundation by Wesley, in the May of

the same year, of the first Methodist chapel was the beginning of an

organized body capable of securing and perpetuating the results that had

been achieved.

From the time of the institution of lay preachers Methodism became in a

great degree independent of the Established Church. Its chapels

multiplied in the great towns, and its itinerant missionaries penetrated

to the most secluded districts. They were accustomed to preach in fields

and gardens, in streets and lecture-rooms, in market places and

churchyards. On one occasion we find Whitefield at a fair mounting a

stage which had been erected for some wrestlers, and there denouncing

the pleasures of the world; on another, preaching among the mountebanks

at Moorfields; on a third, attracting around his pulpit ten thousand of

the spectators at a race course; on a fourth, standing beside the

gallows at an execution to speak of death and of eternity. Wesley, when

excluded from the pulpit of Epworth, delivered some of his most

impressive sermons in the churchyard, standing on his father's tomb.

Howell Harris, the apostle of Wales, encountering a party of

mountebanks, sprang into their midst exclaiming, in a solemn voice, "Let

us pray," and then proceeded to thunder forth the judgments of the Lord.

Rowland Hill was accustomed to visit the great towns on market day in

order that he might address the people in the market place, and to go

from fair to fair preaching among the revelers from his favorite text,

"Come out from among them." In this manner the Methodist preachers came

in contact with the most savage elements of the population, and there

were few forms of mob violence they did not experience. In 1741 one of

their preachers named Seward, after repeated ill treatment in Wales, was

at last struck on the head while preaching at Monmouth, and died of the

blow. In a riot, while Wheatley was preaching at Norwich, a poor woman

with child perished from the kicks and blows of the mob. At Dublin,

Whitefield was almost stoned to death. At Exeter he was stoned in the

very presence of the bishop. At Plymouth he was violently assaulted and

his life seriously threatened by a naval officer.

Scenes of this kind were of continual occurrence, and they were

interspersed with other persecutions of a less dangerous description.

Drums were beaten, horns blown, guns let off, and blacksmiths hired to

ply their noisy trade in order to drown the voices of the preachers.

Once, at the very moment when Whitefield announced his text, the belfry

gave out a peal loud enough to make him inaudible. On other occasions

packs of hounds were brought with the same object, and once, in order to

excite the dogs to fury, a live cat in a cage was placed in their midst.

Fire engines poured streams of fetid water upon the congregation. Stones

fell so thickly that the faces of many grew crimson with blood. At

Hoxton the mob drove an ox into the midst of the congregation. At

Pensford the rabble, who had been baiting a bull, concluded their sport

by driving the torn and tired animal full against the table on which

Wesley was preaching. Sometimes we find innkeepers refusing to receive

the Methodist leaders in their inns, farmers entering into an agreement

to dismiss every laborer who attended a Methodist preacher, landlords

expelling all Methodists from their cottages, masters dismissing their

servants because they had joined the sect. The magistrates, who knew by

experience that the presence of a Methodist preacher was the usual

precursor of disturbance and riot, looked on them with the greatest

disfavor, and often scandalously connived at the persecutions they

underwent.

It was frequently observed by Wesley that his preaching rarely affected

the rich and the educated. It was over the ignorant and the credulous

that it exercised its most appalling power, and it is difficult to

overrate the mental anguish it must sometimes have produced. Timid and

desponding natures unable to convince themselves that they had undergone

a supernatural change, gentle and affectionate natures who believed that

those who were dearest to them were descending into everlasting fire,

must have often experienced pangs compared with which the torments of

the martyr were insignificant. The confident assertions of the Methodist

preacher and the ghastly images he continually evoked poisoned their

imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression,

discolored all their judgments of the world, and added a tenfold horror

to the darkness of the grave. Sufferings of this description, though

among the most real and the most terrible that superstition can inflict,

are so hidden in their nature that they leave few traces in history; but

it is impossible to read the journals of Wesley without feeling that

they were most widely diffused. Many were thrown into paroxysms of

extreme, though usually transient, agony; many doubtless nursed a secret

sorrow which corroded all the happiness of their lives, while not a few

became literally insane. On one occasion Wesley was called to the

bedside of a young woman at Kingswood. He tells us:

She was nineteen or twenty years old, but, it seems, could not

write or read. I found her on the bed, two or three persons

holding her. It was a terrible sight. Anguish, horror, and

despair above all description appeared in her pale face. The

thousand distortions of her whole body showed how the dogs of

hell were gnawing at her heart. The shrieks intermixed were

scarce to be endured. But her stony eyes could not weep. She

screamed out as soon as words could find their way, "I am

damned, damned, lost forever: six days ago you might have

helped me. But it is past. I am the devil's now.... I will go

with him to hell. I cannot be saved." They sang a hymn, and for

a time she sank to rest, but soon broke out anew in incoherent

exclamations, "Break, break, poor stony hearts! Will you not

break? What more can be done for stony hearts? I am damned that

you may be saved!"... She then fixed her eyes in the corner of

the ceiling, and said, "There he is, ay, there he is! Come,

good devil, come! Take me away."... We interrupted her by

calling again on God, on which she sank down as before, and

another young woman began to roar out as loud as she had done.

