[1] An “Association,” it may be urged, generally has a definite purpose, and so far, as indeed we said above, the associates come together, and do not merely find themselves together. But this is only an apparent difficulty. In comparison with the whole compass of their nature, associates who come together for some limited purpose--Bimetallism, Philanthropy, a political cause--do merely find themselves together. They form, as the cynic will say, an extraordinary menagerie, and their association may break up without any apparent effect upon their nature. Obviously, however, there are some purposes which go deeper into men’s characters, and others which are shallower; and this merely illustrates our point that the most casual association is a universal connection of qualities in disguise.
Beginning, as before, with the connection between { 160} persons, we may illustrate the difference by the comparison between a crowd and an army. The mind of a crowd has indeed been taken as the type of a true social mind. But it is really something quite different. It is merely the superficial connection between unit and unit on an extended and intensified scale. As unit joins unit in the street, each determines his immediate neighbours, and is determined by them through the contagion of excitement, and with reference to the most passing ideas and emotions. What acts upon them in common is necessarily what there is in common between persons meeting, as it were, for no reason, and not knowing what they share beyond what they immediately see and feel. The crowd may indeed “act as one man”; but if it does so, its level of intelligence and responsibility will, as a rule, be extraordinarily low. It has nothing in common beyond what unit can infect unit with in a moment. Concerted action, much more reasoning and criticism, are out of the question. The doing or thinking of a different thing by each unit with reference to a single end is impossible. The crowd moves as a mere mass, because its parts are connected merely as unit with unit. Any form of connection which could effect an organisation in the whole would make a demand on the nature of every unit, which, where their conjunction is merely casual, could not possibly be met.