MAN THE GREGARIOUS.*
THE original of society, maintains Mr. Shandy in the famous passage, was mcrely conjugal, and consisted in nothing more than the getting to ether of a man and a woman, supplomented by a bull If man were indeed originally a solitary and not a herd creature, how did the phenomenon of crowds and communities of men first arise ? Pretty rertainly from the need of co-operative action in war and the chase, and badly loss surely from the need of co-operative emotion in religion. Primitive regions have generally had for one of their chief elements the enthusiasm and sef-hypnotism which a crowd engendets. The rites of Isis and Osiris, of Juggernaut, of Obi, of Dionysus, of Totem beast and bird, and of many a dreadful god whose name never passes the lips of a worshipper—all these are crowd religions. And it was from such orgies of communism that man, with his dual nature. turned to the individualism of philosophy. A Socrates seeks truth and virtue, not the opinion of the many. Just before the war intellectual religious life showed a curious tendency to turn from rationalism to some form of mysticism—generally highly ritualistic. Those who followed this train of development seemed to do so from a longing to turn from the cold individualem of logic and, through co-operative ritual, to find again the primitive crowd solidarity and emotion. What will be the effect of the war upon this and similar tendencies ? Will mankind become more or less of a herd animal ? We have nearly all of us been living a crowd life of late--some of us for the first time— breathing the crowd spirit in battalion, hospital, or munition shop. Shall we react from this taste of communal life and become furiously Individualistic, or, pleased with our preliminary canter, shall we choose that dark horse Socialism for our permanent mount ? That will be one of the chief of the many strange questi _ns which peace will bring.
- • The Crowd in Peace and War. By Sir Martin Conway. London: LOOMOLDI end CO. 154. 11C‘i Sir Martin Conway's The Crowd in Peace and War is particularly well timed. If his tracing of the crowd's origins is not specially illuminating, his analysis of that strange mindless emotional creature is excellent. He has throughout the book relied more upon such fact, as he could observe for himself than upon the researches of psychologists. he is more liberal with modem instances than with wise saws. The book is, in fact, an excellent piece of journalism rather than a profound scientific. study. He deals most entertainingly with that universally fascinating creature, the man born of the crowd. As a bubble rises from the troubled depths of a torrent-fed pool, so from a crowd a leader is bound sooner or later to arise. He may be a man of a strong and virile genius—. Sir Martin Conway would call him a "crowd-compeller "—one who will bend, and sway, and weld his crowd as did Shakespeare's Mark Antony, or as Milton's Satan shook and gripped the fionds who heard him in the - hall of Pandemonium, or as Napoleon bent and forged the molten soul of France into an irresistible instrument of Empire. But such men are rare. Oftener the loader will be what Sir Martin Conway calls a "crowd-exponent." Crowd-exponents, he points out, arise after a crowd movement has taken shape
"They are men who have not m- de it but who have been made by It. . . . The crowd-exponent is the man who feels by sympathetic insight and more sensitiveness of nature as the crowd feels or is going to feel, and who expresses in clear language the emotion of a dumb organism. Fos all the ideas of a crowd are necessarily of a dumb emotional sort and can only be expressed by them in the form of shouts or actions of approval or dissent. The crowd loves anyone who will express its ideas. He may be a speaker, or a writer, or a group of newspaper writers-- but whatever he is, he is the voice of the crowd and his utterance is really theirs. . . • Hence the chief quality of a crowd-exponent is sensitiveness, and the faculty he most needs is the power of speech. He is by nature akin to an artist ; his is the stuff of which poets are made.. . . The great men of this sort do not go forth to find out by laborious research what people are thinking. . . . It is only the little men who are always listening at the keyhole of the publio to catch some secret of its tones. The great men catch the opinion of the public as they breathe the air ; they cannot avoid sharing it."
Sir Martin Conway goes on to instance the characters of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lloyd George to illustrate his point. His comments upon the psychology of the latter's political career and his estimate of his value in political life are both illuminating and original. Excellent also is the chapter upon "Government and the Crowd," in which, we are glad to see, Sir Martin Conway shows himself a champion of the Referendum. The whole book, indeed, provides most suggestive and interesting reading at the present juncture.
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