But now, O Apollo! look at the human race moving about in its festive scenes. The children rickety from the cradle, deformed by premature study, stupefied by the school life that wears out the body at fifteen years of age, and cramps the mind before it is formed, reach adolescence with limbs badly grown, badly jointed, in which all normal proportions have completely disappeared. [Illustration 043] And let us contemplate the people in the street, trotting along in their dirty clothing! As for the peasant! Good Heavens! Let us go and watch the peasant in the fields, his gnarled knotted frame, lanky, twisted, bent, more hideous than the barbarous types exhibited in a museum of anthropology. In comparison how splendid are those men of bronze, the negroes; in shape, if not in face; how elegant, both in their movements and their figure, the tall lithe Arabs. Moreover, I have yet another reason for having a horror of crowds. I cannot go into a theatre, nor be present at any public entertainment. I at once experience a curious and unbearable feeling of discomfort, a horrible unnerving sensation, as though I were struggling with all my might, against a mysterious and irresistible influence. And in truth, I struggle with the spirit of the mob, which strives to take possession of me. How often have I observed that the intelligence expands and grows loftier, when we live alone, and that it becomes meaner and lower, when we again mix among other men. The contact, the opinions floating in the air, all that is said, all that one is compelled to listen to, to hear, to answer, acts upon the mind. A flow and ebb of ideas goes from head to head, from house to house, from street to street, from town to town, from nation to nation, and a level is established, an average of intellect is created, by all large agglomerations of individuals. The inherent qualities of intellectual initiative, of free will, of wise reflection and even of sagacity, belonging to any individual being, generally disappear the moment that being is brought in contact with a large number of other beings. The following is a passage from a letter of Lord Chesterfield to his son (1751) which sets forth with rare humility, the sudden elimination of all active qualities of the mind, in every large body of people: "Lord Macclesfield, who had the greatest share in forming the bill, and who is one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, spoke afterwards with infinite knowledge, and all the clearness that so intricate a matter would admit of, but as his words, his periods, and his utterance were not near so good as mine, the preference was most unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me. "This will ever be the case; every numerous assembly is _mob,_ let the individuals who compose it be what they will. Mere reason and good sense is never to be talked to a mob; their passions, their sentiments, their senses and their seeming interests, are alone to be applied to.