Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/367

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY 353

tions, frantic cheers, are needed to express the merriment or wrath or enthusiasm of the crowd. These exaggerated signs of emotion cannot but produce in suggestible beholders exagger- ated states of mind. Insensibly the mental temperature rises so that what once seemed hot now seems luke-warm, what once felt tepid now seems cold.

The energizing and intensifying of the feelings by means of reciprocal suggestion will be most prompt and striking when the members of the crowd are in an excited state of mind or meet under agitating circumstances. In this case the impulse to the unbridled manifestation of feeling is rife from the first, and the psychic fermentation proceeds at an uncommon rate.

Granting that association widens the amplitude of feeling what does this imply as to the moral character of the crowd ? Will it be higher or lower than that of its members ? The earlier students of the crowd regarded it as necessarily criminal in its tendencies, but of late it has come to be recognized that the crowd is capable of opposite extremes of savage criminality, on the one hand ; of sublime heroism, on the other ; of cowardly panic, but also of desperate courage. Now, there are moral emotions as well as immoral ones. Since feelings are intensified in the presence of numbers, it might plausibly be argued that generosity and courage are just as likely to be exalted as wrath and greed. The virtuous impulses will be strengthened as well as the vicious impulses, and, making due allowance, of course, for the influence of the occasion or the leader, the moral quality of the crowd will be an exaggerated reflection of the moral char- acteristics of its members.

This reasoning, however, ignores a very important distinction between the springs of virtue and the springs of vice. Some of the motives to right conduct are, indeed, purely emotional. Such are sympathy, love, generosity, and courage. But in most cases the spring of virtue contains an intellectual element as well as an emotional element. On the whole, right conduct is thought-out conduct. Second thoughts make for righteous- ness. The upright man is "considerate;" he is animated, not by spurts of good impulses, but by the sense of justice, respect