be one of a crowd in our opinions and beliefs, as well as in our
persons. There is hardly anything more painful than the
sense of being utterly alone in one's opinions. Even the
extreme dissenter from the accustomed ways of thinking and
feeling of the majority is associated with or pictures some
little group which agrees with him. And, if we cannot find
contemporaries to share our extreme opinions, we at least
imagine some ideal group now or in posterity to share it with
us.

GREGARIOUSNESS IN HABITS OF ACTION. But if men tend to
think in groups they tend more emphatically still to act in
groups, to be acutely uncomfortable when acting in a fashion
different from that customary among the majority of their
fellows. Habits of action are more deep-seated physiologically
than habits of thought (which is one reason why our theories
are so often in advance of our practice). People will accede
intellectually to new ideas which they would not and could
not practice, the mind being, as it were, more convertible
than the emotions. Even in minor matters, in dress, speech,
and manners, we like to do the accustomed thing. It is more
painful for most people to use the wrong fork at dinner, or
to be dressed in a business suit where everyone else is in
evening clothes, than to commit a fallacy, or to act upon
prejudices rather than upon logical conclusions.

The individual's instinctive desire to be identical in action
with other members of his group, from the collars and clothes
he wears to the way he brings up his children, is greatly
reinforced by the punishment meted out to those who differ from
the majority. This may vary from ridicule, as in the case of
the laughter that greets the poet's proverbial long hair and
flowing tie, the foreigner's accent, or a straw hat in April, to
the confinement and privation that are the penalties for any
marked infringement of the accepted modes of life. Even
when the punishments are slight, they are effective. A man
who has no moral or religious scruples with reference to
gambling on any day of the week will, to avoid the social ostracism
of his neighbors, refrain from playing cards on his front porch
on Sunday. For no other reason than to avoid being consciously
different, many a man will not wear cool white
clothes on a hot day in his office who will wear them on a cool
evening at the seashore.

THE EFFECT OF GREGARIOUSNESS ON INNOVATION. A strong
instinctive tendency to community of a