ms is generally slowly achieved. At their inception and during the
early stages of their development there must needs be many crude and
tentative statements and many rhetorical exaggerations. It is safe to
assert as a rule that at no stage of its history can a great movement
of the masses be fully understood and fairly interpreted by a study of
its formal statements and authentic expositions only. These must be
supplemented by a careful study of the psychology of the men and women
whose ideals and yearnings these statements and expositions aim to
represent. It is not enough to know and comprehend the creed: it is
essential that we also know and comprehend the spiritual factors, the
discontent, the hopes, the fears, the inarticulate visionings of the
human units in the movement. This is of greater importance in the
initial stages than later, when the articulation of the soul of the
movement has become more certain and clear.

No one who has attended many bolshevist meetings or is acquainted with
many of the individuals to whom bolshevism makes a strong appeal will
seriously question the statement that an impressively large number of
those who profess to be Bolshevists present a striking likeness to
extreme religious zealots, not only in the manner of manifesting their
enthusiasm, but also in their methods of exposition and argument. Just
as in religious hysteria a single text becomes a whole creed to the
exclusion of every other text, and instead of being itself subject to
rational tests is made the sole test of the rationality of everything
else, so in the case of the average Bolshevist of this type a single
phrase received into the mind in a spasm of emotion, never tested by the
usual criteria of reason, becomes not only the very essence of truth but
also the standard by which the truth or untruth of everything else must
be determined. Most of the preachers who become pro-Bolshevists are of
this type.

People who possess minds thus affected are generally capable of, and
frequently indulge in, the strictest logical deduction and analysis.
Sometimes they acquire the reputation of being exceptionally brilliant
thinkers because of this power. But the fact is that their initial
ideas, upon which everything is pivoted, are derived emotionally and are
not the results of a deliberate weighing of available evidence. The
initial movement is one of feeling, of emotional impulse. The conviction
thereby created is so strong and so