truck between its elements. What really takes place is a combination
followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry
certain elements, when brought into contact--bases and acids, for
example--combine to form a new body possessing properties quite
different from those of the bodies that have served to form it.

It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a crowd
differs from the isolated individual, but it is less easy to discover
the causes of this difference. To obtain, at any rate, a glimpse of them
it is necessary in the first place to call to mind the truth established
by modern psychology that unconscious phenomena play an altogether
preponderating part not only in organic life but also in the operations
of the intelligence. The conscious life of the mind is of small
importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most subtle
analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in discovering
more than a very small number of the unconscious motives that determine
his conduct.

The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives
which escape our observation. It is more especially with respect to
those unconscious elements that all the individuals belonging to it
resemble each other, while it is principally in respect to the conscious
elements of their character--the fruit of education, and yet more of
exceptional hereditary conditions--that they differ from each other. Men
most unlike in the matter of their intelligence possess instincts,
passions, and feelings that are very similar. In the case of everything
that belongs to the realm of sentiment--religion, politics, morality,
the affections and antipathies, etc.--the most eminent men seldom
surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the
intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great
mathematician and his bootmaker, but from the point of view of character
the difference is most often slight or nonexistent.

It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces
of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority of the normal
individuals of a race in much the same degree, it is precisely these
qualities that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind
the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their
individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the
homogeneous, and the unconscious qualitie