Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/21

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 9

ideas can work only in an entirely one-sided, ruthless, and radical fashion. This fact is accentuated in case the behavior of a crowd in actual physical contact is in question. Under such circum- stances, the innumerable suggestions working back and forth produce an extraordinarily intense nervous excitement, which often deprives the individual of his senses, and drags him along as though he were unconscious. It inflates every impulse, often in a freakish manner, and makes the mob the prey of the most passionate personality in its number. This melting of masses into one feeling, in which all peculiarity and reserves of person- alities are suspended, is naturally in its content so thorough- going, so radical, so alien to all mediation and consideration, that it would lead to sheer impracticabilities and destructions, if it did not usually find its end at an earlier stage from inner wearinesses and reactions, the consequence of this one-sided exaggeration. More than that, the masses, in the sense now in mind, have little to lose. On the contrary, they believe, so to speak, that they have everything to gain. This is the situation in which most of the restraints of radicalism habitually fall away ; in this unorganized mass which consists of human beings with their immediate reciprocities, without a super-individual unity and form, those indefinitenesses, many-sidednesses, and media- torial phenomena are lacking through which the great com- munity ordinarily is distinguished from the small one. In order to form themselves upon the periphery of a community, they need precisely a stable center of the same, an objective social form and interest, in excess of the merely subjective and momentary unification of the elements.

Thus it is to be observed in general that small parties are more radical than large ones, of course within the limits which the ideas constituting the party prescribe. The radicalism here meant is immediately sociological ; that is, it is marked by the unreserved dedication of the individual to the tendency of the group, by the sharp delimitation of the same against neighboring structures which is necessary to the self-preservation of the group, by the impossibility of taking up into the externally nar- row frame a multitude of far-reaching endeavors and thoughts.