For more than two hours Wesley and his brother continued praying over

her. At last the paroxysms subsided and the patient joined in a hymn of

praise.

In the intense religious enthusiasm that was generated, many of the ties

of life were snapped in twain. Children treated with contempt the

commands of their parents, students the rules of their colleges,

clergymen the discipline of their Church. The whole structure of

society, and almost all the amusements of life, appeared criminal. The

fairs, the mountebanks, the public rejoicings of the people, were all

Satanic. It was sinful for a woman to wear any gold ornament or any

brilliant dress. It was even sinful for a man to exercise the common

prudence of laying by a certain portion of his income. When Whitefield

proposed to a lady to marry him, he thought it necessary to say, "I

bless God, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that

foolish passion which the world calls love." "I trust I love you only

for God, and desire to be joined to you only by His commands, and for

His sake." It is perhaps not very surprising that Whitefield's marriage,

like that of Wesley, proved very unhappy. Theaters and the reading of

plays were absolutely condemned, and Methodists employed all their

influence with the authorities to prevent the erection of the former. It

seems to have been regarded as a divine judgment that once, when

_Macbeth_ was being acted at Drury Lane, a real thunderstorm mingled

with the mimic thunder in the witch scene. Dancing was, if possible,

even worse than the theater. "Dancers," said Whitefield, "please the

devil at every step"; and it was said that his visit to a town usually

put "a stop to the dancing-school, the assemblies, and every pleasant

thing." He made it his mission to "bear testimony against the detestable

diversions of this generation"; and he declared that no "recreations,

considered as such, can be innocent."

Accompanying this asceticism we find an extraordinary revival of the

grossest superstition. It was a natural consequence of the essentially

emotional character of Methodism that its disciples should imagine that

every strong feeling or impulse within them was a direct inspiration of

God or Satan. The language of Whitefield--the language in a great degree

of all the members of the sect--was that of men who were at once

continually inspired and the continual objects of miraculous

interposition. In every perplexity they imagined that, by casting lots

or opening their Bibles at random, they could obtain a supernatural

answer to their inquiries.

In all matters relating to Satanic interference, Wesley was especially

credulous. "I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the

existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred

and profane." He had no doubt that the physical contortions into which

so many of his hearers fell were due to the direct agency of Satan, who

tore the converts as they were coming to Christ. He had himself seen men

and women who were literally possessed by devils; he had witnessed forms

of madness which were not natural, but diabolical, and he had

experienced in his own person the hysterical affections which resulted

from supernatural agency.

If Satanic agencies continually convulsed those who were coming to the

faith, divine judgments as frequently struck down those who opposed it.

Every illness, every misfortune that befell an opponent, was believed to

be supernatural. Molther, the Moravian minister, shortly after the

Methodists had separated from the Moravians, was seized with a passing

illness. "I believe," wrote Wesley, "it was the hand of God that was

upon him." Numerous cases were cited of sudden and fearful judgments

which fell upon the adversaries of the cause. A clergyman at Bristol,

standing up to preach against the Methodists, "was suddenly seized with

a rattling in his throat, attended with a hideous groaning," and on the

next Sunday he died. At Todmorden a minister was struck with a violent

fit of palsy immediately after preaching against the Methodists. At

Enniscorthy a clergyman, having preached for some time against

Methodism, deferred the conclusion of the discourse to the following

Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about

him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he

went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective

against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A

woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed,

"They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the

ground, and next day expired. "A party of young men rode up to Richmond

to disturb the sermons of Rowland Hill. The boat sank, and all of them

were drowned." At Sheffield the captain of a gang who had long troubled

the field-preachers, was bathing with his companions. "Another dip," he

said, "and then for a bit of sport with the Methodists." He dived,

struck his head against a stone, and appeared no more. By such anecdotes

and by such beliefs a fever of enthusiasm was sustained.

