Social Psychology
Chapter 5: Prophylactics Against Mob Mind
Edward Alsworth Ross
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Mob folk destroy social stability
IN his " Ninety-Three " Victor Hugo describes a mounted cannon broken loose in the hold of a vessel on the high seas. With every lurch the huge gun rolls helplessly about, wrecking the interior, and threatening to send the ship to the bottom with a hole through her side. This pictures the situation of the society with a large number of mob folk in it, making a wild lunge, now here, now there, as events call up this feeling or that. In a community the prevalence of such a type leads to all manner of folly - Millerism, "holy rolling," vegetarianism, wonderworking shrines, divine healers, table-tipping séances, frenzied religious revivals, land booms, speculations and panics, the Belgian hare mania, and the walking craze, ending in people crowding to watch rival female pedestrians try to walk one thousand quarter miles in one thousand consecutive quarter hours! In a nation it leads to political "tidal waves" producing a dangerous rhythm in the conduct of public affairs, to a costly wavering in dealing with money or tariff, to a fickle sentimental foreign policy, and to war fevers tending, perhaps, to national humiliation and loss of prestige.
Since it is the concern of organized society to lessen its burden of mob folk, let us consider the various conditions that favor the growth of strong, robust individualities proof against mental contagion.
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Education for criticism
I. Higher Education. - Up to a certain point education fosters mob mind by opening the mind to novel ideas before the critical faculty has been strengthened. The power to value ideas lagging far behind the power to absorb them, the individual, left rudderless, is obliged to drift with the current. Now, a college education is not simply four more high-school years. It ought to equip the student with standards and tests of objective truth. It ought to require him to dig down past the walls of some science to the bed-rock it rests on, so that he may learn in what mortar and by what plumb-line the stones of that science have been laid. Once he has been obliged to lay one little stone in the top course of a single turret of his science, he will ever after appreciate the difference between science and humbug, truth and opinion, scholarship and quackery, faddism and progress. When there is, in every community, a handful of well-ballasted college men and women, how often will be stayed the sweep of the popular delusion - rain making, Second Coming, spiritualism, absent treatment, and the like!
How to become crank proof
2. Sound Knowledge of Body, Mind, and Society. Hygiene, psychology, and sociology can ward off more folly than astronomy, physics, or geology. For body, mind, and society are the storm-centres of faddism, the breeding grounds of manias. To be folly-proof here is to be fortified against nine-tenths of the higher foolishness. The reason why cranks haunt these three topics is that they are of supreme human interest. The prizes that can be held out for the adoption of the Kneipp cure, theosophy, or some social Utopia are the most-desired things in the world -immunity from disease, from sin, and from poverty.
Steadying influence of the classic
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3. Familiarity with that which is Classic. - One ought to know the intellectual kings of the human race - job, Solomon, Aeschylus. Plato, Cervantes, Bacon, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Swift, Goethe, Burns. The first-rank minds that for centuries have been able to impress the generations with their universal appeal are all choice, sane spirits, able to rescue one from the sway of the sensational and ephemeral. Excellent are the winnowings of time. "Whenever I am urged to read a new book," says the sage, "I re-read an old one." Moreover, acquaintance with the very best in thought and literature helps one justly to rate the things that people run after, and to ignore the " Lo here!" " Lo there ! " of the false prophets.
Ozone from the peaks
4. The Influence of Sane Teachers. - A university is not, as some insist, "a collection of books." Books are of all dates and values, and hence indiscriminate, omnivorous reading is no furnisher of sound ideas. Guidance by the specialist is needful. President Garfield's ideal of a college, "Mark Hopkins on the other end of a log," recognizes the educative value of contact with a mastermind. The greatest teachers -Hopkins, Agassiz, McCosh, Jowett, Thomas Hill Green-are just those who, by throwing the student on his own resources, bring to ripeness his individuality. The genuine teacher wants fellows, not disciples, and his happiest hour is when he finds that the cub he has trained is now able to hold him at bay.
Shun the dithyrambic press
5. Avoidance of the Sensational Newspaper. - The howling dervishes of journalism propagate crazes and fads by distorting the significance of the moment. The valuable new is, in fact, but a slender fringe along the vast expanse of the valuable old. It is a hundred to one
(86) that the old classic is worth more than " the book of the month." Old wit, condensed into homely maxims about cleanliness, avoiding draughts, keeping the feet warm and the head cool, save a thousand lives where the new wrinkles in medicine or surgery -which make newspaper " copy " - save a dozen. Now, this static side of life is ignored by the yellow press. By exaggerating the news it presents things in a false perspective. It can capture the public's pennies by exploiting the unique, the startling, even the imaginary. Therefore, to keep readers on the tiptoe of expectation, it promises something extraordinary which is always just on the eve of happening, -but doesn't happen! The Czar is about to be blown up, the Kaiser is just going mad, a cure for consumption is ready to be given to humanity, the flying machine is soon to displace the bicycle, or the manufacture of weather is about to begin! So the jaded nerves are kept on the perpetual thrill, and, looking always for something wonderful to turn up, the deluded reader goes on and on like a donkey reaching for the sheaf of oats tied to the end of his wagon pole. Moreover, the constant flitting from topic to topic brings upon the confirmed newspaper reader what we may call paragraphesis, i.e., inability to hold the mind on a subject for any length of time. Reading so inimical to poise, self-control, and mental concentration as the sensational newspaper should be cut down to a minimum.
