Social Psychology
Chapter 3: The Crowd
Edward Alsworth Ross
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Individuality and voluntary movement
THE strength of multiplied suggestion is at its maximum when the individual is in the midst of a throng, helpless to control his position or movements. The same pressure on the body that prevents voluntary movement conveys promptly to him all the electrifying swayings and tremors that betray the emotions of the mass. This squeeze of the crowd tends to depress the self-sense. Says James: [1]
"In a sense, then. . . . the 'Self of selves,' when carefully examined, is found to consist mainly of the collection of these peculiar motions in the head and between the head and the throat. I do not for a moment say that this is all it consists of . . . but I feel quite sure that these cephalic motions are the portions of my innermost activity of which I am most distinctly aware. If the dim portions which I cannot yet define should prove to be like unto these distinct portions in me, and I like other men, it would follow that our entire feeling of spiritual activity, or what commonly passes by that name, is really a feeling of bodily activities, whose exact nature is by most men overlooked."
Sidis [2] goes further in declaring: "If anything gives us a strong sense of our individuality, it is surely our voluntary movements. We may say that the individual self
(44) grows and expands with the increase of variety and intensity of its voluntary activity; and conversely, the life of the individual self sinks, shrinks with the decrease of variety and intensity of voluntary movements." Often a furious naughty child will suddenly become meek and obedient after being held a moment as in a vise. On the playground a saucy boy will abruptly surrender and "take it back" when held firmly on the ground without power to move hand or foot. The cause is not fear, but deflation of the ego.
Depression of the self sense in the throng
Here, perhaps, is the reason why individuality is so wilted in a dense throng, and why persons of a highly developed but somewhat fragile personality have a horror of getting nipped in a crowd. It is said that in the French theatre of the old régime the standing portion of the audience (pit) was always more emotional and violent in its demonstrations than the sitting portion (parquet), and that the providing of seats for the pit spectators greatly quieted their demeanor. The experienced orator knows that a standing open-air crowd is very different in response from a seated indoor audience, and changes his style accordingly.
Fixation of attention
Nevertheless, a holiday jam in a railroad station or at a race-course is no mob. A crowd self will not arise unless there is an orientation of attention, expectancy, a narrowing of the field of consciousness that excludes disturbing impressions. When a crowd is entering the critical state, we hear of "strained attention," "Sea of upturned faces," "bated breath," "ominous hush," "a silence such that you can hear a fly buzz or a pin drop." The following newspaper account [3] of a Paderewski matinée shows the rôle of expectancy and inhibition:
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" There is a chatter, a rustling of programmes, a waving of fans, a nodding of feathers, a general air of expectancy, and the lights are lowered. A hush. All eyes are turned to a small door leading on to the stage; it is opened. Paderewski enters. . . . A storm of applause greets him, . . . but after it comes a tremulous hush and a prolonged sigh. . . . created by the long, deep inhalation of upward of three thousand women. . . . Paderewski is at the piano. . . . Thousands of eyes watch every commonplace movement [of his] through opera-glasses with an intensity painful to observe. He the idol, they the idolaters. . . . Toward the end of the performance the most decorous women seem to abandon themselves to the influence. . . . There are sighs, sobs, the tight clinching of the palms, the bowing of the head. Fervid exclamations: 'He is my master 1' are heard in the feminine mob."
Excitement
An excited throng easily turns mob because excitement E weakens the reasoning power and predisposes to suggestions in line with the master emotion. Thus, frightened persons are peculiarly susceptible to warnings, angry persons to denunciations, expectant persons to promises, anxious persons to rumors. An agitated gathering is tinder, and the throngs that form in times of public tension are very liable to become mobs.
Elements in the crowd that profit by the heightened suggestibility
Although crowding, fixation of attention, and excitement exalt suggestibility, all members of the crowd do not experience this in the same degree. There are at least two descriptions of people who, in the give-and-take of the throng, are more likely to impose suggestions than to accept them. The intelligent are able to criticise and appraise the suggestions that impinge upon them. They are quick to react if a suggestion clashes with their in-
(46) -terests or their convictions, whereas the ignorant are a the mercy of the leader or the claque, and may be stampeded into a course of action quite at variance with their real desires. The fanatical and impassioned are little responsive to impressions from without, because of their inner tension. Being determined from within, they emit powerful suggestions, but are hard to influence. There is thus a tendency for the warped and inflamed members to impart their passion to the rest and to sweep along with them the neutral and indifferent. This is why, as the crowd comes under the hypnotic spell, the extremists gain the upper hand of the moderates.
