Boris Sidis

“ Other men coming up are attracted by curiosity: they wish to learn the reason of the gathering; they fix their attention on the object that fascinates the crowd, are fascinated in their turn, and thus the crowd keeps on growing. With the increase of numbers grows the strength of fascination; the hypnotization increases in intensity, until, when a certain critical point is reached, the crowd becomes completely hypnotized, and is ready to obey blindly the commands of its hero; it is now a mob. Thus a mob is a hypnotized crowd. ”

“ The difference between these two categories of heroes lies in the nature of the object by means of which they influence the masses. Great warriors, politicians, religious lawgivers, fix the attention of the people on their own exceptionally powerful personality, whilst a silly woman or a crazy king fixes the attention of the crowd on a stick, on a knife, or on a mad dance. In the case of really great men, the centre of attraction is their powerful personalities; in the case of mob heroes, the centre of attraction is the object, for their personalities are worthless. ”

“ Even in our own times, especially in European and Eastern countries, the sociostatic pressure has not ceased to work out its deadly effects on woman. Her life is full of regulations; she is formed and fashioned, bodily and mentally, according to a certain style and mode. She is confined to a narrow sphere of activity, where she passes a dull, monotonous life. For centuries the anvil on which monotony and social pressure have hammered with all their might and main, we need not wonder that woman has formed a strong predisposition to hypnotic states. Woman, in truth, is half hypnotized ”

“ There have been periods in human history when monotony and social pressure were ceaselessly at work, and mobs were then as plenty as blackberries. Such were the mediæval ages. In our own times there are unfortunate countries where these two factors are also constantly at work, and the number of mobs is there truly alarming. Russia offers us a fair example of such a country. The social, or, more properly, the political pressure in Russia is so great as to hamper all voluntary movements. A Russian cannot move a step without having first to ask the permission of the police. ”

“ If anything gives us a strong sense of own individuality, it is surely our voluntary movements. We may say that the individual self grows and expands with the increase of the variety and intensity of its voluntary movements; and conversely, the life of the individual self sinks and shrinks, with the increase of variety and intensity of voluntary movements occurring during this in mind, it is easy to understand why the individual sinks in the crowd. ”

“ If we look from the standpoint of the masses, all those are heroes whom the masses obey and follow, and between a great historical hero and a hero of the mob there is only a quantitative difference. Yet there must also be some qualitative difference between one hero and another. ”

“ It is true that whenever great masses of men are in blind movement there must necessarily be some brilliant object that has arrested their attention. Still, it does not follow that every brilliant object possesses the power of moving men. Evidently, there must first be a constitutional predisposition in the masses to pass into the trance-like condition of the mob. ”

“ In a society where the sociostatic press is always at work, where political pressure is far stronger than even in the ancient despotic monarchies, since the Russian government is in possession of all modern improvements, where gray uniformity and drowsy monotony reign supreme, where hypnotization is the means for appeasing pain and putting people into a fool's paradise, obedience must be the rule. Blind, stupid obedience, that slavish obedience which is peculiar to hypnotized subjects, distinctly characterizes the subjects of the Czar. ”

“ Some men, by raising an alarm, or by preaching inflammatory discourses to the crowd, fermented and formed the mob, while others laid out the plan of pillage and took command. Like all low organisms, the mob possesses an enormous power of propagation. Under favorable conditions, mobs multiply, grow, and spread with a truly amazing rapidity. The anti-Jewish riots in Russia furnish excellent illustrations: once a riot broke out in one place, it went on producing new disturbances throughout the whole country.
To return, however, to the hero. We have seen that every mob must have its hero. ”

“ Personality is suppressed in the individual by the rigidity of social organization; the individual becomes an automaton, a mere puppet. Under the enormous weight of the sociastatic press, under the crushing weight of economical, political, religious, and social regulations, there is no possibility for the individual to determine his own relations in life, to move freely; voluntary movements are suppressed, and a limitation of voluntary movements produces that peculiar hypnotic state of fascination which is so highly favorable to the formation of mobs. ”

“ So long, then, as the vigorous personality of a great man preserves itself intact and remains strikingly brilliant, whether in written works or in tradition, so long will he, to use a technical term, fascinate bodies of men. Thus we find that the difference between historical heroes and mob heroes is not only quantitative, but also qualitative. ”

“ The Russian government, knowing well by experience the conditions that favor the formation of mobs, prohibits all kinds of public gatherings; an assembly of only four or five men is strictly forbidden, because even such a small gathering is the possible nucleus of a mob.
The very mode in which a crowd is formed is highly favorable to its hyponotization, and hence to its becoming a mob. At first a crowd is formed by some strange object or occurrence suddenly arresting the attention of men. ”

