Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/267

 ASSEMBLIES 249

mental isolation and the peculiarities of the mental indi viduality become relatively more prominent. The equal izing and levelling effect of the interaction of the individuals is reduced about in proportion to the distances which sep arate them. When they are thinly scattered about the place of assembly it is more difficult to focus their attention upon the same idea or to start a general current of feeling.

We should guard carefully against the fallacious notion that there passes from one to another and envelops the whole crowd a subtile fluid or ethereal substance. We are prone to interpret the facts in such materialistic terms. There is not the slightest reason to believe that anything of the kind takes place. Let us also put a question mark after another notion which, though plausible, is equally unsup ported by facts. It has been maintained that in the fusing of individuals into a crowd there comes into existence, by a process of &quot; creative synthesis,&quot; a new psychical entity, a &quot; social mind.&quot; L But there is no convincing reason for supposing that anything more takes place than the modifica tion and common orientation of many distinct minds through their reaction on one another. What we know takes place is the communication of ideas, feelings, mental attitudes by means of their physical expression, which we instinctively, or by habitual skill, read with lightning-like rapidity, and which modifies the activity of each communicating mind.

The crowding of people promotes the fusion in other ways. The bodily movements of all are thus limited. They can not shift their positions, change their physical attitudes, turn about, stretch out their limbs, etc. This has the effect of lessening their sense of individuality in two ways. First, the similarity of their bodily attitudes, together with their inability to vary them without difficulty, reacts upon their mental states, tending to give them unity of mental attitude. Second, the physical restraint tends to depress the self -feel ing. Sidis says : &quot; If anything gives us a strong sense of

1 See Boodin on &quot; The Existence of Social Minds,&quot; American Journal of Sociology, July, 1913.

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