Emotionalism of the crowd
Feelings, having more means of vivid expression, run through the crowd more readily than ideas. Masked by their anonymity, people feel free to give rein to the expression of their feelings. To be heard, one does not speak; one shouts. To be seen, one does not simply show one's self; one gesticulates. Boisterous laughter, frenzied objurgations, frantic cheers, are needed to express the merriment or wrath or enthusiasm of the crowd. Such exaggerated signs of emotion cannot but produce in suggestible beholders exaggerated states of mind. The mental temperature rises, so that what seemed hot now seems lukewarm, what felt tepid now feels cold. The intensifying of the feelings in consequence of reciprocal suggestion will be most rapid when the crowd meets under agitating circumstances. In this case the unbridled manifestation of feeling prevails from the first, and the psychic fermentation proceeds at a great rate.
Arrest of thought in the crowd
To the degree that feeling is intensified, reason is paralyzed. In general, strong emotion inhibits the intellectual processes. In a sudden crisis we expect the sane act
(47) from the man who is " cool," who has not " lost his head." Now, the very hurly-burly of the crowd tends to distraction. Then, the high pitch of feeling to which the crowd gradually works up checks thinking and results in a temporary imbecility. There is no question that, taken herdwise, people are less sane and sensible than they are dispersed.
The crowd leader
In a real deliberative assembly there is a possibility that the best thought, the soundest opinion, the shrewdest plan advanced from any quarter will prevail. Where there is cool discussion and leisurely reflection, ideas struggle with one another, and the fittest are accepted by all. In the fugitive, structureless crowd, however, there can be no fruitful debate. Under a wise leader the crowd may act sagaciously. But there is no guarantee that the master of the crowd shall be wiser than his followers. The man of biggest voice or wildest language, the aggressive person who first leaps upon a table, raises aloft a symbol, or utters a catching phrase, is likely to become the bell-wether.
The psychic process in the crowd
Under these conditions - heightened suggestibility and emotion, arrested thinking -three things will happen when an impulse, whether emanating from a spectacle, an event, or a leader, runs through the crowd.
I. Extension. -By sheer contagion it extends to unsympathetic persons. Thus by-standing scoffers have been drawn into a revival maelstrom,[4] law-abiding persons
(48) have been sucked into the vortex of a brutal lynching bee, hard-headed workingmen with dependent families have been stampeded into a sympathetic strike. In his story "On the City Wall," Kipling introduces a young native just back to Madras from Oxford. He is a typical product of Western culture, polished, sceptical, utterly aloof from his people, and contemptuous of the foolish religious riots between Hindu and Mohammedan fanatics. He shows us this same scoffer a few hours later fighting furiously in the thick of the riot on behalf of his Mohammedan coreligionists for whose faith he cares not a straw. Sidis [5] cites an incident of the riots of certain military colonists in Russia in 1831: "While Sokolov was fighting hard for his life, I saw a corporal lying on the piazza and crying bitterly. On my question, 'Why do you cry?' he pointed in the direction of the mob and exclaimed, 'Oh, they do not kill a commander, but a father!' I told him that instead of it he should rather go to Sokolov's aid. He rose at once and ran to the help of his commander. A little later when I came with a few soldiers to Sokolov's help, I found the same corporal striking Sokolov with a club. 'Wretch, what are you
(49) doing? Have you not told me he was to you like a father?' To which he answered, 'It is such a time, your honor; all the people strike him; why should I keep quiet?"' An English prison matron confesses that sometimes when she hears the women under her care "break out" and commence smashing and destroying everything they can get hold of, it is as much as she can do to restrain herself from joining in.
2. Intensification. -Each individual impressed feels more intensely the moment he perceives that so many others share his feeling. Hence, a secondary wave, a reverberation, runs through the crowd that is becoming aware of itself.
3. Predisposition. - The perceived unison begets a sympathy that makes like response easier the next time.
Time needed for the emergence of a crowd self
Since each fulfilled suggestion increases the emotion of the mob in volume and pitch, the passing of the crowd into the mob is more or less gradual. A mob is a formation that takes time. The revivalist expects little response during his first half-hour. No matter how brilliant his work in the earlier scenes, an actor will not elict the wildest demonstrations from his audience until the closing acts. There are always several steps in the decline of an orderly crowd into a riotous mob. It is not a single blow, but a quick succession of shocks, that throws an army into a panic. In all these cases, with the growing fascination of the mass for the individual, his consciousness contracts to the pin-point of the immediate moment, and the volume of suggestion needed to start an impulse on its conquering career becomes less and less. He becomes automatic, in a way unconscious. The end is a tranced impressionable condition akin to hypnosis.
