ABSTRACT
Having considered the general character of community in relation to the social individuals that constitute it, we may now proceed to examine the psychological characteristics of minor social aggregates, such as crowds, mobs, organized bodies. I will deal first with the so-called ‘psychology of the crowd’. There exists now quite a large number of works dealing with the subject, but the words of Professor Graham Wallas in his ‘Great Society’ remain true, that the whole subject requires re-statement and re-examination. In particular much confusion has arisen from the use of collective terms and from a lack of accurate classification and designation of different kinds of social aggregates. Le Bon, whose work is very widely read, uses the term crowd in a very wide sense, so that, for instance, the ‘era of crowds’ and the ‘rule of the masses’ are interchangeable terms. Physical presence is not in his view necessary to constitute a ‘psychological crowd’. The essential requisite apparently is the turning of the feelings and ideas of a number of people, in an identical direction, and the consequent formation, according to him, of a kind of unitary collective mind.
