Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/369

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY

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What, now, as to the wisdom and judgment of the crowd ? Will it be a mean of individual judgments or will it be something else?

There is, be it noted, no such summation of ideas as there is of feelings. This is because ideas differ, not in degree, but in kind. If from the countenances and gestures of those about him a man perceives that all are moved as he is, his feeling becomes more intense. But if he observes that others entertain the same idea, his idea does not thereby become clearer to him. He simply believes in it more intensely, this belief being itself a mode of feeling. In the crowd A's wrath or courage reinforces B's, and vice versa. But A's idea does not reinforce B's idea so as to produce an idea superior to either. Impulses are accu- mulable, but not thoughts. A crowd can be more sagacious than its members only in case (i) people think better in a crowd, or in case (2) the ideas of the wiser supplant the ideas of the foolish.

Do people think better when jammed together and tingling with the herd-thrill ? No doubt it is friction that produces sparks. Many a mind is most clairvoyant and fertile in the presence of others. Some men need the stimulus of auditors to rouse them. Great orators have confessed that their best thinking was done in the presence of the multitude real or imagined. Nevertheless, it is generally true that strong emotion inhibits the intellectual processes. Under excitement most of us cannot think connectedly or logically. With joy or fear people become "mad." Only unmoved persons keep their "presence of mind." In a sudden crisis we expect the sane act from the man who is "cool," who has not "lost his head." Now, the very hurly-burly of the crowd tends to distraction. The excitement or breathless interest that brings people together hinders consecutive thinking. Finally, the high pitch of feeling to which the crowd is gradually wrought up paralyzes the thought processes and results in a temporary imbecility. It is therefore safe to conclude that, taken herdwise, people are sillier, more blindly imitative, less sensible, and less original than they are, dispersed. Fruitful thinking is not done in the