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The Kentucky Revival
There is no assignable limit to the mastery of the crowd self over the selves of the members. McMaster[6] thus describes a famous Kentucky revival, 1799-i8oo. " One of the brothers was irresistibly impelled to speak.... The words which then fell from his lips roused the people before him 'to a pungent sense of sin.' Again and again the woman shouted, and would not be silent. He started to go to her. The crowd begged him to turn back. Something within him urged him on, and he went through the house shouting and exhorting and praising God. In a moment the floor, to use his own words, 'was covered with the slain.' Their cries for mercy were terrible to hear. Some found forgiveness, but many went away 'spiritually wounded' and suffering unutterable agony of soul. Nothing could allay the excitement. Every settlement along the Green River and the Cumberland was full of religious fervor. Men fitted their wagons with beds and provisions, and travelled fifty miles to camp upon the ground and hear him preach. The idea was new; hundreds adopted it, and camp-meetings began.
" At no time was the 'falling exercise' so prevalent as at night. Nothing was then wanting that could strike terror into minds weak, timid, and harassed. The red glare of the camp-fires reflected from hundreds of tents and wagons; the dense blackness of the flickering shadows, the darkness of the surrounding forest, made still more terrible by the groans and screams of the 'spiritually wounded,' who had fled to it for comfort; the entreaty of the preachers; the sobs and shrieks of the downcast still walking through the dark valley of the Shadow of Death; the shouts and songs of praise of the happy ones
(51) who had crossed the Delectable Mountains, had gone on through the fogs of the Enchanted Ground, and entered the Land of Beulah, were too much for those over whose minds and bodies lively imaginations held full sway. The heart swelled, the nerves gave way, the hands and feet grew cold, and, motionless and speechless, they fell headlong to the ground. In a moment crowds gathered about them to pray and shout. Some lay still as death. Some passed through frightful twitchings of face and limb. At Cabin Creek so many fell that, lest the multitude should tread on them, they were carried to the meeting-house and laid in rows on the floor. At Cane Ridge the number was three thousand."
"The excitement surpassed anything that had been known. Men who came to scoff remained to preach. All day and all night the crowd swarmed to and fro from preacher to preacher, singing, shouting, laughing, now rushing off to listen to some new exhorter who had climbed upon a stump, now gathering around some unfortunate who, in their peculiar language, was 'spiritually slain.' Soon men and women fell in such numbers that it became impossible to move about without trampling them, and they were hurried to the meeting-house. At no time was the floor less than half covered. Some lay quiet, unable to move or speak. Some talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with their heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over for hours at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then plunged, shouting Lost! Lost! into the forest.
"As the meetings grew more and more frequent, this
(52) nervous excitement assumed new and more terrible forms. One was known as jerking; another, as the barking exercise; a third, as the Holy Laugh. 'The jerks' began in the head and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made to snap. When the body was affected, the sufferer was hurled over hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground to bounce about like a ball. At campmeetings in the far South, saplings were cut off breasthigh and left 'for the people to jerk by.' One who visited such a camp-ground declares that about the roots of from fifty to one hundred saplings the earth was kicked up 'as by a horse stamping flies."
"From the nerves and muscles the disorder passed to the mind. Men dreamed dreams and saw visions, nay, fancied themselves dogs, went down on all fours, and barked till they grew hoarse. It was no uncommon sight to behold numbers of them gathered about a tree, barking, yelping, 'treeing the devil.' Two years later, when much of the excitement of the great revival had gone down, falling and jerking gave way to hysterics. During the most earnest preaching and exhorting, even sincere professors of religion would, on a sudden, burst into loud laughter; others, unable to resist, would follow, and soon the assembled multitude would join in. This was the 'Holy Laugh,' and became, after 1803, a recognized part of worship."
