the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere
that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which
may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This
explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French
Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary
circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous
magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of
quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile
servants.

It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of
organization of crowds, we shall concern ourselves more especially with
such crowds as have attained to the phase of complete organization. In
this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what they
invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organization that
certain new and special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying
and dominant character of the race; then takes place that turning,
already alluded to, of all the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity
in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too,
that what I have called above the psychological law of the mental unity
of crowds comes into play.

The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the
following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or
unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or
their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a
crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes
them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which
each individual of them would feel, think, and act, were he in a state
of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come
into being or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case
of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional
being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined,
exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their
reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from
these possessed by each of the cells singly.

Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished to find coming from the
pen of so acute a philosopher as Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate which
constitutes a crowd there is in no sort a summing-up of or an average
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