is by no means limited to the ignorant. “Any class,” he says, “may behave and think as a crowd—in fact, it usually does so in so far as its class interests are concerned.” Neither is the crowd-mind to be found only when there is a physical agglomeration of people. This fact is important to an understanding of the problems of the public relations counsel, because he must bear in mind always that the readers of advertisements, the recipients of letters, the solitary listener at a radio speech, the reader of the morning newspapers are mysteriously part of the crowd-mind.
When Bergson came to America about a decade ago, men and women flocked to his classes, both the French and the English sessions. It was obvious to the observer that numbers of disciples who conscientiously attended the full course of lectures understood almost nothing of what was being said. Their behavior was an instance of the crowd-mind.
Everybody read “Main Street.” Each reader in his own study tried to react as a crowd-mind. They felt as they thought they ought to.
Initiation scandals, where the crowd-mind has created a brutality not possible to individuals, take place not only in brotherhoods among what Mr. Martin calls “the lower classes,” but also among well-bred college youths and the fraternal orders of successful business and professional men. A more specific instance is the football game, with its manifestations of the crowd-mind among a selected group of individuals. The Ku Klux Klan has numbered among its violent supporters some of the “best” families of the affected localities.
The crowd is a state of mind which permeates society and its individuals at almost all times. What becomes articulate in times of stress under great excitement is present in the mind of the individual at most times and explains in part why popular opinion is so positive and so intolerant of contrary points of view. The college professor in his study on a peaceful summer day is just as likely to be reacting as a unit of a crowd-mind, as any member of a lynching party in Texas or Georgia.