Psychology of the revival
Coe[7] thus accounts for the extraordinary phenomena often manifested in religious assemblies. "The striking psychic manifestations which reach their climax among
(53) us in emotional revivals, camp-meetings, and negro services have a direct relation to certain states of an essentially hypnotic and hallucinatory kind. In various forms such states have appeared and reappeared throughout the history of religion. Examples of what is here referred to are found in the sacred frenzy of the Bacchantes, the trance of the Sibyls, the ecstasy of the Neo-Platonists, the enlightenment that came to Gautama Buddha under the sacred Bo-tree, the visions of the canonized saints, the absorption into God experienced by various mystics, and the religious epidemics of the Middle Ages, such as tarantism and St. Vitus's dance. All these and a multitude of similar phenomena were produced by processes easily recognized by any modern psychologist as automatic and suggestive. Similarly, the phenomenon in Methodist history known as the 'power' was induced by hypnotic processes now well understood, though hidden until long after the days of the Wesleys." "The explanation of the 'power' and similar outbreaks is simple. Under the pressure of religious excitement there occurs a sporadic case of hallucination, or of motor automatism, or of auto-hypnotism, taking the form of trance, visions, voices, or catalepsy. The onlookers naturally conceive a more or less distressing fear lest the mysterious power attack their own persons. Fear acts as a suggestion, and the more suggestible soon realize their expectations In accordance with the law of suggestion, every new case adds power to the real cause and presently the conditions are right for an epidemic of such experiences." "Suggestion works in proportion as it secures a monopoly of attention. Let us ask what, according to this law, will happen to passably suggestible persons who submit them-
(54) -selves to certain well-known revival practices. Let us suppose that the notion of a striking transformation has been held before the subject's mind for days, weeks, or even years; let us suppose that the subject has finally been induced to go to the penitent form; here, we will suppose, prayers full of sympathy and emotional earnestness are offered for him, and that everything has been so arranged as to produce a climax in which he will finally believe that the connection between himself and God is now accomplished. The leader says to him: 'Do you now believe? Then you are saved.' Is it not evident that this whole process favors the production of a profound emotional transformation directly through suggestion?"
The crowd cannot last
The crowd self is ephemeral. Not for long can it supersede the individual self. The straining of attention leads to fatigue, lessened power of response to further suggestions. Then, stimuli from within help to break the spell. Sensations of hunger, cold, and weariness become so insistent as to distract the attention. Presently the bond dissolves, and the crowd scatters. Mobs have been broken up by a downpour of rain or an alarm of fire. The little Corsican disperses a turbulent crowd with grape; the humane philosopher turns a fire hose on it. It is easy to tell whether a riot is a collective aberration or a work of intent by noticing whether the crowd returns the next day. If it does, there is more behind it than mass psychology.
The crowd is unstable
Whether its members be saints or knaves, sages or hodmen, the self of the crowd exhibits certain characteristics. It is unstable, as the word "mob" (mobile) indicates. Its hero one moment may be its victim the next. It may pass abruptly from reckless courage to
(55) dastard fear. Little things turn its purpose. Taine [8] tells of a street mob bent on hanging a supposed monopolizer. By some words uttered on his behalf it was brought to embrace him, drink with him, and make him join them in a mad dance about a liberty pole. At the close of the Paris Commune, a crowd, irritated by the defiant air of one of the communist women, howls, " Death to her! " An old gentleman cries, " No cruelty, after all it is a woman ! " In a moment the wrath of the- crowd is turned on him. "He is a communist, an incendiary!" But in this critical moment the shrill voice of a gamin is heard, "Don't hurt him, she's his girl!" Thereupon a great burst of laughter about the old gentleman, and he is saved.[9]
The crowd is credulous, irrational, and simple minded
The crowd self is credulous. The "holding-off " at- I titude is a kind of inhibition, for we tend to believe what we hear reiterated with fire. Now, in a psychological a crowd, individuals are "out of themselves." For them the past does not exist. Rational analysis and test are out of the question. The faculties we doubt with are asleep. Again, the crowd self is irrational. It cannot dissect, weigh, and compare, cannot apply remembered teachings. Under the sway of vivid impressions through eye or car the man in the crowd cannot relate his present problem to his previous experiences. His actions are near to reflexes. The crowd self shows simplicity. Like children and savages, it cannot embrace in a single judgment several factors and details. It sees only one aspect of a thing at a time.[10] It may face about completely when
(56) some other aspect is thrown into the focus of its attention. Unable to think things in their actual complexity, the crowd trusts to impressions or prejudices, if it is heterogeneous; to glittering generalities or abstract principles if it is a political or legislative assembly.
