eir origin in crowd
excitements and spontaneous mass movements. The very names which have
been commonly applied to them--Quakers, Shakers, Convulsionaires, Holy
Rollers--suggest not merely the derision with which they were at one
time regarded, but indicate likewise their origin in ecstatic or
expressive crowds, the crowds that _do not act_.

All great mass movements tend to display, to a greater or less extent,
the characteristics that Le Bon attributes to crowds. Speaking of the
convictions of crowds, Le Bon says:

When these convictions are closely examined, whether at epochs
marked by fervent religious faith, or by great political
upheavals such as those of the last century, it is apparent
that they always assume a peculiar form which I cannot better
define than by giving it the name of a religious
sentiment.[290]

Le Bon's definition of religion and religious sentiment will hardly find
general acceptance but it indicates at any rate his conception of the
extent to which individual personalities are involved in the excitements
that accompany mass movements.

A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity,
but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete
submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of
fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who
becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.[291]

Just as the gang may be regarded as the perpetuation and permanent form
of "the crowd that acts," so the sect, religious or political, may be
regarded as a perpetuation and permanent form of the orgiastic
(ecstatic) or expressive crowd.

"The sect," says Sighele, "is a crowd _triee_, selected, and permanent,
the crowd is a transient sect, which does not select its members. The
sect is the _chronic_ form of the crowd; the crowd is the _acute_ form
of the sect."[292] It is Sighele's conception that the crowd is an
elementary organism, from which the sect issues, like the chick from the
egg, and that all other types of social groups "may, in this same
manner, be deduced from this primitive social protoplasm." This is a
simplification which the facts hardly justify. It is true that, implicit
in the practices and the doctrines of a religious sect, there is the
kernel of a new independent culture.

5. Sects and Institutions

A sect is a religious organization that is at war with the existing
mores. It seeks t