forms of automatic behavior. The controlling ideas of the crowd are the result neither of reflection nor of "suggestion," but are akin to what, as we shall see later, the psychoanalysts term "complexes." The crowd-self—if I may speak of it in this way—is analogous in many respects to "compulsion neurosis," "somnambulism," or "paranoiac episode." Crowd ideas are "fixations"; they are always symbolic; they are always related to something repressed in the unconscious. They are what Doctor Adler would call "fictitious guiding lines."

There is a sense in which all our thinking consists of symbol and fiction. The laws, measurements, and formulas of science are all as it were "shorthand devices"—instruments for relating ourselves to reality, rather than copies of the real. The "truth" of these working ideas is demonstrated in the satisfactoriness of the results to which they lead us. If by means of them we arrive at desired and desirable adaptations to and within our environment, we say they are verified. If, however, no such verification is reached, or the result reached flatly contradicts our hypothesis, the sane thinker holds his conclusions in abeyance, revises his theories, or candidly gives them up and clings to the real as empirically known.

Suppose now that a certain hypothesis, or "fiction," instead of being an instrument for dealing with external reality, is unconsciously designed as a refuge from the real. Suppose it is a symbolic compromise among conflicting desires in the individuals unconscious of which he cannot rid himself. Suppose it is a disguised expression of motives which the individual as a civilized being cannot admit to his own consciousness. Suppose it is a fiction necessary to keep up ones ego consciousness or self-appreciative feeling without which either he or his world would instantly become valueless. In these latter cases the fiction is not and cannot be, without outside help, modified by the reality of experience. The complex of ideas becomes a closed system, a world in and of itself. Conflicting facts of experience are discounted and denied by all the cunning of an insatiable, unconscious will. The fiction then gets itself substituted for the true facts of experience; the individual has "lost the function of the real." He no longer admits its disturbing elements as correctives. He has become mentally unadjusted—pathological.

Most healthy people doubtless would on analysis reveal themselves as nourishing fictions of this sort, more or less innocent in their effects. It is possible that it is by means of such things that the values of living are maintained for us all. But with the healthy these fictions either hover about the periphery of our known world as shadowy and elusive inhabitants of the inaccessible, or else they are socially acceptable as religious convention, race pride, ethical values, personal ambition, class honor, etc. The fact that so much of the ground of our valuations, at least so far as these affect our self-appreciation, is explicable by psychologists as "pathological" in origin need not startle us. William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience, you will remember, took the ground that in judging of matters of this kind, it is not so much by their origins—even admitting the pathological as a cause—but by their fruits that we shall know them. There are "fictions" which are neither innocent nor socially acceptable in their effects on life and character. Many of our crowd-phenomena belong, like paranoia, to this last class.

As I shall try to show later, the common confusion of the crowd with "society" is an error. The crowd is a social phenomenon only in the sense that it affects a number of persons at the same time. As I have indicated, people may be highly social without becoming a crowd. They may meet, mingle, associate in all sorts of ways, and organize and co-operate for the sake of common ends—in fact, the greater part of our social life might normally have nothing in common with crowd-behavior. Crowd-behavior is pseudo-social—if social organizations be regarded as a means to the achievement of realizable goods. The phenomena which we call the crowd-mind, instead of being the outgrowth of the directly social, are social only in the sense that all mental life has social significance; they are rather the result of forces hidden in the personal and unconscious psyche of the members of the crowd, forces which are merely released by social gatherings of a certain sort.

Let us notice what happens in a public meeting as it develops into a crowd, and see if we can trace some of the steps of the process. Picture a large meeting-hall, fairly well filled with people. Notice first of all what sort of interest it is which as a rule will most easily bring an assemblage of people together. It need not necessarily be a matter of great importance, but it must be something which catches and challenges attention without great effort. It is most commonly, therefore, an issue of some sort. I have seen efforts made in New York to hold mass meetings to discuss affairs of the very greatest importance, and I have noted the fact that such efforts usually fail to get out more than a handful of specially interested persons, no matter how well advertised, if the subject to be considered happens not to be of a controversial nature. I call especial attention to this fact because later we shall see that it is this element of conflict, directly or indirectly, which plays an overwhelming part in the psychology of every crowd.

It is the element of contest which makes baseball so popular. A debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture. One of the secrets of the large attendance of the forum is the fact that discussion—"talking back"—is permitted and encouraged. The evangelist Sunday undoubtedly owes the great attendance at his meetings in no small degree to the fact that he is regularly expected to abuse some one.

If the matter to be considered is one about which there is keen partisan feeling and popular resentment—if it lends itself to the spectacular personal achievement of one whose name is known, especially in the face of opposition or difficulties—or if the occasion permits of resolutions of protest, of the airing of wrongs, of denouncing abuse of some kind, or of casting statements of external principles in the teeth of "enemies of humanity," then, however trivial the occasion, we may count on it that our assembly will be well attended. Now let us watch the proceedings.

The next thing in importance is the speaker. Preferably he should be an "old war horse," a victor in many battles, and this for a psychological reason which we shall soon examine. Whoever he is, every speaker with any skill knows just when this state of mind which we call "crowd" begins to appear. My work has provided me with rather unusual opportunities for observing this sort of thing. As a regular lecturer and also as director of the forum which meets three nights a week in the great hall of Cooper Union, I have found that the intellectual interest, however intense, and the development of the crowd-spirit are accompanied by wholly different mental processes. Let me add in passing that the audiences which gather at Cooper Union are, on the whole, the most alert, sophisticated, and reflective that I have ever known. I doubt if in any large popular assembly in America general discussion is carried on with such habitual seriousness. When on rare occasions the spirit of the crowd begins to manifest itself—and one can always detect its beginnings before the audience is consciously aware of it—I have noticed that discussion instantly ceases and people begin merely to repeat their creeds and hurl