The crowd lacks virtue
Finally, the crowd self is immoral. To be sure, it is capable of courage and generosity, even of honesty. The perpetrators of the September massacres in the French Revolution faithfully turned in the money and valuables found on their victims, while the mob that invaded the Tuileries in 1848 refrained from carrying away any of the priceless objects they saw. The crowd is emotional, and some of its emotions may be moral. On the whole, however, the virtues grow on an intellectual stalk. Right conduct is thought-out conduct. Conscience is a way of thinking things. Now, thronging paralyzes thought, and while the crowd may be sentimental and heroic, it will lack the virtues born of self-control - veracity, prudence, thrift, perseverance, respect for another's rights, obedience to law.
The crowd is the lowest form of association
It is safe to conclude that amorphous, heterogeneous gatherings are morally and intellectually below the average of their members. This manner of coming together deteriorates. The crowd may generate moral fervor, but it never sheds light. If at times it has furthered progress, it is because the mob serves as a battering-ram to raze some mouldering, bat-infested institution and clean
(57) the ground for something better. This better will be the creation of gifted individuals or of deliberative bodies, never of anonymous crowds. It is easier for masses to agree on a Nay than on a Yea. Hence crowds destroy despotisms, but never build free states; abolish evils, but never found works of beneficence. Essentially atavistic and sterile, the crowd ranks as the lowest of the forms of human association.
How deliberative assemblies escape the crowd vortex
A free people is obliged to settle matters of common concern in a deliberative assembly. But the big assembly skirts ever the slippery incline that leads down to mob madness, and guard-rails in the form of fixed modes of procedure are necessary to save it a misstep. Its chief protection is the Parliamentary Rules of Order, wrought out in the venerable House of Commons and certainly not the least among England's gifts to the world. The rules requiring that a meeting shall have a chairman, that the chairman shall not take part in debate, that no one shall speak without recognition, that the speaker shall address the chair and not the assembly, that remarks shall pertain to a pending motion, that personalities shall be taboo, and that members shall not be referred to by name -what are they but so many devices to keep the honey-tongued or brazen-throated crowd leader from springing to the centre of the stage and weaving his baleful spells ! The rules that the hearers be in order, that they remain seated, that they forbear to interrupt, that they patiently listen to all speakers regularly recognized, and that their signs of approval or disapproval be decorous -are not these so many guardrails to help the assembly get safely by certain vertiginous moments?
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Mob mind in city dwellers
It has long been recognized that the behavior of city populations under excitement shows the familiar characteristics of the mob, quite apart from any thronging. Here we get unanimity, impulsiveness, exaggeration of feeling, excessive credulity, fickleness, inability to reason, and sudden alternations of boldness and cowardice. Here, indeed, are the chief counts in the indictment which historians have drawn against the city democracies of old Greece and mediaeval Italy.
The city facilitates inter-suggestion
These faults are due in part to the nervous strain of great cities. The bombardment of the senses by innumerable impressions tends to produce neurasthenia, the peculiar affliction of the city dweller. Moreover, in the sheltered life of the city live many degenerates that would be unsparingly eliminated by the sterner conditions of existence in the country. In the main, however, the behavior of city dwellers under excitement can best be understood as the result of mental contacts made possible by easy communication. Even in the crowd, the main thing is the contact of minds. Let this be given and the three consequences above pointed out must follow. An expectant or excited man learns that thousands of his fellow-townsmen have been seized by a certain strong feeling and meets with their expression of this feeling. Each of these townsmen learns how many others are feeling as he does. Each stage in the subsequent growth of this feeling in extent and in intensity is perceived, and so fosters sympathy and a will to "go along." Will we not inevitably, by this series of interactions, get that "out look which characterizes the human atom in the mob?
Says Jones:[11] "Inasmuch as the prevailing economic
Bearing of mental intimacy on booms and panics
(59) system enforces intimate association in a sense in which no previous system ever did, this class of influences tending to vitiate the economic reasoning of those who are subject to market influences may well demand serious attention. Businesses are being increasingly concentrated in large cities, and especially are those who control them being closely compacted together in the business sections of great cities. It has been asserted that these conditions originate the influences which breed crises, and the case of Australia, where the population is unusually concentrated in cities, has been cited as evidence. 'A large city is characterized by an intensity of internal imitation in proportion to the density of population, and a multiform multiplicity of the relations of its inhabitants. Thus there is an epidemic and contagious character given not only to its diseases, but to its styles and views.' The so-called 'booms' of American towns illustrate in acute form the occasional economic effect of these influences. The power of mental contagion is increased by such facilities for assemblage and communication as the railway, telegraph, and telephone. It is obviously enhanced by the practice of transacting business in industrial assemblages such as stock and produce exchanges. Attention may be called to the fact that in periods of unusual business success or depression, this physical concentration of traders in large markets is greatly increased."