Sport trains to inhibition
6. Sports. - Physical health in itself makes for intellectual self-possession. Frequently sickness heightens suggestibility, which may in part account for the "cures" at wonder-working shrines, and the successes of magnetic healers. The will made on a sick-bed lies under the just
(87) suspicion of "undue influence," in case it favors those who had access to the testator at the time. There is a peculiar value, however, in participation in sports and athletic contests, for these produce moral as well as physical tone. The effort not to "break training," the overruling of the impulse to give up at moments of weariness or discouragement, the subordination of one's playing to the team work that gives another man the showy plays that win applause, the keeping of one's temper under hard knocks, modest self-restraint in victory, and, above all, the "game" spirit in defeat, i.e., the mastery of the impulse to whine or cry "unfair," or show chagrin, - these triumphs of the will over impulse undoubtedly conduce to the triumph of the will over suggestion. If "the battle-fields of England are"won on the football fields of Eton and Rugby," it is because the coolness of the British officer in a Dervish charge or an Afghan rush is the same imperturbability that the seasoned football player attains when, amid the cheers of excited thousands, he thinks quickly and decides unerringly what is to be done.
Stability of the country bred
7. Country Life. - The city overwhelms the mind with a myriad of impressions which fray the nerves and weaken the power of concentration. One comes at last not to hear the din or see the street signs but, nevertheless, the subconscious is noting them and the store of nervous energy is being depleted. City-bred populations are liable to be hysterical, and to be hysterical is to be suggestible. Well does Emerson [1] remark, "A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all, the professions, who teams it , farms it, peddles, keeps a
(88) school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls." In cities, with cuts and fills and asphalt, the human will visibly dominates the physical environment, and men come readily to the cardinal assumption of the mob, that nothing can stand against numbers. In the country painful contact with the unyielding laws of nature inspires reasonableness and caution. The mob's sense of invincibility can hardly spring up among people under the unremitting necessity of adapting their efforts to huge implacable forces. In the city some ways of living foster suggestibility, while others check it. It is bad for people to be crowded into barrack-like tenement houses, for such massing inspires the cheese-mite consciousness, makes the self count for nothing. The best correctives for urban propinquity are broad streets, numerous parks, and the individual domicile with a little space about it; for these preserve the selfhood of the family group and of the individual.
Fireside or café
8. Familism. - Close relations to a few people - as in the well-knit family - joined to a vivid sense of obligation to the community, seem to be more favorable to stable character than the loose touch-and-go associations of general intercourse. The Northern peoples, obliged by climate to centre their lives in the circle about the fireside, are more resistant to popular currents than the Southern peoples, passing their leisure in the buzz of the street, the plaza, and the foyer. Worshippers of the spirit of the hearth, they are more aloof from their fellows, slower therefore to merge with them or be swept from their moorings by them. It seems to be communion by
(89) the fireside rather than communion in the public resort that gives individuality long bracing roots. The withdrawn social self, although it lacks breadth, gains in depth, and there is nothing to show that the talkative, sociable, impressionable Latin will sacrifice himself more readily for the public weal than the hedged, reserved Englishman.
Property is a tether peg hindering stampede
9. Ownership of Property. - The protection and care of a piece of property makes for thoughtfulness and steadiness, individualizes. One recipe for building character in a boy is to give him a plot and let him keep what he can raise on it, give him a colt and let him have its growth in value. This property, so responsive to care or to neglect, is a standing challenge to his self-control. It admonishes him to look ahead, to plan, to sacrifice, to overrule his impulses to idle, procrastinate, or day-dream. The city parent, having nothing of this sort he can make over to his boy, is puzzled how he shall make a man of him.
A wide diffusion of land ownership has long been recognized as fostering a stable and conservative political habit. "The magic of property turns sand into gold," said Arthur Young. It also turns hinds into men. An industrial or mining population, unsteadied by ownership, is altogether more easily drawn into impulsive mass action than a proprietary farming population. The man owns his home, but in a sense his home owns him, checking his rash impulses, holding him out of the human whirlpool, ever saying inaudibly, " Heed me, care for me, or you lose me 1" With the growth of great corporation-held properties in which the individual has only a fractional ownership, property ceases to contribute much to the individualizing of persons. Its role is probably on the wane.
Voluntary association disciplines the impulses
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10. Participation in Voluntary Association. - The acknowledged political capacity of the English has been attributed to the experience of the masses in their popular religious organizations, i.e., the dissenting churches. Participation in the management of a society develops acquaintance with the rules of discussion, tolerance of opponents, love of order, and readiness to abide by the will of the majority. Above all, it teaches people to rate the windbag, the ranter, or the sophist at his true worth, and to value the less showy qualities of the man of judgment and reason. None have a greater contempt for mob mind and for the wild and whirling words of the stampeder than those who have long worked in voluntary associations. Town-meetings, religious societies, fraternal organizations, labor-unions, granges, women's clubs, and similar societies, by diffusing the qualities for deliberative association, diminish the amount of inflammable material in the community.
