is common to
every member of the group. Men in a state of panic, on the other hand,
although equally under the influence of the mass excitement, act not
corporately but individually, each individual wildly seeking to save his
own skin. Men in a state of panic have like purposes but no common
purpose. If the "organized crowd," "the psychological crowd," is a
society "in being," the panic and the stampede is a society "in
dissolution."

Durkheim does not use these illustrations nor does he express himself in
these terms. The conception of the "organized" or "psychological" crowd
is not his, but Le Bon's. The fact is that Durkheim does not think of a
society as a mere sum of particulars. Neither does he think of the
sentiments nor the opinions which dominate the social group as private
and subjective. When individuals come together _under certain
circumstances_, the opinions and sentiments which they held as
individuals are modified and changed under the influence of the new
contacts. Out of the fermentation which association breeds, a new
something (_autre chose_) is produced, an opinion and sentiment, in
other words, that is not the sum of, and not like, the sentiments and
opinions of the individuals from which it is derived. This new sentiment
and opinion is public, and social, and the evidence of this is the fact
that it imposes itself upon the individuals concerned as something more
or less external to them. They feel it either as an inspiration, a sense
of personal release and expansion, or as an obligation, a pressure and
an inhibition. The characteristic social phenomenon is just this control
by the group as a whole of the individuals that compose it. This fact of
control, then, is the fundamental social fact.

Now society also gives the sensation of a perpetual dependence.
Since it has a nature which is peculiar to itself and different
from our individual nature, it pursues ends which are likewise
special to it; but, as it cannot attain them except through our
intermediacy; it imperiously demands our aid. It requires that,
forgetful of our own interests, we make ourselves its
servitors, and it submits us to every sort of inconvenience,
privation, and sacrifice, without which social life would be
impossible. It is because of this that at every instant we are
obliged to submit ourselves to rules of conduct and of thought
which we have neither made nor desired,