Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/259

 ASSEMBLIES 241

(2) The secondary stage is marked off from the primary by no hard and fast lines ; but is characterized by the low ered individuality and the increased mental fusion of the personal units composing the assembly. The intellectual activity of each is less independent and autonomous, is more limited by a common emotional state into which all have been brought. Emotion has a very important in fluence upon the activity of the intellect. Up to a certain point it stimulates intellectual action, and beyond that point hinders it more and more ; but whether stimulating, as in its lower degrees, or inhibitive, as in its higher intensities, emotion is always directive of whatever intellectual ac tivities are going on; because feeling defines, if it does not determine, the line of interest, and it is interest which en gages the intellect. Consequently in a gathering in which common feeling of considerable strength has been developed the individuals are partly blended into a psychical mass in which the one pervasive emotion intensifies the conscious ness of unity and orients the intellects of all in a given direction. The tendency to individualistic thinking, i.e., thinking independent of, or diverse from, that of the as sembly as a whole, is to a large extent inhibited. Mark that it is the tendency to diverse thinking that is inhibited ; the individual is not conscious of the limitation which is upon him. In so far as he is fused with the others he simply does not tend to think differently from the mass ; or, to state it in different words, to the extent to which his indi viduality has been merged he feels no impulse to assert his mental independence. He is not aware that his mental au tonomy is curtailed.

But in this stage the individuality of the units has not wholly disappeared. The fusion is partial only ; a measure of independence remains to the average person. He is more suggestible; is more thoroughly under the influence of the speaker ; he is less able to recollect and utilize all the resources of his intellect by bringing them to bear upon what is said or proposed. He is less critical, more easily con-

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