uals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all
the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their
conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless
transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The
gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I
will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable,
a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected to the
law of the mental unity of crowds.

It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals
finding themselves accidentally side by side that they acquire the
character of an organized crowd. A thousand individuals accidentally
gathered in a public place without any determined object in no way
constitute a crowd, from the psychological point of view. To acquire the
special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of
certain predisposing causes, of which we shall have to determine the
nature.

The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings
and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary
characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always
involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one
spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments,
and under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example,
as a great national event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd.
It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them
together for their acts at once to assume the characteristics peculiar
to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men might
constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of
hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an
entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become
a crowd under the action of certain influences.

It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because
its organization varies not only according to race and composition but
also according to the nature and intensity of the exciting causes to
which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty, however, presents
itself in the psychological study of an individual. It is only in novels
that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an
unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that
creates