“ This mode of hypnotization by monotony gives us some clue to the source of mobs. Wherever we find uniformity of life, there we invariably meet with mobs; wherever the environment is monotonous, there men are trained by their very mode of life to be good subjects for social hyponotization, for mobs. And not only are they thus prepared for hypnotization, they are frequently hypnotized by the monotonous environment itself; they require only a hero to obey, to become a mob. ”

“ Now this fact cannot be explained by the greater weakness of the female organism, because experiments prove that weakness of organization is not at all a condition for speed and good hypnotization. How then shall we explain it? It can be explained only by monotony and social pressure. For centuries the social pressure was brought to bear on women with special severity; their life was fixed for them by their fathers, husbands, eldest sons, by religions and by class regulations. All individuality, personality, was mercilessly, brutally destroyed in women. ”

“ Man, in northern Russia and Siberia is half hypnotized by the monotony of his environment.
There is, however, another factor which is far more fundamental than monotony; it is a purely social factor, but it works with such a stupendous power and on such a large scale that it may truly be considered the great source of mobs. This factor is social pressure. Laws and regulations press on the individual from all sides. ”

“ Thereupon an attack was made, and the mob, after having demolished the Jewish synagogue proceeded after the manner peculiar to all Russian anti-Jewish riots, breaking into Jewish houses, killing, violating, and barbarously demolishing every person And thing they found in them.
These cases clearly show that a mob is not formed of its own accord; it needs an instigator, a leader, who shall ferment the crowd and give it an impulse. A mob, then, can be analyzed into two principal elements: a single person initiating, directing, and a crowd that follows and obeys blindly. ”

“ But assuming that there exists only a quantitative difference between Washington and the Russian hag of 1883, how shall we explain this very difference? Why is it that some men rise like bright, fixed stars on the sky of politics and religion, and keep for ages the attention of masses, whilst others are a kind of meteor? ”

“ The individual self was horrified at the work of the mob self. Once generated, the mob self possesses a strong attractive power and a great capacity of assimilation. It attracts fresh individuals, sucks out their personalities and quickly assimilates them. Weak individualities are especially in danger of it. This strange phenomenon can be well illustrated by a curious incident describing the riot of the military colonists in Russia in 1831, taken from the memoirs of Panæff:―"Whilst Sokoloff was fighting hard for his life, I saw a corporal lying on the piazza and crying bitterly. ”

“ You may travel for miles and miles, for days and nights, and not find a single village, not meet a solitary human being, see no single sign of life,―the same painfully uniform plains of dazzling white snow stretch out on all sides. We should expect that men who live under such conditions would be hypnotized by the environment itself; and sure enough, we find there many cases of spontaneous hypnotization; men suffer from a sickness known as chorea imitatoria. ”

“ Berenheim expresses himself more clearly. "Let us add," he says, "that, in the majority of passes, the monotonous wearying and continuous impression of one of senses produce a certain intellectual drowsiness, the prelude to sleep. The mind entirely absorbed by a quiet, uniform, and incessant perception becomes foreign to all other impressions; it is too feebly stimulated, and allows itself to become dull." ”

“ Manufacturers, business men, professional men, literary men, workingmen, cannot go to their work without having first obtained a permit from the police. Man lives, in Russia, the poor monotonous life of a worm. Individuality is suppressed, strictly prohibited; original thought is crushed; all must act in the way prescribed by the routine of the paternal government. "Russia," says Turgeneff, "is a great prison,"―a great prison where hypnotization is practiced on a grand scale. ”

“ The plains of northern European Russia are almost as uniform in their nature as those of northern Siberia, and we find that the population of northern Russia suffers from many different forms of nervous derangement, and especially of such nervous diseases as spread by imitation. ”

“ To start a society, to form a club, to print and distribute circulars or advertisements, to meet, to walk in a procession on the street, to deliver a lecture, to form a literary circle, to move from place to place, etc.,―all these things can be done only with the permission of the police. ”

“ Professor William James advances a very important hypothesis: "Our entire feeling of spiritual activity, or what commonly passes by that name, is really a feeling of bodily activities whose exact nature is by most men overlooked. ”

“ Analyzing the cases here cited, we find crowds attracted and influenced by a strong sensation, caused by persons in unusual states of mind; by madmen indeed, but it might just as well be by genuinely great men. ”

“ It is interesting to observe that the common people in general and soldiers in particular are excellent subjects for hypnotic purposes. Thus the soldiers of the Czar, as experiments show, have a strong predisposition to hypnotic states. ”