up to the point where some sudden sound, the
firing of a pistol or a flash of lightning, plunges the herd into a wild
stampede.

Milling in the herd is a visible image of what goes on in subtler and
less obvious ways in human societies. Alarms or discomforts frequently
provoke social unrest. The very expression of this unrest tends to
magnify it. The situation is a vicious circle. Every attempt to deal
with it merely serves to aggravate it. Such a vicious circle we
witnessed in our history from 1830 to 1861, when every attempt to deal
with slavery served only to bring the inevitable conflict between the
states nearer. Finally there transpired what had for twenty years been
visibly preparing and the war broke.

Tolstoi in his great historical romance, _War and Peace_, describes, in
a manner which no historian has equaled, the events that led up to the
Franco-Russian War of 1812, and particularly the manner in which
Napoleon, in spite of his efforts to avoid it, was driven by social
forces over which he had no control to declare war on Russia, and so
bring about his own downfall.

The condition under which France was forced by Bismarck to declare war
on Prussia in 1870, and the circumstances under which Austria declared
war on Serbia in 1914 and so brought on the world-war, exhibit the same
fatal circle. In both cases, given the situation, the preparations that
had been made, the resolutions formed and the agreements entered into,
it seems clear that after a certain point had been reached every move
was forced.

This is the most fundamental and elementary form of control. It is the
control exercised by the mere play of elemental forces. These forces
may, to a certain extent, be manipulated, as is true of other natural
forces; but within certain limits, human nature being what it is, the
issue is fatally determined, just as, given the circumstances and the
nature of cattle, a stampede is inevitable. Historical crises are
invariably created by processes which, looked at abstractly, are very
much like milling in a herd. The vicious circle is the so-called
"psychological factor" in financial depressions and panics and is,
indeed, a factor in all collective action.

The effect of this circular form of interaction is to increase the
tensions in the group and, by creating a state of expectancy, to
mobilize its members for collective action. It is like the attention in
the individual: it is the way in which the group prepa