Let stability be honored
11. Intellectual Self-possession as an Ideal. -The types of character held up to youth as models should be strong in point of self-control. Self-consistency, tranquillity, balance, robust independence, should be recognized as rare and precious qualities worthy of all honor and praise. Let fad and craze be made ridiculous. Honor virile will more than the commoner excellences of heart and head. Writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman make intellectual individualism attractive by showing that "Bear ye one another's burdens" does not mean "Share ye one another's delusions."
Pride vs. love as moral mainspring
12. Prideful Morality. - There are two bases of spontaneous right doing, neighbor love and self-respect. Right conduct prompted by the sense of self-respect and
(91) honor seems to preserve selfhood more than if it springs from the sense of a common life with one's fellows. Powerful individualities are more apt to be inspired to goodness by self-respect than by brotherly affection. Haughty nobles develop among themselves a morality that has its mainspring in honor, and there is no question that the basis of morality in modern society is more akin to the pride of the mediaeval castle than to the humility of the mediaeval monastery.[2] Sympathy and fraternalism must, of course, constitute the emotional background to the moral life; but in the advance of individualization the true line is to awaken a sense of worth and dignity in the common man, and to hinge his social and civic duties on self-respect rather than on the spirit of the hive.
Flee yellow religion
13. Vital Religion. -- A religion for life and work is more individualizing than a contemplative devotional one, and a religion that means the domination of one's life by some principle of responsibility or some ideal of character braces the soul more than an emotional religion that charms the heart to goodness by appeals and examples. Introspective devotionalism. is enervating. The remarks of Coe [3] help us realize that there is a yellow religion to contend with as well as a yellow journalism.
" To take feeling out of religion would be as absurd as to take parental or conjugal fondness out of the family. Yet it is not possible to maintain the family solely, or even chiefly, by reliance upon feelings. . . . Religion ought to rest upon and call into exercise all the faculties of the mind, and no superior sanctity should be ascribed to persons whose temperamental make-up is sentimental rather
(92) than choleric. . . . Preserve the equilibrium between sensibility and will. When this equilibrium is lost, in rushes a tide of religious vagaries. At a camp-meeting in western New York a number of Years ago a brother testified somewhat as follows: 'Brethren, I feel -I feel - I feel - I feel that I feel - I can't tell you how I feel, but 0 I feel! I feel !'
" Says a prominent pastor: 'There are in my church two distinct classes of members. On the one hand, there is a group of substantial persons of high character and agreeable conduct who support the enterprises of the church with their money, but are rarely or never seen at prayer-meeting. One never sees them prostrated before God in earnest prayer. If a sinner should come weeping to the altar, they would not gather around to pray for him. If he should rise shouting, they would shake hands with him and tell him they were glad he had started, but that is all. On the other hand, there is a class of members who can be relied upon to be present at the prayermeeting, who would rush to the altar to pray with the sinner, and who, if he should rise shouting, would scarcely know whether they were in the body or out of the body. Nevertheless, these persons are without influence in spite of their unction. They are flighty and changeable in their moods, lack organization, and their judgment is not to be trusted. If I were to go on a long journey, I would not choose them for companions, but rather persons of the former description. And if I were to go sailing in a small boat, I would not take one of these prayer-meeting members with me, lest he should have a spell of some sort and capsize the boat."'
SUMMARY
No education is complete that fails to provide one with truthfilters.
Against the folly of craze and fad one is forearmed who possesses exact knowledge of the matter in question.
No work becomes an acknowledged classic which is not wholesome in tone and universal in appeal. The foundations of one's culture should therefore be laid in the classics.
By exaggerating everything in the foreground, the sensational newspaper predisposes the reader to craze and fad.
A reasonable participation in wholesome competitive sports involving team work strengthens self-control.
It is difficult to build a stable individuality in the city-bred.
Self-sufficing home-life, although it narrows the sympathies, favors depth of character.
The responsibilities of ownership are steadying.
The appeal to self-respect and honor individualizes.
A purely emotional religion leads to flabbiness.
EXERCISES
1. Distinguish between suggestibility and sociality.
2. How does the experience of responsibility affect one's responsiveness to mental contagion? Why?
3. Compare manual training with literary studies as a developer of objectivity and self-control.
4. What are the reactions upon character of boys' clubs, playground self-government, the George junior Republic, etc. ?
5. Compare business with industry in its effect on one's power to resist suggestion.
6. What special reason is there why in the United States mental epidemic has shown itself more in the rural than in the urban population ?
7. Study the religious currents of the Reformation epoch, and find by what means certain sects were able to escape the follies, fanaticisms, and crazes of the time and become the parents of the great Protestant denominations.
