suggestion
is to a high degree effective in establishing and maintaining. The
aggressiveness of the single elements of the mass arrives in this at
their high point at one and the same time, and with complete spiritual
unanimity the mass can now act as _one_ man; it moves, then, like one
enormous social body, which unites in itself the thoughts and feelings
of all by the very fact that there is a temper of mind common to all.
Easily, however, as the crowd is to excite to the highest degrees of
activity, as quickly--indeed, much more quickly--does it allow itself,
as we have already seen, to be dispersed by a panic. Here too the panic
rests entirely on suggestion, contra-suggestion, and the instinct of
imitation, not on logic and conviction. Automatism, not intelligence, is
the moving factor therein.

Other, but quite generally favorable, conditions for suggestions are
universally at hand in the human society, whose individual members in
contrast to the crowd are physically separated from each other but stand
in a spiritual alliance to each other. Here obviously those preliminary
conditions for the dissemination of psychical infections are lacking as
they exist in the crowd, and the instruments of the voice, of mimicry,
of gestures, which often fire the passions with lightning rapidity, are
not allowed to assert themselves. There exists much rather a certain
spiritual cohesion on the ground perhaps of common impressions
(theatrical representations), a similar direction of thoughts (articles
in periodicals, etc.). These conditions are quite sufficient to prepare
the foundation on which similar feelings propagate themselves from
individual to individual by the method of suggestion and
auto-suggestion, and similar decisions for many are matured.

Things occur here more slowly, more peacefully, without those passionate
outbreaks to which the crowd is subjected; but this slow infection
establishes itself all the more surely in the feelings, while the
infection of the crowd often only continues for a time until the latter
is broken up.

Moreover, such contagious examples in the public do not usually lead to
such unexpected movements as they easily induce in the crowd. But here,
too, the infection frequently acts in defiance of a man's sound
intelligence; complete points of view are accepted upon trust and faith,
without further discussion, and frequently immature resolutions are
formed. On the boards representing the stage