But with all its divisions and defects the movement was unquestionably

effecting a great moral revolution in England. It was essentially a

popular movement, exercising its deepest influence over the lower and

middle classes. Some of its leaders were men of real genius, but in

general the Methodist teacher had little sympathy with the more educated

of his fellow-countrymen. To an ordinarily cultivated mind there was

something extremely repulsive in his tears and groans and amorous

ejaculations, in the coarse and anthropomorphic familiarity and the

unwavering dogmatism with which he dealt with the most sacred subjects,

in the narrowness of his theory of life and his utter insensibility to

many of the influences that expand and embellish it, in the mingled

credulity and self-confidence with which he imagined that the whole

course of nature was altered for his convenience. But the very qualities

that impaired his influence in one sphere enhanced it in another. His

impassioned prayers and exhortations stirred the hearts of multitudes

whom a more decorous teaching had left absolutely callous. The

supernatural atmosphere of miracles, judgments, and inspirations in

which he moved, invested the most prosaic life with a halo of romance.

The doctrines he taught, the theory of life he enforced, proved

themselves capable of arousing in great masses of men an enthusiasm of

piety which was hardly surpassed in the first days of Christianity, of

eradicating inveterate vice, of fixing and directing impulsive and

tempestuous natures that were rapidly hastening toward the abyss. Out of

the profligate slave-dealer, John Newton, Methodism formed one of the

purest and most unselfish of saints. It taught criminals in Newgate to

mount the gallows in an ecstasy of rapturous devotion. It planted a

fervid and enduring religious sentiment in the midst of the most brutal

and most neglected portions of the population, and whatever may have

been its vices or its defects, it undoubtedly emancipated great numbers

from the fear of death, and imparted a warmer tone to the devotion and a

greater energy to the philanthropy of every denomination both in England

and the colonies.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Social Unrest

The term collective behavior, which has been used elsewhere to include

all the facts of group life, has been limited for the purposes of this

chapter to those phenomena which exhibit in the most obvious and

elementary way the processes by which societies are disintegrated into

their constituent elements and the processes by which these elements are

brought together again into new relations to form new organizations and

new societies.

Some years ago John Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor

situation in the United States. He called the volume _Social Unrest_.

The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word

unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide

usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native

American to move from one part of the country to another, of his

restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait

transmitted in the blood. We speak more often of the "restless age," as

if mobility and the desire for novelty and new experience were

peculiarly characteristic of the twentieth century. We use the word to

describe conditions in different regions of social life in such

expressions as "political," "religious," and "labor" unrest, and in

every case the word is used in a sense that indicates change, but change

that menaces the existing order. Finally, we speak of the "restless

woman," as of a peculiar modern type, characteristic of the changed

status of women in general in the modern world. In all these different

uses we may observe the gradual unfolding of the concept which seems to

have been implicit in the word as it was first used. It is the concept

of an activity in response to some urgent organic impulse which the

activity, however, does not satisfy. It is a diagnostic symptom, a

symptom of what Graham Wallas calls "balked disposition." It is a sign

that in the existing situation some one or more of the four

wishes--security, new experience, recognition, and response--has not

been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is

social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that

provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the

group where the unrest manifests itself. [313] The materials in which

the term unrest is used in the sense indicated are in the popular

discussions of social questions. The term is not defined but it is

frequently used in connection with descriptions of conditions which are

evidently responsible for it. Labor strikes are evidences of social

unrest, and the literature already referred to in the chapter on

"Conflict"[1] shows the conditions under which unrest arises, is

provoked and exploited in labor situations. The relation of unrest to

routine and fatigue has been the subject of a good deal of discussion

and some investigation. The popular conception is that labor unrest is

due to the dull driving routine of machine industry. The matter needs

further study. The actual mental experiences of the different sexes,

ages, temperamental and mental types under the influence of routine

would add a much needed body of fact to our present psychology of the

worker.

2. Psychic Epidemics

If social unrest is a symptom of disorganization, then the psychic

epidemics, in which all the phenomena of social unrest and contagion are

intensified, is evidence positive that disorganization exists. Social

disorganization must be considered in relation to reorganization. All

change involves a certain amount of disorganization. In order that an

individual may make new adjustments and establish new habits it is

inevitable that old habits should be broken up, and in order that

society may reform an existing social order a certain amount of

disorganization is inevitable. Social unrest may be, therefore, a

symptom of health. It is only when the process of disorganization goes

on so rapidly and to such an extent that the whole existing social

structure is impaired, and society is, for that reason, not able to

readjust itself, that unrest is to be regarded as a pathological

symptom.