there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild
about, when the fit is on, nothing so great but it will forget in an
hour when the fit is past."[28]

History will show us how the crowd-mind works. The medieval mind was not
given to reasoning; the medieval man attached great weight to the
utterance of authority; his religion touched chiefly the emotions. These
conditions provided a rich soil for the propagation of the crowd-mind
when, in the eleventh century, flagellation, a voluntary self-scourging,
was preached by the monks. Substituting flagellation for reciting
penitential psalms was advocated by the reformers. A scale was drawn up,
making one thousand strokes equivalent to ten psalms, or fifteen
thousand to the entire psalter. This craze spread by leaps--and crowds.
Flagellant fraternities sprang up. Priests carrying banners led through
the streets great processions reciting prayers and whipping their bloody
bodies with leathern thongs fitted with four iron points. Pope Clement
denounced this practise and several of the leaders of these processions
had to be burned at the stake before the frenzy could be uprooted.

All western and central Europe was turned into a crowd by the preaching
of the crusaders, and millions of the followers of the Prince of Peace
rushed to the Holy Land to kill the heathen. Even the children started
on a crusade against the Saracens. The mob-spirit was so strong that
home affections and persuasion could not prevail against it and
thousands of mere babes died in their attempts to reach and redeem the
Sacred Sepulchre.

In the early part of the eighteenth century the South Sea Company was
formed in England. Britain became a speculative crowd. Stock in the
South Sea Company rose from 128-1/2 points in January to 550 in May, and
scored 1,000 in July. Five million shares were sold at this premium.
Speculation ran riot. Hundreds of companies were organized. One was
formed "for a wheel of perpetual motion." Another never troubled to give
any reason at all for taking the cash of its subscribers--it merely
announced that it was organized "for a design which will hereafter be
promulgated." Owners began to sell, the mob caught the suggestion, a
panic ensued, the South Sea Company stock fell 800 points in a few days,
and more than a billion dollars evaporated in this era of frenzied
speculation.

The burning of the witches at Salem, the Klondike gold craze, and the
forty-eight people