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The Crowd; study of the popular mind by Gustave Le Bon
page 20 of 214 (09%)
they acquire the character of an organised crowd. A thousand
individuals accidentally gathered in a public place without any
determined object in no way constitute a crowd from the
psychological point of view. To acquire the special
characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of
certain predisposing causes of which we shall have to determine
the nature.

The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of
feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the
primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organised, do
not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of
individuals on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may
acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain
violent emotions--such, for example, as a great national
event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd. It will be
sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them
together for their acts to at once assume the characteristics
peculiar to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen
men might constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen
in the case of hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On
the other hand, an entire nation, though there may be no visible
agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of certain
influences.

A psychological crowd once constituted, it acquires certain
provisional but determinable general characteristics. To these
general characteristics there are adjoined particular
characteristics which vary according to the elements of which the
crowd is composed, and may modify its mental constitution.
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