an irreconcilable distrust for the masses and a decided leaning towards aristocracy. Le Bon asserts that in the collective

mind, the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in con

sequence their individuality, are weakened.

Martin, indeed,

points out that "the...crowd since it was regarded as an affair

of the emotions, was held to be one among many instances [by this school]

of the natural mental inferiority of the common people, and a proof of their general unfitness for self

1

government! The same authority further says:

2

I do not believe that this emotional theory is
the true explanation of crowd-behavior. It
cannot be denied that people in a crowd become
strangely excited. But it is not only in crowds
that people show emotion.

He says also that,

3

A peculiar psychic change must happen to a group
of people before they become a crowd. And as this
change is not merely a release of emotion, neither
is it the creation of a collective mind by means
of imitation and suggestion.... the crowd-mind is
a phenomenon which should best be classed with
dreams, delusions, and the various forms of
automatic behavior.

Martin's thesis, accordingly, is that crowd-phenomenon is not invariably found among a group of individuals but

that it only enters in after due stimulation.

The process

of crowd-formation as Le Bon conceives it will be treated more

fully in the following pages.

4

Acquisition- McDougall's discussion of the acquisitive instinct

I. E. D. Martin. The Behavior of Crowds, p.18.

2. Ibid, p.18.

3. Ibid, p.19.

4. See Chapter IV.

is manifest of his tendency to impute to instincts a capacity

1

2

for scheming and calculating, a capacity which can more plausibly be maintained as that of intelligence. The acquisitive instinct is the impulse to hoard or collect objects without any understanding of their remote use or value. The instinct of acquisition manifest in the love of money and wealth is already in a form fused and suffused with experience and intelIt is, however, with the "civilized" form of instincts that one will encounter in society. This instinct is responsi

ligence.

ble for present economic society and for wars waged for the

it can be easily confused with the instinct of fear. The

mental state in which one is curious because he is afraid is common experience.

Its value in civilized life is immesurable. Says McDougall,

3

This instinct....exhibits great individual
differences as regards its innate strength; and
these differences are apt to be increased during
the course of life, the impulse growing weaker
for lack of use in those in whom it is innately
weak, stronger through exercise in those in
whom it is in ately strong. In man of the
latter type it may become the main source of intel-
lectual energy and effort; to its impulse we
certainly owe most of the purely disinterested

1. McDougall, Social Psychology, pp.329-331.

2. Hobhouse. Mind in Evolution, pp.99-105.

3. McDougall. Social Psychology, p.61.

labours of the highest type of intellect.
It must be regarded as one of the principal
roots of both science and religion.

Discussion, which Bagehot points as the way to progress because it "encourages originality, places a premium on intel1 ligence and teaches toleration and independent thinking" is perhaps an outgrowth of the instinct of curiosity but certainly in a form that is only found in the higher planes of society.

Fear

McDougall classifies fear as an emotion and assigns 2 flight as its corresponding instinct. But when one relflects that flight can be due not only to fear but also to the joy of exercise or the capture of prey or that the "emotion" of fear may give rise also to concealment, shamming dead, silence 3 or loudest noise, his hypothetical assumption of a primary

instinct having its corresponding emotion appears overdrawn. Perhaps fear belongs to the list of instincts and may be considered as closely related if not identical with the instinct of self-preservation. One fears something because of its di

The

rect or ultimate consequences upon himself or upon his interest. Whether it is this instinct that gives rise to caution, deliberation or carefulness, there is no certainty but it would seem that it has a close connection with these tendencies. impulse of fear is, by the way, easy to excite and it is mostly to it that quack doctors and quack politicians direct their appeal.

1. Bagehot, Walter. The Age of Discussion, cited in Ginsberg, The Psychology of Society, p.23.

2. An Introduction to Social Psychology, pp.51.58.

3. See Supra, p. 11.