Crowd phenomena in city and in country
But the propinquity of city people may be more than counteracted by their mental and moral heterogeneity. Says Professor Giddings: [12] " The increasing density of
(60) modern populations is seemingly favorable to popular tumult, which might easily become insurrection or revolution. In the literature of political science there is perhaps no more familiar assumption than the one which associates all the dangers of the mob spirit with the democratic organization of great cities." Yet " a systematic grouping of observations from many part,,,; of the world would demonstrate that the phenomena of lawless popular action, as in insurrections, lynchings, and riotous outbreaks in connection with labor strikes, are, on the whole, phenomena of rural rather than of urban population. There have been scenes of wild violence in Paris and in London; there have been draft and other riots in New York City; but the collective violence in all the great cities of Europe and America for two hundred years would not make a great showing by comparison with the epidemics of emotion - accompanied by dancing and other manias - that surged through rural communities in connection with the great revival movements under the Wesleyans, the later revivals of 1837 and 1857, the insurrections like Shays's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, the Ku Klux Klan outrages, the Vigilance Committee activities, the conflicts between Gentiles and Mormons, the White Cap outrages, and the lynchings in our Western and Southern states.
Obstacles to impulsive cooperation among city dwellers
" The reason for this curious fact is undoubtedly to be found in the restraining effect of ethnic and mental difference. The rural community is relatively homogeneous. The 'neighbors' for miles in every direction are nearly all of one blood. They are practically of one economic condition. For the most part they are of one religious confession or of two or three confessions not very unlike
(61) in creeds and practices. All are acquainted with one another. An exciting event or suggestion that moves one will, almost certainly, move the others. Emotion among them is highly contagious. They respond to like stimuli because they are alike. The city population is composite and differentiated. In a mixed crowd of hundreds that gathers on the street no one man of them all recognizes a dozen others. They are of all sorts and conditions, the well-to-do and the poor, and often of many nationalities. Danger arises only when discontent and inflammatory suggestion find homogeneous material to work upon in a quarter whose denizens are of one nationality and of the same economic condition, and among whom may be found, here and there, small gangs of toughs who are already disciplined in associating for lawless purposes. Only an extraordinary influence can combine the impulsive tendencies among unlike classes, differing nationalities, unacquainted neighborhoods, in one great outbreak. Such things have happened, and doubtless will happen again; but the normal influence of heterogeneity and differentiation in a population is unfavorable to collective action."
SUMMARY
In the dense throng individuality wilts and droops.
A common orientation of attention and a state of excitement predispose to the mob mood.
The heightened suggestibility of people under such conditions exaggerates the influence of the fanatical and impassioned.
Crowd conditions facilitate the circulation of feelings, hinder the circulation of ideas.
Under these conditions the dominant emotional note reaches an extreme pitch.
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In the crowd rational or accurate thinking is arrested.
Every impulse that traverses the crowd smooths the way for its successor. The merging of many individual selves into a single crowd self therefore takes time.
The crowd self is unstable, credulous, irrational, and immoral.
The Rules of Order save the deliberative assembly from degenerating into a crowd.
EXERCISE
Show that each of these arts of the popular orator finds its warrant in some psychological characteristic of the crowd. If possible read Le Bon's " The Crowd," Bk. I, ch. III; Bk. II, ch. II, sec. 1, ch. III.
I. At the outset seem to agree with it.
2. Vigorously affirm and reiterate with fire and passion.
3. Make each imagine you address him. By eye, voice, attitude, and action rivet attention and keep the spell unbroken.
4. Cut out facts, statistics, valid proof, and evidence.
5. Never argue or follow out painstakingly the links of a logical chain.
6. Use demonstration, ocular evidence, histrionism.
7. Use figures of speech, metaphors, emblems (flag, group symbol, totem), and shibboleths (" family," " home," " the Church," the Fathers," " Our Country," " our Cause," " the Right ").
8. Address passions (including, of course, cupidity), but not rational interests.
