GREGARIOUSNESS IN BELIEF. Man's gregarious character, as already pointed out, is manifested not only in his desire to be physically with his fellows, but to be at one with them in their actions, feelings, and thoughts. Beliefs once established tend to remain established if for no other reason than that they are believed in by the majority. That an opinion gains prestige merely because we know other people believe it, is frequently illustrated by the facility with which rumor travels. At the end of the Great War, it will be recalled, the false news of the armistice report flew from mouth to mouth and was accepted with the most amazing credulity simply because "everybody said so." The spread of superstitions and old wives' tales and their long lingering in the minds even of intelligent people is testimony that men tend mentally as well as physically to herd together. The tendency to find comfort in the presence of one's fellows and uneasiness if too much separated from them, is as pronounced in the sphere of moral and intellectual relations as it is in the case of merely physical proximity. We like to be one of a crowd in our opinions and beliefs, as well as in our persons. There is hardly anything more painful than the sense of being utterly alone in one's opinions. Even the extreme dissenter from the accustomed ways of thinking and feeling of the majority is associated with or pictures some little group which agrees with him. And, if we cannot find contemporaries to share our extreme opinions, we at least imagine some ideal group now or in posterity to share it with us. GREGARIOUSNESS IN HABITS OF ACTION. But if men tend to think in groups they tend more emphatically still to act in groups, to be acutely uncomfortable when acting in a fashion different from that customary among the majority of their fellows. Habits of action are more deep-seated physiologically than habits of thought (which is one reason why our theories are so often in advance of our practice). People will accede intellectually to new ideas which they would not and could not practice, the mind being, as it were, more convertible than the emotions. Even in minor matters, in dress, speech, and manners, we like to do the accustomed thing. It is more painful for most people to use the wrong fork at dinner, or to be dressed in a business suit where everyone else is in evening clothes, than to commit a fallacy, or to act upon prejudices rather than upon logical conclusions.