oint after point. They are carried out. They
combine with what existed already. Every new step increases the number
of points upon which other minds may seize. It seems to be by this
process that great inventions are produced. Knowledge has been won and
extended by it. It seems as if the crowd had a mystic power in it
greater than the sum of the powers of its members. It is sufficient,
however, to explain this, to notice that there is a cooperation and
constant suggestion which is highly productive when it operates in a
crowd, because it draws out latent power, concentrates what would
otherwise be scattered, verifies and corrects what has been taken up,
eliminates error, and constructs by combination. Hence the gain from the
collective operation is fully accounted for, and the theories of
_Voelkerpsychologie_ are to be rejected as superfluous. Out of the
process which has been described have come the folkways during the whole
history of civilization.

The phenomena of suggestion and suggestibility demand some attention
because the members of a group are continually affecting each other by
them, and great mass phenomena very often are to be explained by them.

+24. Suggestion; suggestibility.+ What has been called the psychology of
crowds consists of certain phenomena of suggestion. A number of persons
assembled together, especially if they are enthused by the same
sentiment or stimulated by the same interest, transmit impulses to each
other with the result that all the impulses are increased in a very high
ratio. In other words, it is an undisputed fact that all mental states
and emotions are greatly increased in force by transmission from man to
man, especially if they are attended by a sense of the concurrence and
cooperation of a great number who have a common sentiment or interest.
"The element of psychic coercion to which our thought process is subject
is the characteristic of the operations which we call suggestive."[33]
What we have done or heard occupies our minds so that we cannot turn
from it to something else. The consensus of a number promises triumph
for the impulse, whatever it is. _Ca ira._ There is a thrill of
enthusiasm in the sense of moving with a great number. There is no
deliberation or reason. Therefore a crowd may do things which are either
better or worse than what individuals in it would do. Cases of lynching
show how a crowd can do things which it is extremely improbable that the
individuals w