is left undemolished.

Taken all in all Martin has presented

a fair theory of the crowd; only that while he has disproved the theory that the crowd-mind exists ipso facto among individuals in an assemblage, he has demonstrated that, upon due stimulation, it may exist among a crowd as well as in an isolated individual.

1

2

Martin's theory, as I understand it, is that the peculiar mental condition called the crowd-mind is the result of a "release of repressed impulses which is made possible because certain controlling ideas have ceased to function in the immeliate social environment". He argues that social forces cause us to repress some of our impulses which, under normal mental condition, we readily recognize as anti-social. But merely repressing them does not put an end to their existence; they are bound to manifest themselves in some form or another. Martin points out that this release or manifestation of rep

ressed emotions and impulses may take two form

crowd-behavior.

dream and

In both cases the act motivated is "uncons

cious" and "unattended".

3

He defines crowd as "a device for indulging ourselves in

a kind of temporary insanity by all going crazy together".4

But an assemblage does not become a crowd "so long as the matter discussed requires close and sustained effort of attention, and the method of treatment is kept free from anything which

I. E. D. Martin. The Behavior of Crowds, Chapter I and II. 2. Ibid, pp.48-49.

3. Ibid, Chapter II.

4. Ibid, p.37.

crowd".1

savors of ritual, even the favorite dogmas of popular belief may be discussed, and though the interest be intense, it will remain critical and the audience does not become a crowd". This is his main point of difference with Le Bon whose theory is that the crowd-mind automatically and spontaneously exists in every gathering of individuals.

According to Martin's theory, then, there is a way of avoiding the emergence of a crowd-mind as well as a way of

....let the most trivial bit of bathos be ex-
pressed in rhythmical cadence and in platitud-
inous terms, and the most intelligent audience
will react as a crowd.

What we have discussed as symbolism in the following

3

chapter is what Martin regards as the only way of creating But such symbolism, he points out, can be

a crowd-mind.

evoked not only by stump speakers but by other agencies

of information as literature, and the public press, and the can exist in an assemblage as well 4

effect - crowd-thinking

as in isolated individual. That is why he says:

Our mob today is no longer merely tramping
the streets. We have it at the breakfast table,
in the subway, alike in shop and boudoir and of-
fice wherever, in fact, the newspaper goes.

Here as elsewhere, he points out the newspaper as the leader par excellence in crowd-thinking.5 5 And as the crowd

E. D. Martin. The Behavior of Crowd, p.26.

2. Ibid, p.26.

3. Chapter IV.

4. E. D. Martin. The Behavior of Crowd, p.47.

5. Ibid, p.47.