776 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-CREATION
Diall, in his Psychology oj the Aggregate Mind oj an Audience,
holds that the mind of an assemblage listening to a powerful
speaker undergoes a curious process called "fusion;' by which
the individuals in the audience, losing their personal traits
for the time being ... are reduced, as it were, to a single
individual, whose characteristics are those of an impulsive
youth, imbued in general with high ideals, but lacking in
reasoning power and will. Tarde, the French psychologist,
advances similar views.
Professor Joseph Jastrow, in his Fact and Fable in Psy-
chology, says:
" ... The conjurer finds it easy to perform to a large
audience, because, among other reasons, it is easier to arouse
their admiration and sympathy, easier to make them forget
themselves and enter into the uncritical spirit of wonder-
land. It would seem that in some respects the critical tone
of an assembly, like the strength of a chain, is that of its
weakest member."
Professor [Gustave] Le Bon, in his The Crowd, says:
"The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the
gathering take one and the same direction, and their con-
scious personality vanishes .... The most careful observations
seem to prove that an individual immerged for some length
of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself in a special
state, which most resembles the state of fascination in which
the hypnotized individual finds himself .... The conscious
personality has entirely vanished, will and discernment are
lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction
determined by the hypnotizer ....
"Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an
organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder
of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultured individual;
in a crowd, he is a barbarian-that is, a creature acting by